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Comment by losteverything | Hacker News Reader

I would like to ask walt if he thought this could happen today: a 23 year old waking into a newspaper and start a career. (I assume no would be his answer but that's why I ask)

Q2 for walt: What would the name of the office/company be today that you think you could walk into as a 23 yr old and start a career?

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The Washington Post is hiring pretty aggressively here in DC. I don't see any reason a 23 year old couldn't start a career there.

The number of people reading a daily print newspaper has declined from 55% to 5% in the last twenty five years. Granted a higher percentage are reading the news on their phones but you don't need as many people to put out a digital paper.

Sure the boomers retiring will need to be replaced but it's a declining market and even if you manage to get hired it's doubtful you will have as long a career as Walt managed.

You will have to compete with a computer. Experts are predicting that up to 90% of newspaper stories will be written by computers by 2030. It's akin to entering the buggy whip manufacturing business right after the introduction of the Model T.

http://www.journalism.org/2016/06/15/newspapers-fact-sheet/

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/jun/28/computer-...

A 23 year old today can start an online enterprise that stands a fair chance of acquiring an audience about the size of those small town papers at which many journalists used to get their first jobs covering PTA meetings and Boy Scout award ceremonies.

The down side is not learning from veterans. The upside is not needing permission.

There were two factors here: one was the prestige of the platform, and the other was the transformation that began with the invention of the microprocessor. Both required luck.

Today, it probably wouldn't be a newspaper. It might be a website. However, we don't know what the next transformative technology might be. There must be some former 23yo's who are already on track via the web or smartphones, or perhaps AI or VR. The next one could be in a medical field, such as genetics. Take your pick ;-)

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