When I first graduated from college, me and the husband decided to move to Tahoe, and house sit for a friend. I immediately got a job at the local newspaper. They only hired kids right out of college, because we got paid crap.

There were 8 of us on the paper, and an old crusty ass named Bill who was the boss of us. But we did cool things! I was the advertising editor, and I literally laid out the paper. You do the ads first and then put the editorial around it. My desk was built into a wall in a corner, next to the photographer.

We all had dreams of moving to a big paper, and we all had writing degrees of one kind or another. That is the way it should be, you work on a small local paper, and move up. Those days are over now. It's really sad because working at that paper formed the basis of my work style.

My wife was on track to become a journalist, she worked on the community college paper, did layout, was assistant editor in chief, and did many interviews for stories. She saw the direction journalism was taking 2 decades ago and shifted to teaching. It is very sad where this has gone in the last 30 years.