The great thing about the Journal — from the moment I started, in Seattle, in 1998 — was that we were given the freedom to go after a good story, and if it was really good, to follow it wherever it took us, for as long as it took. Those days seem to be gone forever.

On Thursday morning, with no warning, reporters received a memo to show up for a 10 am meeting, according to people involved. When they arrived, several executives in suits were in the room and it was impossible not to sense doom. The journalists were told they’d be paid through the end of the year, and would get two weeks severance for every year worked. Then the messengers went back to midtown Manhattan, NewsCorp. headquarters, and nine great reporters were out of work.

On Friday there was a lot of gallows humor in the newsroom, I was told, and one veteran reporter told a younger one: “You’re a smart kid. Get out of journalism while you can.”

It’s probable that neither of them — like so many of us — will ever work again as a reporter for a daily newspaper. But at least, for a while, we got to write for one of the greatest papers in the world.

–Rachel Zimmerman