The question often is framed this way: Will newspapers survive?

My answer is a robust and immediate, "Yes." But I follow with a caveat. The printed newspaper of the future may be nothing like the newspaper we've known and loved for more than a century. Small but significant changes have affected newspapers, not the least of which are electronic nuances developed over the past five years.

I can recall writing about URLs and suggesting the time would come when newspapers would regularly direct readers to them because they provide expansive information that would take newspapers reams of paper to print.

We're still inching closer to my envisioned newspaper that doesn't print stock listings, sports agate, television listings, or classified ads but instead leads readers to online sites that provide this information.

Right now, the printed paper is directing readers to the Internet. The day may arrive when those roles are reversed and readers go first to the Web and only later for more permanent or specialized presentations to the printed news. The newspaper, in other words, might become a gigantic print-out.

Students entering journalism at this time are headed into an exciting, challenging and largely uncharted expanse.

Still, I think there are some givens about a journalist's life that will not change no matter how the technology of information and its delivery changes.

It's hard for me to believe, but with the turn of the century I have entered my fourth decade in journalism, those years almost evenly divided between newsroom and classroom. The changes I've experienced-which include the death of paste pots and red china markers and the subtle growth of newsroom cubicles and Web managers-are minuscule compared to what's ahead.

First, journalists work weird hours. Simple reasoning should drive this home. If most readers expect to pick up the newspaper at dawn and read about events from around the world and the neighborhood, someone has to be working in the 8 or 15 hours prior to the delivery of that newspaper.

Or consider broadcast news. Do we know what time those morning news people have to get out of bed in order to be on camera at 6am? At the other end of the day, the prime-time news hour staff is busy while most citizens are eating supper or getting ready to retire for the night.

In response to a survey by the Princeton Review, 80 percent of the professional journalists cited "time pressure" as a major feature of their job. As the Review puts it, "Long hours and chronic deadline pressure can be significantly negative factors." The same survey shows journalists reporting they work an average of 55 hours per week.

Second, journalists don't make lots of money. This is especially true for those who are drawn to the profession because of a love of writing or reporting. So, students, get it down early: The editors and managers and technologists make the big bucks; writers and reporters remain largely "legs" and gofers who gather the stories. It's turned over to the "producers" to turn it into news.

The Princeton Review's summary says the average beginning journalist starts with a salary of about $27,000 annually. I'd say that's a bit high. I think the television and information technologists are probably curve-wreckers in that calculation. At the end of 15 years, the same survey projects, journalists can expect to be making about $65,000.

Television puts a slightly different twist on this in that the on-camera people are usually extremely well-paid, but the down side is that for every on-camera person involved in a news operation there are probably 25 to 50 people behind the cameras making the broadcast operate properly, and most of them are not highly paid.

The print journalists who become editors and make higher salaries also tend to become supervisors of writers and reporters. This can be disconcerting. It is possible to have an editor who hasn't written or reported a live story in years making the final decision on the words of a story that readers receive.

Third, journalists will still get to move around the world. Think about this carefully, however; we're not talking Riviera here, or Waikiki or Paris. There's a good chance journalists will wind up in places few people have heard of before-Kosovo, Kuwait, Waco and Guyana come to mind. Young journalists should realize that for them the best opportunities may lie in Wyoming, Alaska, Vermont or the Dakotas, places where large populations do not take hold and neither do large newspapers.

Most who abandon the profession give as their reasons the long, odd hours and the unusual and uncertain lifestyle. Many journalists, of course, raise families, but the profession doesn't have a high reputation for encouraging families and family values.

My sense is that the lifestyle is less influential than the mentality that is bred by constant exposure to both the best and the worst of humankind, with an edge going to the worst. When one sees so many programs fail, so many promises broken, so many arguments based on stupidity and ignorance, so much murder and mayhem, it becomes more difficult to develop a sense of worth related to humanity.

An old definition of cynicism goes like this: The critic sees something wrong and acts to right it; the cynic sees something wrong and has no answer but criticizes anyway. Journalists are encouraged to avoid providing answers. Their job is to act as conduits. Conduits deliver; they don't solve problems. Much of modern journalism, and perhaps of future journalism, spearheaded by the Net, is moving to change this.

A rather startling statistic of the Princeton Review survey is that over 60 percent of journalists-specifically writers and reporters-do not survive the profession beyond the 10-year mark.

But some of us do, and we're both glad we did and feel better because of it, despite any misgivings we have about where the profession is headed.

Copyright 2000 Joe Shea The American Reporter. All Rights Reserved.