Piers Morgan’s interview in Media Guardian yesterday was as incisive as ever.

Morgan compares himself to Marmite. A lot of people would say that even that’s being kind to him, but who can argue with the man’s self-assurance and drive?

One thing that jumped out for me was his contention that hacks who ask him when he’s going to go back to journalism are daft because he’s now earning far better money and doing a far nicer job.

Morgan did the same journalism course as me – he at Harlow, me at Cardiff. He started on a newspaper three years before I did. While his career rocketed in the red tops, I got sick of papers far earlier and made the switch to PR. But we both seem to have realised the same thing – newspapers typically pay many of their editorial staff poorly and offer pretty barbaric working conditions. So life on the outside can be a lot more appealing.

My aim here is not to slag off the publishers – far from it, many are good businesses. But if they have not taken a revolutionary look at what they do and how they charge for it, now is the time to do so. The established media hierarchy has to realise that unless it modernises and creates a commercial model that makes better pay and conditions feasible, it will lose its best assets: people.

Once on the other side, for example, I was amazed that PR agencies had dedicated people who looked after things like HR. In newspapers, people management tended to amount to a nurse who did the cough test on day one and a newsdesk who told you to just shut up and file the copy if you complained.

Of course, grizzled hacks don’t need nannying, just a little ego stroking. But most are skilled, intelligent, shrewd people, which means if their employers don’t look after them they’ll doubtless find other careers more attractive in time. I know of countless reporters who have left the profession in the last decade simply because they realised their talents could be put to more profitable use elsewhere. But given the choice, they’d rather still be journalists.

Journalism is, in my humble opinion, one of the very best jobs in the world for those who thrive on it. It’s also one of the best jobs for preparing people for other jobs. But unless the media can grasp and address the sweeping changes that are forcing many regional newspapers to their knees, it will continue to offer an increasingly less attractive career path.