Those who expressed an opinion on what they planned next if they expected to leave journalism included becoming a press officer, teaching journalism or running own business were among the popular answers.

Actor, probation officer and farmer were also cited.

More offbeat replies from people who appear truly fed up with the industry included:

We found that 69.4 per cent of readers who took part were NCTJ qualified, with the highest level of education varying between O-level/GCSE/NVQ2 at 28 people (4.9 per cent) up to the ten per cent who have a masters degree. Twenty-two per cent of those did a media degree.

And 58.3 per cent had some journalism training before entering the industry. 41.7 per cent did not.

Yet only around 17 per cent think a degree or masters is important in journalism.

As for specialised journalism training, we found that 331 people – almost 60 per cent – said that they had some journalism training before entering the industry. The flip-side of this question is one on whether people in newsrooms would be happy to give people their first break, by having them on work experience without any previous experience. A massive 84 per cent - 477 people – said they would.

And 67.6 per cent say they had received formal training at work.

Our survey, which was running on this website for two weeks in October and was voluntary to fill in, attracted 568 respondents.

Weekly newspaper staff accounted for 191 responses (33.6 per cent), while 197 said they worked at regional dailies (34.7 per cent)

The rest comprised mainly freelances (12 per cent), magazine journalists (7.9 per cent) and the nationals (4.8 per cent).

Although the results won’t be a scientific study, the sheer number of completed forms – 568 – has given us a big enough sample for a credible and reliable guide to what readers are thinking.