If so, make sure your parents have a free room where you can crash, because it’s a low-paying and rocky road to financial security and editorial happiness (if either ever arrives). Rare is the journalism job that pays decent and allows the freedom to report on things interesting and substantial (I count my job at the Monitor as one of those rarities).
Here’s a prescient video that jokes about the annoying idealism and naivety of many would-be journalists (I was one of them: through college, I exclusively submitted articles to The New Yorker until I actually started subscribing to the magazine and realized that I could probably never be good enough to write for it).
Bear 1: I would like to make a difference. I would like to meet the president. I want to work for the New York Times.
Bear 2: Would you like to write about pork belly futures for a trade magazine based in Topeka, Kansas?
Bear 1: No. I want to write for the New York Times. I want to live in a big apartment in Greenwich Village and go to cool restaurants every night with my exciting friends, like on TV.
Bear 2: Would you like to live in your parents’ basement and work for the local weekly on a contract basis without health benefits?
But if you do really want to be a journalist, a commenter on Gawker has this good advice: “Go to a good school with a tight alumni base, forget what grades are, write anything you can and never say something isn’t in your job description.”
