While I agree that if writers of any age are looking out for their best long-term interests, they'd steer clear of magazines as their main source of income. Even Gay Talese states that diversification among the various media outlets is the best path to secure income, both back in the day and now.

However, Gay Talese and his friends are hardly representative of the average magazine staffer of yore. It's cute that the young anonymous editors quoted have this fantasy that magazine jobs were once all lavish expense accounts and high salaries and long-form investigative articles and job security. For the average working stiff--the majority of the staff--it was (and still is) low pay, long hours, stories edited by committee until they bear little resemblance to the original, and switching jobs every couple of years in order to remain relevant and to make more money. And mags have always had high rates of folding like poker hands.

The young writers in this article are typical of young editors and writers in any era: They want glamour and prestige and respect and lots of money right out of school. That much hasn't changed, apparently. Nor has the rampant paranoia of magazine people, considering the number of anonymous sources in this article.

What else hasn't changed is that if you went to a decent school, made the right friends, and wrote for Gawker, you too can have plenty of opportunities in various forms of media. Not that these are bad things, mind you. Let that be the lesson for young journalists.