The Los Angeles Herald Examiner, once the nation's largest afternoon newspaper, published its last edition Thursday, announcing its bittersweet farewell with the headline "So Long, L.A."
Virtually every columnist and many of the 86-year-old newspaper's reporters confessed in print to giving way to tears while composing the edition."They tore a part of my heart out yesterday," sports columnist Doug Krikorian declared on a sports page whose headline asserted "We're outta here!"
Humor columnist Gordon Dillow found himself without a joke.
"Tough, hard-bitten journalists aren't supposed to cry," he lamented. "And yet . . . when the announcement came that this would be the last edition of this newspaper, dozens of tough, hard-bitten reporters and editors who have spent years dealing with death and destruction and calamity on a daily basis stood around with tears welling up in their eyes."
Hearst Corp. attributed the closing to losses of up to $2 million a month and a lack of suitable buyers since the paper was offered for sale last summer.
The announcement of the closing, which leaves the nation's second-largest city with just one daily paper, came Wednesday from Robert Danzig, general manager of Hearst Newspapers, who spoke from atop the newsroom's copy desk.
"Although operating at a financial deficit for more than two decades, there was never a deficit in the quality and the vigor of its editorial commitment to the people of Los Angeles," he said. "It has been a losing business, but a winning newspaper."
The paper's 831 employees will receive 60 days' severance pay and help in looking for work; longtime staffers will get additional, unspecified benefits.
Founded by William Randolph Hearst in 1903 as the Los Angeles Examiner, the newspaper was under intense pressure in recent years from the Los Angeles Times, the region's dominant daily with five times the Herald's daily circulation.
"It's a sad day for journalism and a sad day for Los Angeles," said Shelby Coffey III, editor of the Times.