I wonder how much of this is the incentives effect of who wants to be a journalist. Big 3-letter national media org Journalism requires you to live in a HCOL city while accepting miserable pay at the start. Yet there are enough people interested in the field that it also requires a prestigious elite college degree, and possibly doing some unpaid internships in college.

In my observation in NYC being surrounded by some of these people, it attracts A LOT of nepobabies. Even some of the famous newscasters you watched as a kid fall into this category. They, as a group, have largely chosen power over money.. but only partially because they do come from enough money to make that choice. Tons of overlap between the industry & working on political campaigns / in government admins.

Who else can afford to go to Harvard, work summers for free, then move to Manhattan for a $40k salary in a flat to declining industry? Who else has the parental backstop to choose to make 1/3rd their potential income given the school they got a degree from? It's kind of a fun game looking up random people in the industry on wikipedia and observing how many have 1 or 2 parents who have their own wikipedia pages (A LOT).

Even guys I deeply respected at some point like Michael Lewis, who started in the industry and knew it well.. eventually get so out of touch that their writing starts to exhibit the Gell-Mann effect.