the possibility that being a journalist lowers your effective IQ?

My view was always that most journalists just weren't too bright to begin with, or else they'd have chosen an actual productive profession...

I'm with Ethan. My favorite story is from back in college, when I had a friend (oddly, very intelligent) who was a journalism major. The stories she would tell of her interactions with other journalism students were hilarious, but the best one was when the student newspaper editorial board resigned in protest of a new policy that required staff to maintain a C average. The board didn't think it was fair, or that they could get the staff with that kind of requirement.

Journalism doesn't lower your IQ; journalism just happens to draw in the low IQ types. My college newspaper had one editorialist who actually wrote on how she felt everyone was being "too dressy" in jeans instead of sweats, and how she felt like people were trying to make her feel stupid by being too smart in class. (There's an obvious reply to that one.)

It was really sad that the best reporters we had were all from other countries. One was from Dubai— English was her third language, after Arabic and French— and another was from Zimbabwe, and I pray that he didn't go back. Oh well. The newspaper paid me for my drawings and gave me pizza, and most of them weren't dumber than dirt, so c'est la vie.