It’s not uncommon these days to hear public discussion of the future of journalism.

Whether its a way to monetize online content already available or stream daily headlines to the millions of prospective tablet owners, journalism, as it so often does, has money on the brain.

But behind the scenes, off the front pages, there’s another, private battle journalism is waging against itself.

Journalism is literally starving itself to death.

Working as a journalist has never been glamorous for most. It’s not all Woodward and Bernstein. It’s a lot of long hours for short pay, with a writer’s work rarely singled out for any lasting praise.

The public sees journalists and they assume they have the best job in the world, where a person gets their name printed every day and can build up fame until they can trade it for fortune.

But in the past decade, journalism’s long-standing plight of fading readership has hit critical mass, as droves of readers learned they could go online and get for free what they previously had to pay for.

The result of that has not been pretty and the down economy has only hastened the decline. Journalism jobs have disappeared by the thousands, flooding the market with experienced journalists willing to work for an ever-decreasing wage just to be working.

When I was in school, most of my professors allowed that it was a tough economy, but since they were employed themselves, I don’t think many really understood how difficult it is to find work, they just told us to be cautiously optimistic.

Now I’m not going to just cry poor for young journalists. I’m not so naive as to believe that a 22-year-old writer who has parents to house and board him has it worse than a 32-year-old with two kids and a mortgage.

The difference is the jobs that would have normally gone to a young journalist—the $20,000 a year with no overtime pay and the writer having to shoot and paginate as well—are going to writers desperate to stay in the business rather than people looking to break in.

Were I to turn my part-time job into a full-time career, I’d easily best that rate. What’s worse is the jobs that are more picky about experience, requiring at least three or four years in a daily newsroom, really don’t pay much better.

Ask any editor who has had to sift through job applications for a publicly-advertised position lately and I can guarantee they can tell you horror stories about having two or three hundred resumes show up on their doorstep.

Is there any other career that requires a four-year degree from a good school, with internships, with experience at a college organization and can’t even employ those who actually fulfill those requirements?

There are other jobs, of course. Universities have done a great job expanding the curriculum for student reporters, exposing them to other careers such as marketing, public relations, production, and advertising.

In fact, most of the people I graduated with that have found work are in exactly those fields, where skills are still in demand and jobs, while still tight, are at least open at the entry-level.

Journalism’s pressing matter of sliding readership and a failed business model is a truly daunting problem. However, slinking in the shadow of that problem is one far worse: a dearth in the supply of young, bright people willing to accept careers in an industry that is so poor at courting them.

This is not just some lost generation, either. The idea that the supply of journalism students becoming reporters will dry up for a period until the industry rights itself is false. Without an influx of fresh ideas and perspectives, of young people willing and able to learn on the job, journalism will lose not just this generation, but its whole future.

Since May last year I’ve filled out dozens of applications. I’ve updated my resume at least once a week. I’ve built up my website. I’ve written for sites like this and others. I’ve had interviews that yielded freelance work and I’ve been able to find other work on my own.  I’ve entered and “won” writing competitions, only to be passed over for the temporary position the competition promised for a more experienced, unemployed journalist.

After all that work, after all the kind words I’ve gotten from editors and those in the business, I haven’t given up. I can’t find a single employer anywhere near me willing to pay me to be a reporter, but I haven’t given up.

It’s a funny old business, I guess.

Old, getting older.