I tried to get into sports journalism, but same concepts apply. We made $10K to $30K a year the first several years out of school, and this is 2008-2015 dollars not 1970 dollars or something. The most I ever made was $13K and I was working 60-80 hour weeks a lot of the time and I was damn good. And getting jobs is almost all about who you know not how good you are.
They only friends I have who stuck it out were rich kids who’s parents helped them a ton financially and in some cases helped them get jobs.
You could also have a spouse that has a real job. I knew someone who started out as a local news reporter in a very small TV market and kind of worked their way up to a living wage within a few years (maybe like 50k/year). Moved a couple of times to successively bigger markets. At that point they quit to stay at home with the kids and spouse made enough that they didn’t have to work.