SCMikeGibbons

All told I was in news about 15 years. It's changed a ton. When I started, we were doing actual cut and paste. Cut copy with a razor, run through hot wax, and paste on a big mock-up board. We were a big, robust newsroom, and our goal was news, news, news. When I left, the recession and digital had crushed newsrooms (John Oliver just did a great piece on it). When I left, I felt like we were no longer generating news, but making widgets. If those widgets made profits, good widget! It was rather deflating. As for the PDs, I had a great relationship with them, and am friends with lots of them to this day. The key to making it work: I was fair. They knew that I was going to report what the community needed to know, and if one of their own was in the wrong, I wasn't going to brush it aside. But I was also happy to write the good feature pieces about them.

Sure. I took our job as watchdogs seriously. It was nothing on a large scale like Spotlight, but it's important to keep the community informed. I remember one story we ran (I didn't write it) about a great grandmother who couldn't get a passport because she didn't have a birth certificate. Her family was trying to take her on a cruise for her 90th birthday. We profiled her plight with the system, and got a legislator involved, who helped her get the passport. She sent us a postcard from her vacation. Those were what I called the high-five moments. You should see a newsroom when you find out she's getting a passport. The place erupts.

A woman driving four kids under the age of five hit a school bus head on. I got there before the coroner and walked right up to the wreck. I didn't sleep for days and I still get nauseous thinking of it. Knowing what I know now, I would have driven a little slower to the scene and let a perimeter be set up.

Check out John Oliver's piece. Sums it up perfectly.

First job out of college was as an editor of college textbooks. Lasted a year, and I had enough so I moved back home. Had a family friend who was at the paper and got me a part-time job writing advertorials. I was pretty good at it, and a position opened for the crime beat, so I just moved up.