This is the Thanksgiving column I never thought I’d write.

You’ve seen what’s happened to newspapers. As we’ve struggled for relevancy in the digital age with one hand and fought off the recession with the other, we became something less. At the Register, our Web presence grew and we got the most-important news to you faster – great progress. But overall we couldn’t do as much as we once did.

We went from about 385 journalists in 2002 to about 185. There was round after round of painful staff cuts, some voluntary, some not. I stopped going to staff meetings because I knew there was nothing more our editor could say. You saw our newspaper physically shrink. The Business section, for example, was folded into the News section. We lost richness and breadth.

Click the link to read the entire story @ ocregister.com