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Parting Thoughts

  1. August 29, 2008 08:00 AM

    The AJC's Michelle Hiskey

    Leaving a job, leaving a family

    By Michelle Hiskey

    Today, August 29, is my final day at the only full-time job I have ever known: writing for The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

    I’m forty-five. I started here twenty-two years ago, half my lifetime. It’s an uncommon crossroads—federal labor statistics show that a person sticks with a job for about four years.

    Newspaper work, though, means far more than a paycheck,...

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  2. August 20, 2008 11:43 AM

    Parting Thoughts: Chris Ison

    A note to editors: talk journalism, and win back the newsroom

    By Chris Ison

    It was one of the first management meetings in my career as an assistant managing editor, and our boss was talking about “aligning our values.” I was resisting drinking the management Kool-Aid, and I peeked around the room to see how the more experienced editors were taking in the message.

    They looked pretty serious, so I refrained from the...

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  3. August 14, 2008 12:12 PM

    Parting Thoughts: Clarissa Aljentera

    'There's a goodness in newsrooms, in journalists'

    By Clarissa Aljentera

    In my idealistic mind, good journalism could save the world. As a high school senior, I believed that journalists were the best storytellers. I still do. We can turn a magnifying glass to governments and schools. We can turn it on our neighbors and ourselves. Our words can sting, and soothe.

    And in these difficult economic times it hurts to...

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  4. August 05, 2008 02:33 PM

    Parting Thoughts: Tracy Fox

    ‘I decided to become a nurse’

    By Tracy Gordon Fox

    I remember the exact moment it struck me. I was lying on a couch bed in Connecticut Children's Hospital next to my teenage daughter who had pancreatitis, a painful, but treatable inflammation of the pancreas. The intravenous machine steadily dripped pain medication and fluids into her veins. A medical helicopter hovered over Hartford Hospital across the street, where a trauma...

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  5. August 04, 2008 12:22 PM

    Parting Thoughts: Winston Wood

    News remains vital, but there’s better money in panhandling

    By Winston Wood

    For several years as an editor at The Wall Street Journal I was invited by my college alumni association to speak about journalism to undergrads at the group's annual Career Night. This involved a panel discussion with three or four others in the field talking about what we did, how we did it and—of primary interest to the audience—how we...

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  6. August 01, 2008 12:03 PM

    Parting Thoughts: Richard Kipling

    Experience matters; we’re about to learn just how much

    By Richard Kipling

    In September of 1991, in the depths of the Bush-the-Father recession, I penned a piece for CJR. Headlined "A Lost Generation," it bemoaned the loss of young talent graduating from journalism schools with no job prospects. I was a hiring editor at the Los Angeles Times, and only a year or so before the economy tanked I had helped bring...

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  7. July 31, 2008 11:42 AM

    Parting Thoughts: John Flowers

    Whither the money men?

    By John Flowers

    Redefining policy—as one is wont to do when suffering an existential crisis—starts with asking the right questions. An alcoholic, for instance, who asks himself, “Does alcohol have a problem with me?” probably isn't going to get the help he needs. Ditto journalists.

    We've been asking ourselves the wrong question about the future of our industry for years now. It's...

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  8. July 30, 2008 11:35 AM

    Parting Thoughts: Rick Vernaci

    Newspapers are reliable, and that means something

    By Rick Vernaci

    I left journalism a dozen years ago, well before The Plague struck.

    It had been twenty mostly happy years since the first day I walked into a newspaper office in Texas and was surprised to find that it smelled like ink; that every desk in the small, dark newsroom had an oil can filled with rubber cement; that the...

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  9. July 29, 2008 12:04 PM

    Parting Thoughts: Todd Engdahl

    Sorry to be blunt, but get over it

    By Todd Engdahl

    I thought hard before sitting down to tap this out, because I didn’t want to seem insensitive about changes that have so severely disrupted the careers, finances, and self-esteem of so many.

    But, after years of reading Romenesko, countless other blogs, and endless articles on high-minded media Web sites, I’ve heard enough complaining, enough nostalgia for a golden age...

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  10. July 28, 2008 11:35 AM

    Parting Thoughts: John Biemer

    ‘You only live twice’

    By John Biemer

    If you had told me a few years ago that I’d be applying to medical school in 2008, I would’ve said you’re nuts.

    By then, I had worked as a journalist for a decade. I had interviewed presidential candidates campaigning through Iowa, Kosovar Albanians in a refugee camp in the Balkans, and survivors of a deadly tornado hours after it...

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  11. July 25, 2008 12:50 PM

    Parting Thoughts: Nic Roethlisberger

    ‘If you don’t love journalism, get out now’

    By Nic Roethlisberger

    I thought I loved journalism. The excitement of being in the middle of a fast-paced newsroom, the responsibility of shaping the daily paper, the camaraderie I shared with my co-workers. But I was wrong; I only liked journalism. And, sadly, that isn’t enough anymore.

    My newspaper career started a decade ago with my realization that being an engineering major was...

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  12. July 24, 2008 12:08 PM

    Parting Thoughts: Bob Carey

    ‘My compact with the L.A. Times has been buried in an avalanche of debt’

    By Bob Carey

    I'm being laid off after twenty-four years at the L.A. Times and after thirty-eight years in the business. I spent most of my career as a staff photographer, but I've also been an editor now and then.

    The decline of the L.A. Times is due mostly to the failure of the members of the Chandler family to exercise even...

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  13. July 23, 2008 12:15 PM

    Parting Thoughts: Walt Wasilewski

    ‘Without journalism, there is no hope for progress.’

    By Walt Wasilewski

    Dear colleagues:

    You're under pressure. I empathize. But listen: I nearly drowned in chaos my first day as a reporter for The Post-Standard (in Syracuse, New York) twenty-eight years ago. We were struggling to make sense of new technology, fighting small-town, tin-pot dictators, and trying to cover a tidal wave of news with far too few reporters and editors. But...

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  14. July 22, 2008 12:38 PM

    Parting Thoughts: Jim Spencer

    ‘I still want journalism. Journalism just doesn’t seem to want me.’

    By Jim Spencer

    When the assistant managing editor trundled over to summon me to my “involuntary separation” from the Denver Post, I was working on an exclusive column about the Crips and Bloods’ turf war at the city’s supposedly family-friendly “Jazz in the Park” series. The timing came to symbolize for me what has happened to the news business. My scoop didn’t matter....

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