I don't see why you think "I worked around a newsroom for 13 years" is a good rebuttal to the fairly trivial claim that most professionals chose said profession because they wanted to do it.

Well, maybe it's because he replied to ME and I made specific claims that he decided to doubt. Now maybe in this brave new world, some people don't consider actual lived experience to be worth a whole lot, but that's not my problem.

The associate editor at the paper I did work for was making $13.50 an hour as of two years ago when I left. I know this because she overheard a conversation regarding the salary of my subordinate who was guaranteed to be paid a certain hourly rate (that was about 3x hers) upon his initial 6 months with the company, and she vented to me about it one night when I was in the office to perform some server maintenance and she had just arrived back from a football game she covered for the sports editor, who was out of town on vacation. She routinely wrote between 16-20 stories a week, did layouts for 5 sections of the paper including real estate, legal, and classifieds, covered all official local events, and covered girls' sporting events.

Does that seem to you like something you could do in 40 hours?

You're still missing the point that people tell almost identical stories for just about every profession in existence. The user that replied to you wasn't even doubting you, they were just saying that it's not special.

I'm not missing the point at all. They ARE special in that unlike all those other professions he rattled off, these people aren't making jack squat.

> when I was in the office to perform some server maintenance

So this work you did "around newsrooms" and "with journalists" was sysadmin work? Have I misread that?

I was the lead developer for a custom CMS platform for a small company and literally sat in the newsroom with the reporters and worked with them on a daily basis. When I first started working for the company, it was directly after Hurricane Katrina and I did work directly FOR the paper as well as dev work because the COO had yet to justify to the CEO why they needed a full time developer, much less a team. The hours were long and the work sucked but I was hourly and got to experience their work habits and schedule.

I've done startups for 25 years which has included publishing, there's nothing special about the hours of journalists. Every profession thinks that they put in more work and hours than others. Ask anyone at a law firm.