Chapter 1

"Jim? It's Julian."

"Hey. Merry Christmas, etc. etc."

"Yeah, you too. Listen, you got a minute? I got a story idea for you."

Julian Farnsworth is managing editor of the Columbus Record, the newspaper for which I had worked for the past two decades and counting.

The counting, however, was ending very soon. As of next week -- January 2 of the coming year -- the Record would cease to be. We had always been Columbus, Ohio's second newspaper in terms of circulation. However, those of us who had grown up with the Record had always thought that in quality, we were number one.

Well, evidently we had been wrong. Columbus, a thriving, growing city -- now the largest city in the state -- was about to become a one-paper town. It was the way of the world. Newspapers were being crushed by competition from television and the Internet.

I was now -- and until January 2 would be -- the Record's Washington bureau chief. I'd held that relatively prestigious job for the past seven years. So, OK, I was "chief" of a staff of three people. It wasn't exactly ABC News. But it was a great job, and I had loved it and thrived on it for nearly a decade since moving from Columbus. And, unlike many of my colleagues on the staff back in Ohio, I was going to land on my feet when we got our walking papers the following week. At forty, I was reasonably well-known in the business, and I had been snapped up by an online news magazine. I would be staying in the Nation's Capital, getting a hefty twenty-five-percent pay raise, and enjoying greater freedom to write what interested me than I had ever before experienced.

That didn't keep me from regretting the demise of my first and only civilian employer, the beloved Columbus Record.

"Still coming up with story ideas, Jules? With the paper ready to go to sleep and never wake up in just a few more days?"

"It's for the final edition, on the second," Julian said. "You remember the first story you ever did for the Record?"

"It was an obituary," I said. "I think I did four or five my first day."

"Yeah, yeah. But I mean your first actual feature assignment. Do you remember it? ... I do!"

"New Year's baby story," I said. "Jeez, Jules, that was twenty-one years ago this week!"

"Yep. You were still a part-timer. Just starting back to college after your army hitch."

"I'm amazed that you remember all that."

"Why wouldn't I? I hired you, didn't I? You'd been home from your army hitch for, what? Something like a week, am I right? You were starting back to college for the winter quarter at Ohio State right after the first of the year. And you were looking for work as a writer. Part-time work."

"What better than a morning paper?"

"Hell, you did six hours a day, and eight on Saturday. Damned near to being a full-timer, really. Thirty-eight-hour week!"

"I needed all the hours I could get, the way the Record paid its rookie writers."

"I remember all that stuff because I was the one who took a chance on you, and it paid off. I've always been proud of myself about that. About spotting talent. You were good, Jimbo! You were the best reporter I ever hired."

"God, this must be an awful assignment you're cooking up for me, the way you're laying it on so thick!"

"Not awful. Not at all. It's just an accident of geography, and I'll admit it's a little out of your usual political line."

"For the final edition? What do you want? Nostalgia? The thoughts of an Old China Hand on the paper's last day?"