Yes, Gen X Really IS the Greatest Journalism Generation

-first published in Substack blog “The “Last Editor” on December 10, 2025

Scrolling through social media, it’s clear the algorithm knows I enjoy a good dashcam crash video, discussions of movies and, of course, snippets of the best journalism. As I was killing time on Instagram the other day, a post from T, The New York Times Style Magazine caught my eye. The headline asked “Is Gen X Actually the Greatest Generation?” The piece—which I highly recommend—details how members of Gen X (born between 1965 and 1980) have affected our culture in countless positive ways. Focused mainly on the arts, the piece lays out a strong case to support its thesis. Once you’ve read it, it’s hard to deny that nearly the entire cultural landscape in which we now find ourselves was almost entirely shaped by the talents of Gen X. I’m here, not to support the Times piece, but to write my own supplement to it.

It has been clear to me for many years now that journalists who are members of Gen X are the best our profession has ever seen.

My credentials to make this declaration are substantial and, I think, unique. My now 39-year tenure as a faculty member at the Missouri School of Journalism has given me the opportunity to work closely with journalists who are Baby Boomers (born 1946 to 1964), Gen Xers, Millennials (born 1981 to 1996) and Gen Zers (born 1997 to 2012)—all still in their embryonic stage when they worked in our TV newsroom and all exhibiting their most basic traits. At first, back when I began teaching in 1986, I had mostly Gen Xers with a few Baby Boomers thrown in as graduate students. There are many similarities between those generations when it comes to their workplace skills and habits, so I didn’t really notice the differences between generations at the time. But around the turn of the millennium, that namesake generation showed up in the newsroom and boy, did I notice a change. I’ll not litigate all the challenges the Millennials brought to managing a newsroom in this post (I’ll save that for another post—or perhaps several more posts), but suffice it to say our newsroom managers had to work a lot harder with that generation to get the same results we had gotten easily from our Gen X students. The drastic difference made me begin to observe and record what I saw, making me the self-appointed expert on changing generations in the newsroom I claim to be today.

Facing the challenges we did with getting Millennials prepared to enter the field, the veil was lifted as to just how good we had it with Gen X.

What we perceived with that generation at the time we taught them was a solid group of individuals who needed the typical amount of training to become competent in the field. But looking back once that generation was graduated and gone from our newsroom, I could now see they were much, much more. It became clear that a Gen Xer was like something you designed in a lab to be the perfect journalist. Members of that generation had a long list of traits—instincts, even—that made them ideal to report, produce and more. I spent some time trying to reverse engineer what made Gen Xers who they are, and I’ve come up with a short list of traits that shows how perfect they were to become journalists.

Independence: Gen Xers were the first of the so-called “latchkey kids” of the 70s and 80s. This was the time that, due to rising prices and a desire to have more, couples decided that both parents should have full-time jobs outside the home. Children, once they were deemed old enough to handle the responsibility, were given a key to get home on their own after school—often at only seven or eight years old. Once home, they were to look after themselves—no babysitters—and begin household chores like fixing dinner or cleaning up. This heavy dose of responsibility thrust upon them at a much earlier age than what had been common meant Gen Xers had to become independent, responsible individuals early in life. That independence stuck with them, creating individuals who could work on their own and get things done. What a perfect trait to bring to journalism.

Reliability: That early emergence of independence we saw in Gen Xers led to another important trait—they became people on whom you could always count. Not only did a child getting home from school alone have to be independent, that child also had to be someone on whom the parents could rely to take care of the house and the duties that needed to be done there. Gen Xers develop a sense of responsibility for what was expected of them and they took it very seriously. If they could reliably deliver what their parents needed from them every day, they could maintain that important independence they had come to enjoy. Flash forward to when they entered the newsroom and I knew I could count on my Gen X students to always deliver for the newscast, whether they were working in field, the newsroom, the studio or the booth.

Confidence: As you might guess, running a whole household at the age of seven gave the average Gen Xer a lot of confidence. And it was well-earned confidence, unlike some of the false confidence we see in younger people, buoyed by parents who tell them they’re something more than they are. Gen Xers earned their stripes as independent, reliable individuals and they carried the confidence that gave them forward to their future endeavors. That meant when Gen Xers arrived in the newsroom and faced the complicated, time-sensitive and important tasks it takes to put a newscast on the air, they were prepared to face it and get it done. Lack of confidence is an accomplishment killer in any context, but that was never a worry for Gen X when facing new challenges. Think about how much confidence it takes to for a student journalist to ask hard questions of a corrupt governor or to produce an election night newscast with a dozen live shots. That’s why this trait helped Gen Xers become the journalists they are today.

Skepticism: Oh, how I miss the raw skepticism found in the average Gen Xer. I didn’t know how integrated into their beings that trait was until the Millennials came along. That next generation, raised by well-meaning helicopter parents who wanted their children to live pain-free lives, entered the world with a notion that anyone in authority would look out for their best interests and never lead them astray. But we journalists know we get lied to every day (I can recall a classroom full of Millennials to whom I said that everyone with whom they spoke on their next reporting shift would lie to them—I thought half of them were about to cry) and we need skeptics on our teams to see through the misinformation and disinformation we get fed on a regular basis. Skepticism is a superpower for Gen Xers, helping them create some of the most important and impactful investigative and in-depth journalism of the last 35 years. It is perhaps what we miss most in young journalists today.

Questioning of Authority: Going hand in hand with that skepticism is a built-in need to question authority in all its forms. Trace this back to parents who gave so much responsibility to their children. The Gen X kids soon figured out they knew as much as their parents when it came to taking care of themselves. I experienced this plenty in the newsroom and the classroom. I had many Gen X students who clearly thought they knew as much as I did and really didn’t need me—an authority figure—to teach them anything. Frankly, I didn’t mind it. I could usually still get my messages through and saw that their lack of need for someone to tell them what they had to do would take them far. And who, in our current political climate, doesn’t want a journalist to question authority as far as they can take it?

This ode to Gen X doesn’t mean I didn’t see the strengths in other generations.

Baby Boomers had a work ethic second to none—always sticking with it until the job was done right. Millennials brought much-needed empathy to journalism, understanding the feelings of the people they meet on their stories and working to make those interactions more than transactional. And Gen Z has an inventive and entrepreneurial approach to journalism that’s going to keep reinventing it to be what audiences need it to be as our times change. We Baby Boomers are leaving the journalism workforce these days, but I’d love to see the Millennials and Gen Zers who now make up the majority of newsroom staffs take a page from the Gen X playbook. Just because they weren’t brought up with these innate traits doesn’t mean these younger generations can’t learn some independence, reliability, confidence, skepticism and the ability to question authority. Just think how much better our profession would be with all those traits added on top of what Millennials and Gen Z already have in their skill sets.

Each generation brings a strength to our profession that we need. But I don’t think we’ll ever see all the elements come together to build another generation like Gen X, truly journalism’s greatest generation.