Odds of Hanging On
Staying in this business can be tough once you realize that, while $38,000 stocks you and your roommate's apartment with plenty of order-in pizzas and video games, it's not enough to do stuff like travel the world. It's also not enough to move out of the place where your roommate hogs all the pizza and video games.
To stay in the job and actually succeed, you're going to need to stay on top of changes in tech and the ways we get our information (those mediums have been in flux since that whole "Internet" thing happened). Lots of newscasters are taking to Twitter to build and cultivate followings, or are making a name for themselves by doing stuff like pronouncing astonishingly long names of Welsh towns like it ain't no thang.
Now, if you do become Anderson Cooper, you're likely to stay Anderson Cooper, because now you have a name that people recognize and want to watch on TV. When you get to that point in your career, you can forget everything we just said. You're pretty much made in the shade.