chicago sun-times

Surprised to find one of my old newspapers do something right, even more surprised to find people so up in arms about the Washington Nationals overpaying for a player who will help them be a better team and just plain confused about how to organize my Dylan music into playlists.

Each April the past three years, I have been without steady, secure employment, without an office and wondering just how much longer I have health insurance. But in all three years the outlook has been different.

It finally hit at about 3:30 Friday morning. Most of Thursday I felt mostly deflated, more irritated than actually angry. I was prepared, more or less. It had been almost three months since the initial announcement that Scripps was going to try to sell the Rocky, and there was ample time to prepare for what we assumed was the inevitable outcome. During those three months I occasionally felt optimistic, maybe hopeful, but nothing could ever fully shake the sense of dread. There were just too many complications in the situation, the economy tanking, the business model failing, the horrible intertwining of two businesses that should have been all out competing . . .

If my return to Colorado ends in nothing more than what I'm doing now, being among the last to stand up for this newspaper, then whatever pain I feel from the outcome will be worth it. Nothing this valuable should be allowed to fade quietly away.

When I look around the newsroom I see people lashing out at all things electronic as if a machine could really be to blame for changing how people want to read news. But it's the readers, myself included, who are driving the change, not the technology.