Go ahead and cut me! I'll bleed ink

"Foreman says these jobs are going boys
And they ain't coming back to your hometown"

One of my oldest memories takes place in the late 1970s in a sprawling warehouse that held the press equipment at the Manteca Bulletin. It's late at night, and I'm with my brothers and sister as we wait for our dad, then the publisher, to finish writing a story. I'm sure we behaved for a while, but four bored, unattended kids in a press room is a dangerous scenario.

Inevitably, the hulking rolls of newsprint caught our attention. Once we figured out how to climb atop them — they were taller than we were, and one spool easily outweighed us all — we discovered two of us balancing carefully could get them rolling. Picture giddy log rollers atop giant redwoods.

Now the problem was, once you got the big rolls moving across the concrete floor, there was no way to stop them. And they picked up speed. Whenever the riders neared an immovable object — a wall, the press equipment, whatever — the best we could do was jump for safety and hope nothing terrible happened. And each time the giant spools crashed into something, the sound of uncontrollable laughter echoed through the warehouse. For a kid, it was difficult to imagine having more fun.

You had to be careful, too, because one bad slip could mean landing head-first onto the concrete. Worse, getting trapped between spools in motion easily could have killed one of us. Of course, the real danger here was the large man madly pounding the keys of a typewriter in a nearby office: my dad. I'll never forget the horrified expression on his face when he walked into the press room that night and discovered us running amok. I can't remember how long we were grounded, but I know it was difficult to sit down without pain for the next few days.

I share that memory only because the current state of newspapers leaves me longing for the good old days. I imagine some of you read last week's announcement that The Bee offered buyouts to some employees as a cost-cutting measure brought on by declining ad revenue fueled by a weak economy. It's no secret that the Internet, most notably Web sites Google and Craigslist, have done nothing but hurt newspapers' bottom line. Thousands of newspaper jobs are disappearing each year, perhaps never to return.

While I do remain cautiously hopeful about the future of newspapers, and my place in them, I must admit that in some respects, the current climate feels like the end of an era. During downtime, when the mood for gallows humor strikes, I have stood in the newsroom with colleagues and lightheartedly practiced the delivery of words we might use in our next career; it's usually phrases like, "Would you like fries with that?" or "Ma'am, did you say you wanted extra foam on your latte?" Or perhaps a simple cardboard sign that reads "Will write for food." Yes, we may joke about the future, but don't be fooled: Truth is, for many journalists, this is all we really know how to do. For some of us, it almost feels like this was what we were bred to do.

I'm a fourth-generation journalist. And, at this point, it's difficult to imagine one of my young sons carrying on that tradition. That means I'm probably the last of the line. I must admit I find that notion incredibly sad.

For my family, it began long ago when my great-grandfather George Murphy Sr. purchased half of what I think was then the Irrigation Bulletin for a sum believed to be in the neighborhood of $800. The check stub still exists in a family album somewhere. (Please forgive my details for being a bit sketchy here, as I just hung up with the only person who remembers the history, my mother, who is battling cancer and taking powerful drugs.) The paper, which later became the Manteca Bulletin, managed to survive the Depression — though there are stories of Murphy Sr. trading out ads for goods such as groceries and laundry services because money was scarce.