There isn’t much call for someone who can create catchy phrases on their word processor these days. Employers want skills, real skills..
He made the decision to be a writer.
There ain’t a lot of money in it...............
I never understood the “job” thing unless you have very specialized skills. I just worked for myself starting at age 26.
Had a degree in Sociology, went into music, then real estate. Mostly retired at 60, but investing is too much fun to give up entirely.
I have many friends of all types. The ones who ran businesses or worked for the government have ended up in the best positions in general.
If you are a competent journalist there is LOTS of demand for you at trade publications. This guy felt like he was too good for anything but “the SI” which is why ESPN, Bleacher Report, Barstool Sports and tons of other outlets made their snide publication irrelevant in the first place.
Serious journalism is in steep decline (and it’s not just in the political sphere.) Magazines have been going under at an alarming rate over the last 5 to 10 years. Armies of journalists have been dumped into a market with few openings.
When a genuine job opens up in the world of journalism, hundreds of people apply for that job and at prestige organizations perhaps thousands.
The websites that have replaced magazines are looking for “content providers” - not journalists. The job is to make crap sound interesting rather than doing the hard work of uncovering an interesting story. They want young people who are not conflicted about the fact that what they are doing is just another form of marketing. And young people are cheap these days.
Website want people with SEO skills. SEO stands for search engine optimization. That means the website writers use keyword manipulation to draw people to the website. When the vistors land on the website because of some SEO manipulation, they are disappointed because the story they thought was there is just a lot of puffery. But as long as the website gets hits the owners don’t care. The advertisers are happy and that’s all that matters these days.
Older journalists are like the buggy and whip manufacturers after the automtobile was introduced. They have become increasingly irrelevant and unemployable. For those who were genuine journalists, it is a rough world.
Quality in writing is a thing of the past for the most part. Even when writing about non-political matters. Quality does not pay like it used to with magazines. Whole libraries of trade magazines have bitten the dust as a result.
My SIL proudly graduated with an English degree. Being very conservative politically and socially(Staunch Orthodox) he found no one was buying English degrees. He is now a pharmacist and doing very well.