When I decided to become a newspaperman, everyone tried to talk me out of it.

My Dad was at the top of the list. He wanted me to be an engineer so I could earn a good living. Even j-school professors warned my classmates and me that we had better be passionate about the profession because journalism in general and newspapers in particular are no place to make money.

They were right. I never could have afforded the rent in Morgantown, W.Va., on my first full-time salary. Thankfully, my two brothers were in college and we shared a one-bedroom apartment. Dad paid the rent, and I paid the utilities.

I was reminded of the vow of poverty I had to take in the early days of my career when I saw an ad on JournalismJobs.com for a reporter in Sandusky, Ohio, which is near Cleveland. The paper wants someone “with enthusiasm, energy, a good sense of humor and the ability to report and write a range of stories” — but it’s only willing to pay $20,000 to $25,000 a year for that person.

Just out of curiosity, I checked the median income in Sandusky. It’s $34,085. The average house in the city costs $110,000. No reporter could ever afford one.

You might think that would make me second guess my career choice, but it doesn’t. I knew the financial realities when I got into this business, but I also believed I had the passion to succeed — and with God’s help I have.

I worked a combined 14 years at two of the most respected media companies inside the Beltway, National Journal and Congressional Quarterly. I served as the editor and managing editor of a niche publication at National Journal for seven years. I launched a video-sharing Web site. And for the past several years, media leaders inside and outside my companies have sought my advice about how to incorporate social media into their journalistic routines.

I remember seeing a newspaper story about the exorbitant salaries of publishers right about the time I decided to major in journalism. I took it to Dad and said something like this: “See, people can make good money at newspapers. I’ll just have to work hard and become a publisher.”

I haven’t risen to the publisher’s level for “The Man” and doubt that I ever will. In fact, I’m not sure I want to. “The Man” is on his deathbed.

But I made myself a publisher back in 2006 when I launched AirCongress.com. Although I’ve earned only a pittance from that project, I see my rise to that self-appointed office as instructive for every budding journalist today.

The lesson: If you have a good media idea, and conceive a sound business model to implement it, you won’t have to work long for a wealthy but stingy publisher like the one at the Sandusky Register. You can be a publisher in this new media world.

Add a healthy dose of old-fashioned journalistic passion to the mix, and you will be more successful than your father or any journalism professor ever could have imagined.

That knowledge is all that keeps the hope within me alive after three consecutive layoffs, two of them within 10 months, in a changing media world. The future of journalism is both scary and exciting. It will be literally what we formerly ink-stained wretches make of it.