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Comment by MatthewPhillips | Hacker News Reader

This just makes me think: why in the world would any one want to become a writer these days? There isn't much money in it, unless you get lucky and hit it big. I understanding having a passion, but this is one passion that should be relegated to hobby time. Am I wrong on this? I'm just not seeing the economic viability of writing sentences and having people (whether readers or advertisers) paying you proportionate to the amount of work you put in.

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Being a writer has never been a way to get rich. All those movies about newspaper journalists are not filled with a bunch of wealthy writers. They are grinding it out, for the most part, and they always have.

The economics are true of just about anything that scales -- startups and anything in the arts both come to mind. There's no guaranteed route to six-figure comfort (like there is with, say, dental school), but the potential rewards are enormous.

And, as other responses have pointed out, in all of these fields, people really, really want to do them. The number of writing jobs that are 'comfortable' (pick your number, $60k?) has sharply declined from the glory days of the newspaper industry, but it still has the same non-monetary attractions, and there are the still the same opportunities to become, say, a bestselling nonfiction author.

Funny you say that, 'cause people tell me the same thing about startups.

But as Bezos once said: "You don't choose your passions. Your passions choose you."

I think it's more, "You don't choose your passions. You will randomly do many things in your life and some of those things will interest you so much that you feel compelled to keep doing them."

It's not as pithy, though.

Maybe they're not motivated by money. Maybe they'd rather make $35k doing what they love full-time, rather than only do it as a hobby.

Sadly, you are wrong. Democracy relies on good journalism to inform the people. Good journalism cannot be done as a hobby.

Meeting and talking earnestly with lots of people, being out in the field chasing something, the thrill of knowing first..

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