By David Trinko
The Lima News
If you love what you do, you’ll never work a day in your life, the old adage claims.
It’s time for me to stop working and get back to what I love. That pretty much sums up why I’m returning to The Lima News as its editor, starting Monday.
Some of you may recall back in July when I announced my resignation as editor in what I thought would be my final column. I left journalism after a quarter-century to work in the healthcare industry.
This column isn’t a retraction. Everything I said back in July is still true: Local journalism is a tough job with plenty of detractors that pulls you away from your family and friends. We have less staff, less space in the printed paper and generally fewer resources than we once had.
After a few months away from it, though, I realized there was no other way I could live my life. As they say in this line of work, once you get ink in your blood, it’s hard to get it out.
I enjoyed moments of my time outside of journalism, but it wasn’t as satisfying day in and day out as leading our team here in Lima, delivering the news you need, you want and you deserve. For the first time in my life, I wondered when the workday would end, so I could just go home.
I really caught the news bug again as I helped cover high school football for the newspaper each Friday night.
My farewell from journalism turned into a sabbatical. Now I’m refreshed and ready to tackle new challenges.
I don’t have a time machine to bring us back to the glory days of the late 1990s, when I was a young reporter here in Lima and the newspaper had a lot of staff, a lot of advertising and a lot of pages each day. Those days are gone.
We don’t have to mourn that, though. We can look forward to brighter days. There’s still room for your local news source to evolve, providing up-to-the-minute information online that can help you live your lives with meaning. There’s still room for us to be deeply involved in the communities we serve.
It will look different than it did 25 years ago. Much of life does, after all.
I won’t be working the 60- or 70-hour weeks I once did. That’s not sustainable, and it’s not healthy. I love my family and my home life too much to neglect them. I will be toiling hard during my working hours to maintain the balance they deserve, while directing the passion I have for sharing local news.
In the coming months, our devoted staff will work to make our website, LimaOhio.com, and the two editions per week of The Lima News print edition more useful and valuable to you. My time away from the day-to-day rat race helped clarify the differences in the wants and needs of these two audiences.
I’m grateful for this new chance to serve the readers of The Lima News and LimaOhio.com. Your dozens of letters and emails when I resigned truly touched me, and I hope you hold me accountable on my promise to work hard to give you the newspaper and website you deserve.
We all deserve a job we feel passionate about, and I’m glad to be back at The Lima News where I belong.
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See past columns by David Trinko at LimaOhio.com/tag/trinko.
David Trinko is editor of The Lima News. Reach him at 567-242-0467, by email at [email protected] or on Twitter @Lima_Trinko.
