Dispirited

A newsroom overcome by the blahs. No spirit. All in a funk. That's how the TD newsroom was described to me today. I haven't set foot in the East Grace Street newsroom since Dec. 27 when I walked out the door to retire after nearly 40 years with the Times-Dispatch and The News Leader, the TD's afternoon sister paper. 

I assume the reporter who told me this had a spot on assessment of the newsroom environment. Apropos of something perhaps, many years ago a News Leader business writer and good friend told me he looked up from his desk one day and saw the paper's chief political writer puking in his wastebasket. He said he turned his head away and  saw a fellow business writer picking his nose and admiring his finds. "I knew then I had to get out of here," he told me. He went on to become the publisher of the Atlanta Journal Constitution.

The newspaper business is a glum place to be. Circulation  continues its slide. Publishers and editors frantically search for the magic bullet that will make everything better, much, much better. Mostly they come up shooting blanks.  No gimmick is left untried, no deck chair is left un-re-arranged.  So, is it so the folks of TD newsroom are sad, depressed and apathetic?  NNPERO.