I have been an editor, reporter, designer, photographer, darkroom technician, mailroom clerk, typesetter, obituary writer and complaint-taker – sometimes all at once and sometimes until the rising sun signaled that the drop-dead deadline had passed – for my entire adult life. I’ve spent five- and six-year stints – and sometimes as much as twice that long – in interesting communities and have come to understand their psyches. It has been a privilege that has shaped my view of the world.

I never thought much about doing anything else. Or that journalism would change this much.

A lot of jackassery is being perpetrated in its name as news organizations struggle for market share and, ultimately, their survival. I’ve committed some of this jackassery myself. Anyone who has been working in this industry for 30 years, as I have, and claims not to have done so is lying. Lots of folks I know sometimes have to think back many years to remember the nobility of their purpose in being in this business, and they worry if they’ll retire feeling good about what they contributed.

Journalism continues to offer surprises like this: “How much for a front-page story?” I felt the turbulence caused by the spinning of some long-dead publishers over that one. The market is confused by the increasing number of publications that sell their editorial copy or wink at it through a sleazy quid pro quo deal that swaps an ad for a story, and I was happy to answer that we don’t sell news here.

When did it become OK for someone like Tim Russert to betray a source? When did it become common for journalists to quote unnamed sources and the exception for them to quote on the record? This is how absurd it’s become: A recent wire story about how well – or poorly – Katie Couric has settled into the CBS anchor’s chair quoted a half-dozen people who claimed anonymity as they gossiped about her performance. This really isn’t the life-or-death consequences Washington Post publisher Katharine Graham and reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein considered when they shielded “Deep Throat’s” identity. Or how about that recent story about an unemployment hearing that included salacious details about a lawyer’s alleged (you read that qualifying word here first) affair, hinged apparently on the fact that because he ran for Congress a couple of times, he was a public figure and, therefore, fair game?

Still, I confess to having read it and landing smack in the middle of my own professional dilemma: Do the media give people garbage because the people want it, or do they just think they want it because that’s all the media give them?

In general, I don’t think newspapers are responding well to the threat of online media. Smart media organizations are following their readers online, but that doesn’t mean they’re doing it smartly. There’s such a rush to post it first that fact-checking, libel standards and, indeed, civility become bothersome nuisances. In the rush to compete, I hope newspapers don’t give up their franchise, which is telling a story deeply and completely, and giving writers the breathing room to explain a story well.

I’m a dinosaur and I know it. It’s time to do something else, so on Tuesday, I start a new job as communications editor for Great Ape Trust of Iowa.

I’m proud of the high road we’ve taken at the Business Record. As a niche publication, instead of a general-circulation newspaper forced by competition to appeal to the lowest common denominator, we enjoy that luxury. I leave confident in the integrity and ethics of Jim Pollock and the newsroom team and secure in the knowledge they’ll continue to do journalism the right way.