Journalist
A penny-a-liner is a derogative term for a journalist who is paid for a certain amount of text. It is an old expression which goes back to the days when writers were paid one penny for each line they wrote. An Australian newspaper, The Queenslander, printed a story in 1871 that the "...penny a-liner no longer exists, for there are but few papers who pay at so small a rate at the present day. The increased value of literary labor and the demand for news has affected the lowest as well as the highest of literary laborers, and the flimsy writer can now obtain three-halfpence, and in some cases, twopence, for every printed line that appears in the newspaper..."