Eons ago, when I was a high school jock turned frustrated sports writer and college student, a career in journalism was still for the most part a pipe dream.
More than three decades later, I'm still chasing that dream. And I have the ink-stained shirt cuffs to prove it.
That's the thing about this business. Every day is new. Maybe that's why they call it news.
Back then, there was nothing I enjoyed more on a Monday morning in the fall than getting a copy of the Philadelphia Daily News and inhaling the introspection concerning the Eagles game from the day before.
I would sit at the counter of my parents' store, munch on my daily cheese steak, and gorge on the tabloid prose.
Today, a lifetime later, I still have a morning ritual.
Every day I walk outside the office in the early-morning darkness, pick up a plastic bag, take a deep breath, then dig into what's inside.
What is inside is the Philadelphia Inquirer and Philadelphia Daily News.
The truth is, I don't perform this daily ritual with the same anxiety as I used to. That's because today I likely already know much of what is in the two print editions of the Philly dailies.
And that is part of the problem. I am a morning person. Make that an early-morning person. Part of my daily routine once I get to the office at the insane hour I do is to quickly run through about 15 websites from newspapers across the region to get up to speed on what has happened since I lapsed into a coma the night before. This, of course, only after a full dose of KYW on the radio as I make the drive into the office.
The 'Inky' and 'Dirty News' are competition. Yes, they sell papers in Delaware County, too. I want to be sure they don't have something from Delco that we happened to miss. And yes, there are a lot of days when I wince, seeing something in their print editions that is not in ours.
It's not easy when you work for a smaller daily that is right next door to a behemoth metro paper. I simply don't have the resources, the bodies they have to throw at a story that they do.
That margin got a little smaller yesterday. It doesn't make me feel any better, for what I do, nor for this business in general.
Philadelphia Media Network, the people who now own the Inquirer, Daily News, and Philly.com, announced they would lay off 46 people in those newsrooms. It's part of a plan to merge the news-gathering operations into a single newsroom.
Yesterday, some names started to be put beside those numbers. There will be 17 fewer people at the Daily News, 17 fewer at Philly.com, and 12 fewer at the Inquirer.
I know some of the people who were let go. I consider them friends, and all them compatriots in this struggling industry.
Ryan Lawrence, the Daily News Phillies beat writer, used to do the same for us. I still remember the conversation I had with Ryan on his last day, and the questions both of us had about the future of the business. Yesterday he was among those who learned he was being let go.
It is something every print organization is dealing with. Advertising and circulation continues to dwindle as more and more people get their news online.
The key is to somehow find a way to bridge the gap from now until the digital revenue can sustain the operation.
It is a daunting task.
I have come to hate the word "efficiencies."
Forty-six people lost their jobs yesterday. They were competitors, engaged in the same task I perform every day.
Make not mistake, it was not a good day for the city or the region.
Or for journalism either.
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