Jeff South

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times — yada, yada, yada. In 1974, when I launched my journalism career (not counting my teenage years as a bicycle-pedaling paperboy), newspapers were profitable enterprises: They weren’t necessarily printing money with their offset presses, but like each issue in those pre-color days, they were reliably in the black. Every town had at least one newspaper — many cities had several — and so wanderlustful writers like me could count on finding work wherever we might land.

I didn’t know it at the time, but that was the heyday for the newspaper industry. And while we hacks bitched about stingy publishers, they usually were committed to at least a modicum of public-service journalism. (Admittedly, I did work for a few stinkers — like the publisher at the Lubbock Avalanche-Journal who hung a Lester Maddox axe handle on the wall above his desk.)