Daily Bafflements

• Here is a tale of a journalist and a programmer who set out to make an interactive graphic of diversity in top editorial positions in American newsrooms, and failed. “As it turns out, there isn’t really enough data to make an interactive graphic about diversity among top newsroom editorial positions that doesn’t make you have to squint to see the racial breakdown in the first place—because there isn’t really any racial diversity at all,” writes Manjula Martin at Scratch Magazine. “The results are barely improved when it comes to gender.” (Via Poynter.)

• A scathing column by Julie Burchill in The Spectator invites us to “Meet the new faces of nepotism: The old paths to the top for working-class children–sport, music, acting, writing–are increasingly closed.” Now more than ever, talent and hard work aren’t the most important ingredients for success; having been born to the right parents is, Burchill argues.

• ”Joblessness may kill you, but recessions could be good for your health,” says “science.” Okay, sounds good!

• Or, let’s look on the bright side: recessions could help the health of future generations? Amanda Wilson has a damning feature in Pacific Standard about a former mill town in North Carolina that a billionaire has transformed into a new hub for biotech research. “Today’s Kannapolis does not offer as many good blue-collar jobs as it used to—unemployment still hovers at 10 percent—but it does provide plenty of opportunities for locals to serve as human research subjects,” Wilson writes. Read on for a story of “the new American economy in three tablespoons of blood, a Walmart gift card, and a former mill town’s DNA.”