When I started my career more than 20 years ago, nearly all my friends were reporters.

We worked at small papers, where you got your start - writing obits, then on a smaller beat or assisting other reporters with theirs, and moving up the ladder. Some transferred to bigger metro papers, where competition for good jobs was already fierce at the advent of the Internet. Several years later, when the Web became the first place people turned for breaking news, things really started to go downhill. Papers began cutting back. And back. Snipsnipsnipsnipsnip. Reporters who weren't laid off eventually left because they disagreed with the "new" journalism driven by advertising profits (or fear of losing what ad business was left). Death by attrition.

Today, most of us have moved onto other things: law, communications, advertising/marketing, freelancing or entirely different careers. But I daresay we probably all long for those days 20 years ago that, looking back now, we can see were the beginning of the end of traditional, content-focused newspaper journalism.

Back then, copy editors sitting in a sort of horseshoe (indeed, some of the older papers used to call it that) smoked cigarettes and yelled across the room at newbie reporters who'd come-a-runnin' with no small amount of anxiety and fear. (If you're going to get dressed down in public, you'd prefer anyplace but a room full of sharp, jaded veterans who keep mental notes on how often a rookie has screwed up, trust me.) It was trial by fire to be quizzed about your sources or news angle in front of the entire newsroom by an editor on deadline, re-writing your story as you stand alongside his or her desk - your purpose at that final hour solely to point out whether or not the editor's new interpretations of what you'd written were factual or not.

Reporters sat across from each other at heavy metal desks anchored down by big push-button phones, steno pads and black video screens glowing with small orange or green type. "ADTs," I think we called them. Or "Atex." When we talked on the phone, we were competing with everyone else in the open-air newsroom. We got used to it. These days, cubicles are more the norm. Back then, everyone heard everything you said: when you scooped a story and when you were shot down. I remember the atmosphere was convivial and sympathetic and tense and celebratory all at once. With all those emotions running rampant, it was no wonder why so many reporters drank like they did. And probably still do, perhaps for different reasons.

Many of the older reporters had never gone to college. They learned their trade the hard way - proving themselves to the editors who'd once been reporters themselves, and humping for great stories by tramping the community. Newer reporters like me went to college, where typewriters were still in use, and then moved from the sterile, almost pleasant campus environment to the gritty, gruff, hardscrabble newsrooms where reporters were reporters, not professionals, who didn't give a crap whether we'd won awards in school or got good grades. All they valued was your ability to find and write good, quality news stories, and keep 'em coming.

Are those days gone? I ask myself this a lot lately, especially whenever there's news that yet another paper is laying off a substantial part of its staff. "Rest assured, our readers will see no difference in our reporting," the managers say. But I can't see how that's true. Fewer seasoned reporters means fewer in-depth stories. If you've got half the staff, you can't really expect them to create the same amount of news and have it mean anything, can you?

So our papers get filled more and more with non-local wire stories, with fluff. And fewer people read them. And it becomes this vicious cycle. Snipsnipsnipsnipsnip. People now turn to flashier media that's easier to consume: TV, Web and even blogs. But the lines between reporting and personal observation become increasingly blurry. People are quick to say, "I'm an expert! I'm an expert!" and shop themselves out to any reporter who needs a story on deadline. The once "mass" media is being whittled down to a few owners of multiple media outlets that distribute the same news over and over again. Intelligent public discourse doesn't flourish; it withers to a few well-drummed refrains that enable people to pick side "A" or side "B," without ever having to tax their brains that there are many other views and sides to consider in this nuanced, beautiful and vast world. No wonder so many distrust the media. I do.

We need good journalism, now more than ever. Now, when quite a few people believe everything they read on the Internet (Obama is a Muslim! Steve Jobs is dead!), and everyone who can type or snap a phonecam photo is "qualified" to be an i-reporter. Don't get me wrong: Personal observations of the world are the best kind of journalism. But it takes training to craft a short story that includes different observations for a fair and largely accurate assessment of a situation, or gives a reader the ability to dive head-first into an issue and come up for air wiser, and more attuned to the world, for the effort.

Years ago, I chose the path to move away from journalism. It was dying. The money wasn't so hot. The road was hard.

These days, I hear the calling I heard when I was younger, less experienced in the world and more idealistic. Journalism as truth. Journalism as knowledge. Journalism as a way to empower the people.

Except this time, the calling sounds more like an imperative. It sounds like a drumbeat. Can you hear it too?