My impression is that it's nowadays a poorly paid career of choice for the propertied upper classes for whom the job is an identity and means of social signalin

My impression is that it's nowadays a poorly paid career of choice for the propertied upper classes for whom the job is an identity and means of social signaling and only incidentally an income. Same as acting - perhaps easier to get into though. They were for sure a lot more talented when there existed such a thing as a working class journalist. They probably also had more resources available to them to do real journalism - before tech took the lion's share of the advertising pie.