Felix Salmon essay kicks off a day of #AdviceForYoungJournalists

Felix Salmon of Fusion set off a little journalism nerdworld firestorm yesterday with his letter “To all the young journalists asking for advice.”

Salmon’s message was dark, as hinted at by the story graphic, a photo illustration that featured the words “We won’t pay you” superimposed onto newspapers:

I’m sure that many people have told you this already, but take it from me as well: 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.

It goes on like that for quite some time, though Salmon also calls himself a “golden ager” and writes, “I think this is probably the greatest era for journalism that the world has ever seen.”

The problem, he writes, is that “Labor has almost no leverage over capital any more,” meaning it’s very hard to get paid.

Salmon makes a lot of good, tough points. I saw two responses that offered pushback on his bleak vision. This is my best advice to young journalists by Ezra Klein of Vox, and Advice for young journalists by “Sports Media Guy” Brian Moritz.

Both offer plenty of solid practical advice, but not terribly much to rebut Salmon’s pessimistic view of anyone getting paid. “The Death of Journalism is really a kind of disruptive change in journalism,” Klein writes, “and that’s bad for incumbents, but you’re not an incumbent.”

The problem with that is that, if successful, you will be, and, as Salmon wrote: “If you get a job by competing on price against 40-year-olds when you’re 22, then the turnabout, once you reach 40, is only fair play.”

Moritz, playing off a quote from Dr. Seuss’ “The Lorax,” writes, “If the students and young journalists care a whole awful lot, they will create the journalism the world needs—both as a business and as the news.”

The whole dustup spawned a Twitter hashtag #AdviceforYoungJournalists. There are a lot of attempts at humor to wade through, a few of them successful, and some good advice mixed in.

Laurie Penny, herself a young journalist but a brilliant one for the New Statesman and the Guardian, collected her thoughts on the hashtag in a Storify.