Find the work you love and forget the rest

CareerCast.com ranked more than 1,000 American jobs , and determined that the worst job isn’t garbage collector, animal cage cleaner or Lindsey Lohan’s sobriety tester – but journalist. Yes! Score! Booyah! They based their rankings on four criteria: the workplace environment, the industry’s future, the job’s average income, and stress. Okay, it’s true: newsrooms aren’t pretty places. The future looks bleak for newspapers. You can make more money doing a lot of other things. And, yes, the stress is very real. The hours are bad and many of our customers think they can do it better – and often take the time to tell us that. But journalists themselves have reacted to this ranking with all the cool, collected calm of Geraldo Rivera, or Nancy Grace. But here’s why: newsrooms aren’t for everybody, but we like them – the hustle and bustle and energy and urgency. We like the stress, too – no matter how much we complain about it – because it comes with doing work we think actually matters.