Real life, I guess

I took up my working life as a copy editor at the Greenville Piedmont in South Carolina.

The Piedmont was an afternoon paper, the smaller sister of The Greenville News.

I loved it there. I was a good copy editor, and I enjoyed the people I worked with. We hung out together outside work.

It was like the Red and Black, but I got paid for doing something I loved.

Sadly, in time, afternoon newspapers began to die off around the nation.

The Piedmont held out for a time, but there was no turning the tide.

At least, I still had a job. I was absorbed into the copy desk at The News.

I came to love my colleagues, and I continued to love my work. I still missed the Piedmont, but there was no sense dwelling in the past.

Then, something ominous began to happen. Larger morning newspapers began massive layoffs. Some shut down. The bosses at our parent company, Gannett, began to get facial tics and twitching eyes.

There was a round of layoffs at The News. There were furlough days.

It wasn't enough, though. We were hemorrhaging subscribers. People could read The New York Times online for free. Why piddle around with The Greenville News?

The copy desk was outsourced. A large copy editing hub was established at Gannett's largest newspaper in the southern region, The Louisville Courier-Journal.

And, after 33 years of excellent work, I was suddenly out of a job. As one friend put it: "They tossed us aside like pieces of rubbish."

It seriously sucked.