Journalism is a calling, and it has its heroes

Supposedly 10,000 people retire each day. Make that 10,000 and 1. Yesterday was my last day in the newspaper and journalism biz after 40 years, the last 25 at this newspaper. I have a few things to say before I depart.

I am a war-movie buff. The best in the genre is “Band of Brothers,” which my wife and I recently rewatched, all 10 episodes.

The storyline is well known. It recounts the gritty combat of Easy Company from its parachuting into Normandy on D-Day, June 6, 1944, until the capture of Hitler’s Eagle’s Nest mountain retreat in the Bavarian Alps nearly a year later.

In the final scene of the last episode, Maj. Dick Winters, the celebrated commander of Easy Company, relates a post-war exchange he had with his grandson.

“Grandpa, were you a hero in the war?” the grandson asks. “No, but I served in a company of heroes,” the tearful Mr. Winters replies.

That’s how I feel about our troubled industry and the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. Heroism is not a word you hear associated with journalism anymore, yet it was when I first got into the business.

In 40 years, I never once felt like an “enemy of the people.” Quite the contrary. What I felt was a strong sense of mission which propelled me even when the sense of loss brought on by declining business conditions was overwhelming at times.

I was a small cog in a very large wheel which provides a constitutionally protected service to our community and the nation. Being informed is the most essential pillar of citizenship and democracy, one worthy of sacrifice and devotion.

The press, for all its admitted faults but as the so-called Fourth Estate, must be an independent watchdog of the other estates. God help us if that independence and freedom ever diminish. It is the reason the soldiers of Easy Company who didn’t return gave their last full measure, for press freedoms are ultimately about defending your right to know.

Despite what press critics may say, publishing a newspaper is a heroic endeavor. It’s been called a “daily miracle,” not without reason. Many moving parts must mesh seamlessly to report, print and deliver a newspaper which lands on your doorstep, newsstand or inbox each morning. Whether it’s writing an article which is bound to offend someone, or delivering the paper on an icy morning, newspaper publishing demands heroism.

The Committee to Protect Journalists counts 1,324 fallen comrades worldwide who’ve died in the line of duty since 1992. I’ve personally known one person on that list.

There are times now when working in our industry feels like “Hogan’s Heroes” — warfare bordering on the comical. The salad days of the 1980s, when my employer at the time, The Wall Street Journal, had a six-month backlog of advertisers desperately seeking placement in the paper are long gone.

Now we deal with near constant financial insecurity, downsizing and turmoil. Worse, we’ve become a laugh line and punching bag. People regularly disparage our work as well as our reason to exist. Even our president does. But we do it all the same, because we need a paycheck and perhaps because we don’t have any place else to go. We’re in a foxhole together, trying as best we can to support one another.

This sense of camaraderie was palpable during the eight-and-ahalf years I worked in the Post-Gazette newsroom for the late editor John Craig and managing editor Maddy Ross. We won a Pulitzer together. And I’ve had the same sense of belonging for the past 16 and a half years in the circulation and audience departments while working on the business side of the newspaper for several general managers as well as my former and current immediate supervisors, Randy Waugaman and Tracey DeAngelo. They’re special people.

I’d say the same about our owners, the Block family. I first met the co-owner, Bill Block Sr., in 1980 on the 4th floor of the old PG building on the Boulevard of the Allies when I came to work for this newspaper the first time (I left a year later, returning again in 1994). My desk was outside his office.

Bill didn’t act like an owner. He was a prime example of the Dick Winters “Greatest Generation,” a World War II vet and extraordinary in so many ways — genuine, self-effacing, generous, fearless. And he bestowed a great legacy to his descendents, who have carried on despite gale-force winds buffeting family-owned newspapers. Maintaining the tradition of publishing a newspaper in this day and age is, at its core, heroism.

Two huge news stories bookended my PG career. A few months after I arrived in 1994, USAir Flight 427 crashed in Hopewell. And just before I departed, innocents were massacred at a synagogue in Squirrel Hill.

Both were the types of stories no one wants to print. But in each case, and in all the events great and small in between, we stayed the course.

We published a newspaper. That’s a calling that predates the American Revolution. It is one that Benjamin Franklin embraced and vigorously defended, as have many other distinguished publishers and citizens since.

It’s been a distinct honor and privilege to have known my colleagues in this troubled but deeply rewarding business and to have been known by them.

Thank you for memories I will always cherish.