Some career choices.

Here are some things you may not want to do for a living:

• Work on Wall Street
• Win the US election on November 4, 2008
• Go into home building
• Become a photojournalist

The first three are obvious, but the fourth?

Check out this smart way in which CBS is seeking to get millions of prospects to work for them absolutely free:

Basically, you load this application on your smartphone (iPhone, Blackberry, whatever) and, when you see a newsworthy event, you snap the picture and send it to CBS.

Given that the chances of seeing a newsworthy event are close to zero, these things being random and unlikely (plane hits bridge, intelligent life found in Washington DC, etc.), CBS has just smartly hired a few million photojournalists with no payroll, labor, transportation, copyright, etc. issues. Smart. The sort of thing the media need if they are to survive the gale force storm of the internet, TiVo and blogs.

And at least CBS has the sense to know that a phone camera is just fine; there’s no point in wasting money on expensive DSLRs.

Still want to be a photojournalist?

The iPhone version of this application is available from Apple’s AppStore. Price? Exactly what the future value of photojournalism is. $Zero.