Uh no. While revenues and thus hiring have certainly dropped, it is by no means on a few orders of magnitude. I'd be surprised if it were even on a single order of magnitude. Even the newspaper I worked at that is in much more dire straights compared to 10 years ago is about a third its size.

Besides new online outlets, legacy companies are still chugging along. Starting wage for a reporter at the New York Times is around $70K last I heard (too lazy to look up the union site)

I think you misread my comment. I wasn't saying that the entire NY media establishment is approaching zero employees. I was strictly speaking of the classic "guy who gets paid to write stuff that nobody reads because it's good for the community/country/brand/whatever, while people on some other beat bring in the eyeballs and pay the bills." That's the population that's shrinking really fast.

Ah, OK. Sorry, I overestimated your cynicism...I read it as, "the New York media establishment writes stuff that nobody reads" :)