From the archives: Paul Vitello leaves Newsday after 24 years

This story was originally published in Newsday on May 15, 2005

I have left quite a few jobs in my life, and each time it's been with a light heart and a sense of finished business; but not this time.

This time, after working for Newsday for 24 years, 18 of them writing this column, I leave behind too much to leave lightly: too many people I like, too much hard-earned understanding of how things here work, too many readers who have been kind to me, too many readers I feel responsible for having irked for too many years. In short, I leave too many chunks of my life.

I met my wife here. When each of our children was born, it was from this place that I took time off from work to welcome them.

The people who took the biggest risks for me in my working life so far - whether packing me off on assignments around the world, or letting me write critical articles about a local establishment of which this newspaper has always tried to be an integral part - have all been Newsday people.

I owe immeasurable debts to the reporters who have shared their beats with me, the research librarians who have covered my back, the copy editors whose exasperating demands have often improved my writing, though I would never admit it, the photographers who taught me to see the drama contained in every moment, the editors who let me find a voice I didn't know I had.

If those sound like the sentiments of someone who loves Newsday, not someone who is leaving, it's because they are. If I stayed here for the rest of my working life, I'm sure I would be a happy man.

But I am leaving with a hope for something that, to be honest, I'm not altogether sure I can identify. If you've worked a long time in a trade you love, you might know the feeling: One day you look up at the clock. It says you still have time, but not all the time in the world; and if there is something else you always wanted to try, better make it soon. I'm 54, and I've decided to try that something else.

This feeling is a cousin to an impulse that reporters sometimes have when they think they are finished gathering the facts for a story. It's the impulse to make one last phone call, to reach one more source. It's the call you make half out of a sense of curiosity, half from a sense of duty to the story, and another half for the sheer, perverse pleasure of adding a new layer of detail that will more often than not end up being cut anyway, though not necessarily.

Sometimes that last call takes a story in a whole new direction. At least that's what you always hope for.

Because Newsday has been going through a financial crisis stemming from a circulation scandal, and because my leaving has roughly coincided with that problem, I also want to clarify something on that score. If there had not been the scandal, I might not have looked up at that clock I mentioned. But great journalism has been produced by this newspaper regularly since our problems came to light - not least of it our stories about the circulation scandal itself, which I know Newsday will survive. I have never stopped being proud of the work we do. My decision to leave was ultimately a personal one.

I have a few apologies to make before I go. I've never been able to return every phone call or answer every letter or e-mail I ever received. I am certain that among those calls and messages there were many stories that should have been told. I'm sorry I never told them.

I'm sorry also that in the course of writing this column, I was never able to convince you all to see things my way every time, never able to make the crooked paths straight, as they say.

But I have been honored to talk to you. I wish you all the kind of satisfaction I've had in these years, and hope to keep having - the pleasure of doing what you love.