I came across this piece by Mimi Johnson yesterday about her husband’s decision to leave newspapers and wanted to share it. Many of the sentiments expressed within it are no doubt familiar to anyone who has worked in newspapers. Yes, newspapers are like a demanding mistress. Yes, newspapers never love their journalists back. Yes, walking away is like ending a relationship. And yes, it sucks to have to move every time you changed jobs in this profession (one of the reasons I got out).

Personally, I’m very glad I walked away from the business before my relationship with it got to the state described in this piece. My decision to leave came in 2005. There had already been a couple waves of layoffs at newspapers around the country, including one at my paper, though nothing like what has transpired the last couple years. I was a month shy of 26, and it was the first time I had gone through a layoff. That early January night when I found out two of my colleagues in the sports department (along with many others at the paper) — both excellent and dedicated journalists — were laid off was the only time I’ve ever found myself struggling to concentrate at work, so much so that at one point I had to go outside and clear my head just so I could focus enough to get the paper out.

Wounds heal, as those wounds did, to a degree, over the course of that year. But it was obvious that it was only a matter of time before fresh wounds would be inflicted, in the form of more layoffs and budget cuts. As news of the shakeup at my paper made the rounds in the journalism circle, other papers started pilfering our talented journalists who were looking for an out. I got a few inquiries myself from good papers. Yet when I looked out over the newspaper landscape, I could see that the same tsunami was coming for every port-of-call. It wasn’t a matter of “if”, but merely “when”. When recruiters from other newspapers told me, “We don’t lay off people,” my unspoken response was “Yeah, but you will.”

I had always known that I wanted to try my hand at other fields before settling on one, yet I loved journalism and newspapers so much that when I rejoined my first paper at age 25, I honestly could see myself working there until I was 30 — well beyond my original career plans — and I could see myself possibly coming back to newspapers someday after adventures afield. But a year later, I knew that when I walk away from the business, I wouldn’t be coming back, at least not full-time and not with anywhere near as much blood, sweat, and tears as I had poured into it over the previous six years.

Four years after I walked away from working at newspapers full-time, I’ve had absolutely no regret about the decision. I have regrets about the fact that I had to leave and about watching once-great papers torn down, but never about the decision to leave. I actually still go into my old paper every now and then and help my friends out a bit. The little extra money is nice and it’s always good to get back in the saddle again, however briefly, but mainly I do it out of a sense of loyalty to friends who are still in the biz. Those little glimpses into the newsroom today — walking into a building where 4/5ths of the cubicles are unoccupied, seeing people bust ass just to get the paper out when in the past they were busting ass to put out a great product, and seeing the products get thinner and thinner and the workloads get heavier and heavier — remind me that I walked away at the right time, before a once-beautiful relationship had degenerated into bitterness, frustration, and scorn. I can still at least look back at my time with newspapers with more fondness than anguish, without feeling the need to demonize, villainize, or ridicule them for what they did to me, and for that I’m thankful.