It’s been 35 years, but I have vivid memories of the morning of May 9, 1980. I left home for my job as city editor of The Tampa Times during a blinding rain. Fearing flooding on my usual scenic route of Bayshore Boulevard, I took the higher-ground Crosstown Expressway instead.
As I approached the door of the newspaper building around 8 a.m., the early-morning copy editing crew was leaving; they had put out the first street-sales edition of the afternoon newspaper and were heading for breakfast before diving into the home edition.
I'm a digital journalist and recovering newspaper guy who lives in Lakeland, Fla.