My last day at The Morning Call passed with little fanfare.  There was no retirement party, no gold watch, no thank youfrom the president for long years of service, no cake with my picture embossed upon it, just a quiet day by myself in the empty newsroom of the Easton Bureau. 

A quiet day to reflect onthe end of my career as a photojournalist for this once great newspaper, to gather up my belongings and move on to the next phase ofmy life.

Decimated by budget cuts and massive staff reductions andfacing more of the same in the near future, TMC joins other papers in the Tribune line who are trying to retrench and find a way to stay economically afloat in troubled times.  Whether they will be successful remains to be seen. 

Part of me is happy that I am going off to start a new life asa full time graduate student, but another part of me is bitter that it had to end this way.  So many good, talented journalists have lost their jobs for the bottom line--money.  The new crop of young, fresh faces will not have the wisdom and expertise of seasoned writers and photographers to learn from.  In many ways, it looks like the print industry is flying by the seat of its pants.  No one is sure what newspapers need to become in order to survive so every flashy new idea is seen to have merit.  Time will show if they are right or wrong.

A dear friend who used to work for The Morning Call emailed me recently about the budget cuts and lamented the loss of coverage.  "The industry is in such trouble which makes me wonder who's watching the henhouse of government since newspapers don't staff half the meetings they used to," he writes.  "I really feel this gutting of the news industry will affect our democracy.  Sadly its all based on greed since most businesses would be happy to have 8 or 10% growth. Back in the 90's The Call was making 22 and 23%.  Just like the auto industry, we're now supposed to feel bad for the CEO's after taking the money and running to Hawaii."

Another friend in the local news scene said how interesting it is to see how The Morning Call and Channel 69 WFMZ have literally changed places in the last couple of years as far as expansion and news coverage.  The Call is laying off people and cutting their coverage area while WFMZ is hiring staff and expanding their product.  All this after we've had it beaten into us that our readers want MORE LOCAL NEWS.  Okay, let's cut the staff!  That's a great idea, huh?

I decided to start this blog in order to give local journalistsa chance to vent (nicely, please!) or share thoughts and feelings about what has happened to our paper, so please feel free to add your comments.  Lets set up a dialogue about the state of the news industry.