"Pruitt is a Joke"

"A lot of us here, a core group, are too young to be eligible for Social Security and too old to be considered young," says reporter Mike Kaszuba. "We need to squeeze out another 10 years to stay in this industry. And you sit back and say, wow, I wonder if there is another 10 years left in this industry? We are the Watergate babies, from back when it was cool and sexy to be a journalist. We were naive, goofy idealists in a way. Now it is about dollars and cents. The thing I got into it for, I'm not sure it's even among the top five reasons this place runs anymore. Your best day is publishing a story that you'd really like to have your name on top of, for all the right reasons. And you look around and wonder how many people who are around here anymore share that need to put out a paper that matters. Then you see what McClatchy paid for us and what they sold it for and you think, my god, I am sitting in a Model-T here.

"It wasn't like we were the New York Times before the redesign," Kaszuba continues. "Compromises have been happening all around. It is like the melting of the polar ice cap. There have been a whole series of what you could call redesigns that have taken us down this slope, where we get more interested in what Britney Spears is doing than what the chair of the county board is doing. It still comes down to [the fact] that we have to give people a reason to go and put 50 cents in that paper box. The thing that I hold on to, and I don't know if this is being stupid or not, is that if they are going to put out a newspaper, they are going to need somebody to go out and get some news. That is what I got into this business for. The question becomes, do they give you 30 inches to write the news or four inches? And at what point in the tradeoff will I decide it is time to get out?"

David Fick

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"I can't describe my feelings," says Meyers brusquely. "I'll let Stephen Colbert deal with feelings. Who gives a shit about my feelings? To me what is interesting are the facts, and there are plenty of them. Let the reader decide: Our circulation has gone down far faster than the industry average and those numbers are there to read. The big fear for the oldsters is that the satisfaction of the job is eroding. I didn't go into this job to retire at 50 or to make a fortune. I did it because I liked it and I enjoyed the work. It is a calling. And over time, it has become more and more of a regular job where you show up do your job and leave. And that is a goddamn shame."