New Jersey

We used to envy the Record because their reporters had more creative leeway than the dry, dull reporting demanded at the Star-Ledger.

I worked in the Star-Ledger's Middlesex County bureau from 1979- to the mid-80s. Covered municipalities, the NJ Highway Authority, the NJ Turnpike Authority and Rutgers, not to mention every leaking toxic waste dump and hazmat incident. Went on medical leave for a while, then worked general assignment part time out of Newark until mid-1990, when my husband got a job in DC and we moved to Maryland.

Those were the days. The paper had maybe 100 reporters, a huge State House bureau, and bureaus in a number of other counties. A high-pressure newsroom filled with clattering metal typewriters, vacuum tubes to send copy, a big spike for killed stories on the editor's desk. Mort, Chick and Andy, the three top editors, in rolled back sleeves and green eyeshades. Cigarette smoke, shouts of "copy boy" and constant ringing telephones. Boozy reporters who drank lunch with their sources. Printers wearing their traditional square hats made of folded pages. The floor-shaking rumble of the presses. A ferocious night copy desk led by a man nicknamed the Slasher for the way he cut paragraphs from stories. Not many female reporters - I was one of the few in 1979.

The paper was thick with advertising and made good money. There were incredible holiday parties where people got bonuses of a week's pay for every year they'd worked, and nearly everyone got rip-roaring drunk and caroused until the wee hours.

After I left, they began offering buyouts and then doing layoffs, year after year. I'm thankful I wasn't there to see the decline.