It's fair to say that the D&C takes its share of knocks around the City newsroom; we gloat when we scoop them and bitch and make lame excuses when they scoop us. We laugh, like the liberal-elitist-intellectuals we are accused of being, at the D&C's Teddy Geiger worship or innovations like ROC Pets.

We're competitors, after all.

But today, while Tim grinds away on deadline and Jeremy's off chasing down a lead, we're all thinking about our Exchange Street counterparts. The D&C is cutting 59 positions - including longtime sports writer Scott Pitoniak - as part of a Gannett staff reduction that will shrink the company's workforce by 10 percent. The cuts are being carried out this week.

There's no doubt that our industry is changing. Some of the changes are good. I can't imagine, for example, how journalists did their jobs before the Internet - although I suspect that some were more than a little "generous" with facts and, looking over articles from "the day," I get the impression that stories often wandered over into advocacy and commentary instead of straight-up journalism.

We can talk about the few rotten apples like Jayson Blair and Janet Cooke, whose actions somehow condemn a whole profession, all day. And while I've known reporters who routinely rewrite a few lines of a press release, grab a single live quote, and then sit back and wait for the Pulitzer board to call - most of us are here because we love it despite the long hours and deadline pressures - or because of them - and simply could not imagine doing anything else.

It's not glamorous. Whenever people talk about the "glamour" of my profession, I want to send them to cover flooding or a house fire. You spend a lot more time knee-deep in mud than up in the penthouse waiting for Superman to drop in.

And you're no one's top priority. Believe me on that.

But it's a passion. A calling. And it's important, if you do it right. If you love it, you wake up every morning completely aware of the privilege you've been given - precious inches in a newspaper - and of the responsibility to get it right. If you love it, you skip the family whatevers and pretend it's a sacrifice; the dirty little secret is that you'd almost always rather be at work.

If you love it, it's like nothing else in the world.

And so we know what it would feel like to have that taken away. And we're sorry for those Gannett employees - especially at the D&C - who are losing so much this week.