Business paper editor says goodbye

Don Kopriva, the editor of the Oak Brook Business Ledger in suburban Chicago, is retiring after 16-plus years as the head of the paper.

Kopriva writes, “Financial exigencies make my departure necessary, and it’s that 900-lb. gorilla at every publisher’s door that make cost-cutting again, and again, and again, the new norm in our industry rather than the exception.

“I marvel at the Internet, and all the information and entertainment it affords, for good or for ill. And I recognize that it is here to stay and that newspapers have to face that fact and the consequences thereof, financial or otherwise.

“But I don’t have any faith in it the way I do in newspapers, in a reporter’s ability to get the facts, without bias, and in a rewrite man’s (or woman’s) ability to write words and paragraphs and articles that sing and enthrall the reader, and, finally, in an editor’s ability to put it all out there for the newspaper’s readers.

“My dad told me not to go into newspapering, that I’d never make any money. By some standards, that’s been true. But money doesn’t buy happiness, or pride in a job that I will leave others to judge whether well done or not.”

Read more here.