Writers do not earn very much

In 2005, I graduated with a degree in print journalism. It was already apparent that the internet was starting to disrupt the industry, but little did we anticipate how "writers' incomes declined by 42% between 2009 and 2019" ("Thousands of authors urge AI companies to stop using work without permission," Chloe Veltman, NPR, July 17, 2023) and that the 2022 median income for full-time writers was $23,000 (per "a forthcoming report from The Authors Guild," Veltman says).

Newsroom journalism isn't 'a path to fame and fortune'

"All The President’s Men is a very good movie — a suspenseful, high-stakes, real-life cat-and-mouse game about two little guys with grit taking on a king. And those little guys do it with excellent hair.

* * *

All The President’s Men made a working-class profession look like a path to fame and fortune. It may have ruined multiple generations of journalists. Suddenly, ink-stained wretches were dreamy. They were scrappy underdogs. Here’s the truth: Journalism is mostly eating at your desk. The true art of the reporter is typing with one hand and holding a sandwich with the other.

The problem with the movie is journalists aren’t superheroes. A good journalist knows that power in any measurement — even a spoonful — corrupts. Sometimes, rotten meat can smell sweet. A good journalist isn’t unbiased. They’re human beings. This means they’re hugely biased assholes. A good journalist knows that everyone is an asshole, including journalists. There are no creatures under heaven who excrete rose petals. Reporter, expose thyself.

Journalists are not sexy Robert Redford, with sensitive furrowed brows. Dustin Hoffman’s Carl Bernstein is a chain-smoking ladies’ man in All The President’s Men. Woodward and Bernstein were ex-hippies in tight pants with egos the size of Chevy Impalas — like the rest of their generation. Oy, Boomers. The movie made them rock stars, and only rock stars are rock stars. All The President’s Men is a fun fantasy to watch for two hours and 18 minutes, but it’s just make-believe. You know, bullshit. The Adventures Of Bob And Carl."

— John DeVore. Essay: 'All The President's Men' (1976): Journalism isn't sexy—it's mostly eating at your desk. July 21, 2024.

Neither is hustling for paid subscribers to your own blog

Shay, writing in October 2025, says: "as of this writing, I have made $6,821 in two years on Substack." And: "I only just this month cracked the 100 paid subscriber mark. At $5 a month or $50 a year, that’s not a lot of cash, especially when I must pay taxes on that money." Her monthly stats are 43,000 readers on Substack and 1.9 million readers on Facebook, but she's only getting $500 for that value she's providing to so many people (minus, I suppose, Substack's 10% fee and then owing income tax on the remaining $450).

Sometimes a reader will ask her why her Facebook posts don't have links. Obviously, it is because Facebook strips out the links when she copy/pastes her work to be freely available on Facebook. (Also, something she doesn't mention: Facebook's algorithm suppresses posts that contain external links because they discourage people from leaving Facebook.) Those readers will compare her "to someone else who is well-resourced with more time and money and possibly even an assistant or two," someone who is literally Substack's top paid writer, earning an estimated $5 million per year. Really:

"In the old days, you didn’t read unless you paid. Now? It’s a smorgasbord of consumption that is dismissive of who creates that work, or what goes into it. I spend hundreds a month on subscriptions so I can access accurate news as much as possible. I share unpaywalled links. So, yeah, nitpicking when you can’t get a source when you are on a device that has access to so much information feels less than mindful."

In other words, her sources are somewhere, and free readers on a platform that obstructs the posting of sources should take the time to find out where she posted her sources, which might be behind a paywall, in which case the readers should really think about paying for her work.

The way I do it

Personally, I write on Medium. Medium members pay $5/month for access to millions of articles on the platform by all the writers. I get paid a few pennies only when those paying members find and read my work. No, the pennies don't add up to "a lot." They add up to "something."