Through my notifications, I spotted this on Reddit, a senior in high school thinking about studying sports journalism. The Redditer is concerned that jobs are scarce and that the pay would be crap unless he lands a gig at ESPN. In my 20-year career in journalism, part of me wants to say twas ever thus, but here is my response:

As someone who has worked in journalism for the last 20 years but now “does things to support my journalism habit” and am looking for a second act for the second half of my career, I would say that you can do this, but think of two things (at least): A) Transferrable skills B) a double major that gives you solidly marketable skills outside of the exceedingly competitive sports journalism market. That second major could be sports marketing or simply marketing. (Or if you’ve got the resources and the drive, get a master’s degree outside of journalism. You’ll have a better sense of what you want to do once you’re at university.)

Also, if you really want to go the sports journalism route. Get writing and doing video as soon as possible. It was true 20 years ago when I was starting and it’s ten times more relevant now that you need to start building your personal brand and portfolio immediately.

And a little context, my last full-time job in journalism lasted 21 months as a regional executive editor for one of the major US newspaper groups. The last round of cuts a month ago by the group in the region where I used to work wiped out half of the local sports staffs.

Let me end on a positive note. I may not be working full-time for a news organisation now, but I have had an utterly amazing career. I got my start as a cub reporter in western Kansas in the mid-90s. Four years after I started, I landed in the BBC’s Washington bureau as their first digital journalist outside of the UK. I moved to the UK in 2005. I worked for the BBC a little longer and then moved to the Guardian in 2006. In 2010, I took a buyout. It gets a little less predictable after that, which is the story for a lot of journalists my age.

But now, I have my own little media consultancy. Who am I kidding, I’m a one man consultancy. This year, I’ve written a report on newsroom innovation management for the Reuters Institute at Oxford. I’ve traveled to 11 countries already this year doing workshops, conferences and consulting with media companies and industry groups. I informally advise digital media start-ups and do some fundraising for them. It’s a lot of work. It’s a lot of fun, but it is a lot of create your own adventure too. Best of luck!

I’m not going to say that this is the end all and be all of advice. It’s an exciting time to enter journalism, but I think this Redditer also understands the inherent risk in the industry right now. It used to be that journalists graduated from junior reporting positions that paid two cents more than f*&k-all to gradually either well paid senior writing positions or leadership positions. At the moment, that career path is broken. Now journalism has a rise or retire system similar to the US military, well apart from the pretty good retirement benefits.

Most of the regional journalism jobs that are have disappeared in the US over the last ten years will not come back, and most of the digital jobs are in high-rent cities — New York, Washington, SF and LA.

We’re in a moment when what was is being slowly dismantled, and we’re not entirely sure what will be in the future. That’s exciting, but the ride is a little bumpy, to say the least.