the authors find that students with wealthy parents enjoy a large advantage in elite college admissions that academic credentials alone cannot explain. Moreover, graduates of these institutions reap significant monetary and nonmonetary rewards compared to similar college graduates who attended less-prestigious schools.

New Study Investigates Why Elite Colleges Favor Rich Kids (forbes.com)

And this applies to elite journalists as well:

The twelve most prestigious private schools (the Ivy League plus the University of Chicago, Stanford University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Duke University), represent just 0.8% of college students. However, graduates of the so-called “Ivy-Plus” universities make up 13% of the highest earners and 12% of Fortune 500 CEOs. Ivy-Plus alumni are also overrepresented among prestige positions such as U.S. Senators and New York TimesNYT 0.0% journalists.

Studies have found similarly for the WSJ, Washington Post and other media services that an enormous percent of their news staff comes from wealth and elite university backgrounds. Journalists at the national level have little in common with the people they report about.