Will Steacy – Blood and Ink
On a warm Friday evening in the newsroom of The Philadelphia Inquirer, national/foreign editor Tom Steacy was asked to leave his desk. He was led to a conference room, where he found the paper’s executive editor waiting.
“The realisation began to dawn as I made that walk,” the 66-year-old says in a slow, halting voice from his home in Philadelphia. “Everyone was nervous. We all knew there was a great shining axe hovering in the sky somewhere. There had been for quite a while.”
The editor, Stan Wischnowski, told Steacy that after 29 years on staff the paper was letting him go. “I kept shouting to myself: ‘Silence, silence. Gosh, please don’t let me hear what I’m about to hear,’” Steacy says. “Stan gave me his 10-minute spiel about why it was necessary and why I had been chosen. Then I made him repeat the whole thing. I was in so much shock. When it was over, I left the building and went home,” he continues. “I went back to the newsroom once to sign papers – that newsroom was my life for 30 years.”
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