Fired Tribune Co. Reporter Speaks Out: 'We Deserved Better'

By a former Tribune Co. newspaper reporter

Do you ever write about all the journalists who have been “early retired” out of our careers? I’m 52 and lost my job in 2007 when I was 45, not realizing it was the end of my career, too. But that’s when the newspaper industry started bottoming out and I was never able to find another job. After ripping through my 401K (minus half, because the poor apparently deserve to have half their savings taken when they’re unfortunate enough to be poor) and trying to fight cancer without healthcare, I got near-death enough to qualify for Medicare. Lucky me. I now make an under-the-poverty-line income thanks to having been employed for 25 years.

But my calling is gone. I have tried to recover but am still bitter and angry at the dirty pool that was played. So many people I considered good friends, whose weddings and baby showers I attended, stabbed me right in the back.

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