‘Advice for young journalists’ trend delivers lessons for PR pros, too

If aspiring reporters were looking for motivation to meet their newsroom-career aspirations, they didn’t find it in Salmon’s article.

“In fact, life is not good for journalists,” he wrote. He continued by explaining why “journalism is a dumb career move.”

If there’s something else you also love, something else you’re good at, something else which makes the world a better place — then maybe you should think about doing that instead. Even successful journalists rarely do much of the kind of high-minded stuff you probably aspire to. And enormous numbers of incredibly talented journalists find it almost impossible to make a decent living at this game.

Washington Post columnist Alexandra Petri wrote a different take on journalistic aspirations, as did New Statesman reporter Laurie Penny, but even that wasn’t enough for those with advice to share.