Behind the Scenes in Newsrooms

What's happening behind the scenes in newsrooms around the country?

I can't speak to every one of them. But here's a snippet of a conversation from a recent meeting with several newspaper colleagues I used to work with several years ago.

"The newspaper just isn't what it used to be," said one woman, a mid-level editor at a metro, who went on to describe the uncertainties of working in a newsroom that's been decimated by a bad economy and a slow draining of resources over time.

Another person sitting at the table said he was returning to school to get a master's degree to "keep my options open."

A third person at the table thought I was smart to jump off the newspaper bandwagon and into an Internet startup, regardless of the risk. She'd recently been assigned another position in the newsroom because the beat she'd been covering simply wasn't important anymore to the paper.

Seems like a recurring theme.