From the keyboard of the San Francisco Chronicle's Jon Carroll: (h/t to Romenesko)

Prologue: The paper you are holding in your hands is a miracle. It has been put out by men and women dealing with sadness and loss. The personnel cuts have begun at the newspaper, and they ain't stopping any time soon. Everyone will be losing friends; some have already lost them.

By today's standards of job "mobility" (oh look, my job is moving! And so am I! Only not in the same direction!), the people at this newspaper, the combined staffs of The Chronicle and the Examiner, have been together a very long time. They have worked diligently while enduring various kinds of stress, layoffs and threatened strikes and the much-discussed decline of print journalism, and they have had to go home after too-long days and hear some smug academic talk about what a lousy newspaper The Chronicle is.

And after all that, a 25 percent staff reduction. And yet, here is today's paper, professional and informative and useful and entertaining, put out by people under siege. It's as though Travis at the Alamo had found time to write an opera. ...

Journalism is a noble profession. It can be used ignobly, but so can anything. It's one of the best things a person can do. It's wonderful to be able to feed your family while doing it. And now there is a withering away, and I hate every single part of the process.