In the New York Times exposé on the conditions in nail salons, writer, Sarah Maslin was heavily scrutinized for her narrow coverage on the story. She painted the nail salon industry to be a place of exploitation, low and sometimes no wages, and even abuse. Richard Bernstein, a former Times writer, believed that Maslin’s exposé only covered a marginalized group, specifically undocumented, limited English speaking workers.

I believe that Bernstein’s criticism was fair, but also had some issues in the way he addressed the article. Bernstein did research, calling various salons, while using his wife’s native tongue to get as fair of information as he could from salon owners. This, I believe is where Maslin went wrong: she just interviewed various salon workers, often working “small jobs” instead of the owners themselves. Had she had a way to contact the owners, in a sense, going undercover in order to find out how much wages actually were, Maslin may have had a more accurate depiction of how much workers actually get paid. Posing as someone else may be deceiving, but so was the way in which Maslin covered the article. She did not source the salons that held back wages for three months at a time, nor did she cite the news clippings offering jobs of an incredibly low wage that various workers were able to verify. This once again brings up the issue of a language barrier between the writer and the workers, thus diminishing the validity of the story. The editors’ responses to Bernstein’s questions were also incredibly vague and even allude to an air of avoidance on the topic of Maslin’s article that was under factual question.

Overall, the exposé was necessary because there is a major gap between regular minimum wages workers and the workers within the salons that many visit weekly. The way she covered the article though, did deserve scrutiny because it was incredibly one sided. Never did she get in touch with any salons like Bernstein’s, nor did she seem interested in doing so. It was her journalistic duty to cover all sides of the story, and had she done that to her full potential, readers would have a multifaceted understanding of the nail industry without having to later question its accuracy.