I left the news business in 1983, from a major metropolitan daily. I was coming in at 1 pm, writing three business stories a day to a 6 pm deadline, then staying until 9 pm supervising the layout of the business pages. Honestly, many of the business stories were junk (how could they not be at little more than an hour apiece?). Typically one would be a rewrite of a wire story, one would be a rewrite of a corporate press release, and one would consist of calling the same stock market "experts" after the market closed for their pontifications on why the market moved the way it did that day: "Well, the market appears to be heading for a correction as buyers anticipate poor results in tomorrow's housing starts report..." I'd see almost the same words from the same guys on the wire and in the other major dailies. I'm sure they were making it all up on the spot.

I always had a couple side stories I was working on that would take a week or so, and now and then I'd go out to do a business profile, which tended to be something of an advertisement for the business in question. I'd interview the owner or president, look around the place, talk to a few employees. But at least it was something like journalism. But with the intense deadline pressure during my regular work day, I mainly did the work for these in the morning on my own time.

There were some fun times though. There was the night when our hometown team won the Superbowl, and all the reporters stayed late watching the results come in. That night I drove through streets packed with celebrating people to get photos taken by our man on the scene from the AP office across town. Election nights were great too, with free food in the conference room and the whole staff feverishly compiling results until the front page closed at midnight.

And there was a sense of power too. All I had to do was say "I'm a reporter for the XYZ Times," and the company president or the head staffer in the Congressman's office would be eager to talk to me.

Thirty years ago was supposed to be the glory days of print journalism, but already papers were closing and reporters losing their jobs. A running joke in the newsroom underscored our basic anxiety about the future: "What's a journalist? A reporter looking for work."

I lost my job after my mentor, the managing editor who shepherded me through the political minefield of the editorial staff, got sick and took a six-month leave of absence, leaving me at the mercy of the ambitious deputy managing editor.

One day the business editor, my immediate boss, called me into his office and told me I was being transferred to a sister publication of tiny circulation in another town, but that was actually a lie. The truth became apparent when I was called before the deputy managing editor. He actually ran the newspaper since the editor-in-chief was a figurehead hired for his name alone. The managing editor who had mentored me was long gone. "How does it feel to be fired?" were the first words he said. I gathered my stuff and walked out. I went back to school for a grad degree and never looked back.