At the beginning of the century, the profession was in extremis. A series of recessions prodded media companies to gamble everything on a digital future, a future unencumbered by the clunky, bureaucratic apparatus of publishing on paper. The sense of crisis and opportunity quickly remade the old newsrooms. Over the course of a decade, journalism shed $1.6 billion worth of reporter and editor salaries. At the same time that journalism shriveled, its prestige collapsed. One survey ranked newspaper reporter as the worst job in America, edging out lumberjack and parole officer.
