From the Guardian:

Becoming a journalist is nearly impossible "if you don't have rich parents", according to Orwell Prize winner Johann Hari.

The 29-year-old Independent columnist, whose first media job on the New Statesman in 2001 earned him £9,000 ($18,141.30) a year, spoke out as he received the Orwell Prize for political writing last night.

"Basically, if you don't have rich parents, it is increasingly impossible to become a journalist in Britain – and that is really bad, not just for social justice but for the newspapers themselves," Hari told the audience at the Orwell Prize as he accepted the £3,000 award.

"When I graduated, I suddenly realised that if you want to become a journalist, you have to work unpaid in central London for as long as two years – and I just couldn't afford it. There was no way I could."

In her book No Logo, author Naomi Klein touched on the theme that cultural industries jobs in Canada, including journalism, were defaulting to those who had the financial support to accept unpaid internships.

I've heard of jobs in T.O. that pay in the low $30K range, which doesn't buy you much of a life in the Big Smoke.

From the NYT:

President Hamid Karzai strongly criticized the British and American conduct of the war here on Friday, insisting in an interview that his government be given the lead in policy decisions.

Mr. Karzai said that he wanted American forces to stop arresting suspected Taliban and their sympathizers, and that the continued threat of arrest and past mistreatment were discouraging Taliban from coming forward to lay down their arms.

From the Globe and Mail:

Russia's super-rich love to flaunt their wealth. Soon they will have a magazine called Snob to help them.

Mikhail Prokhorov - whose wealth is estimated at about $22-billion - plans to spend $150-million setting up a magazine, website and television station called Snob, the general director of the new venture told Reuters this week.

Is it simply a matter of supply and demand being out of whack, to be balanced by letting market forces work their magic? This  analysis for the BBC suggests it's a bit more complicated than that.