Working in newspaper journalism has been a calling. I grew up the son of a preacher whose own calling was to social justice. My mother was a journalism major at Penn State whose care for the underserved has shaped the lives of me and my siblings, to the next generation as well. I took a different path toward that same north star.

Working in newspaper journalism has been my life’s work, so far. It started in junior high school with an expose that embarrassed the principal, who tried to quash my article. So I wrote a story about that. For a 13-year-old, it was heady stuff. I’ve worked at newspapers ever since.

Working in newspaper journalism has been a gift. It opened horizons right at home, wherever home was. It offered connection to people and concerns I might never have known otherwise. I’ve heard the steel door slam shut behind me inside Brushy Mountain Prison in Tennessee and paddled to hidden springs with John Moran, the celebrated former staff photographer at The Gainesville Sun. I got to see how brave, committed reporters, photographers and digital journalists could uplift a city devastated by a tornado.

Working in newspaper journalism, for me, is coming to a close. My position is ending due to some expense reductions.

While I will no longer be overseeing the newsrooms in Gainesville, Ocala and Leesburg, at 62, I’m still not ready to retire to inexpert hobbies and neglected chores. I look forward to finding the next opportunity to use the skills I’ve developed over a career of building civic engagement and nurturing the talents of others.

The reason I’m writing this column, however, is to say this: Our communities need to support the journalists who are still out there, gathering news, checking it for accuracy and fairness, and presenting it to readers in the most effective ways.

There is a lot of head-wagging by some about the financial state of newspapers who say corporate profits and poor customer service are killing community journalism just when we need it most.

I’ve been around long enough to have seen the salad days. When executives from the New York Times, which owned our newspapers then, spent lavishly on private jets, expensive wine and new buildings with massive printing presses. The problem isn’t with corporate profits, which are much thinner now as stock prices drop.

Gannett, I think, has finally gotten the message about customer service. It is a strong headwind in bearing up to a digital future.

We need powerful journalism at the community and national levels for our democracy to survive. Journalism is in peril because of a business problem and civics problem.

The business problem is that advertising won’t carry us forward. Newspapers built an industry on the odd notion that credibility was so valuable that businesses would pay to rub up next to it. That was in an era when reaching customers with a message wasn’t easy. Newspapers could deliver credibility and an audience.

Now, of course, businesses can reach out to potential customers directly. Cheaply.

The civics problem is that our credibility has waned dramatically. Some of that is our own fault, but by any measure I can see, there is more regard now for accuracy, accountability, fairness and transparency than has ever existed in journalism as practiced in the United States. When I started my career, back when manual typewriters were still on reporters’ desks, newspapers were openly partisan, many reporters lacked any solid training, and many newspapers' owners were in the pockets of politicians.

And those reporters and their editors? Anglo males almost to a soul.

No, the erosion of public trust coincides with a general distrust of institutions in America. Some of that is a complex shift away from notions of objectivity, shared values and even shared understanding of truth. But the bigger, more present hazard are deliberate efforts to undercut trust in journalism by those who would benefit.

We may disagree on who those dark interests are, but I hope we can agree that good journalism should root them out.

So, if you don’t yet, please subscribe. We need young readers willing to pay for valuable journalism. The cost of print newspapers is out of reach for many households. Most can afford a digital subscription. If you do subscribe, you might consider a digital subscription for a friend, co-worker or family member to help get them in the habit of reading news that’s worth paying for.

My family and I have spent a decade now in Florida. Two of our children have graduated from the University of Florida. My wife and I don’t plan to leave.

I do have some unfinished work. I had hoped to complete a report to the Gainesville community on the history of reporting in The Gainesville Sun on racial violence in the Jim Crow Era. Spoiler: It was awful. We’ve been working with the Samuel Proctor Oral History Program at UF, and a committee of community stakeholders, to bring that out this fall. I hope it might still happen.

I am deeply appreciative of my colleagues in Gainesville, Ocala and Leesburg, in Gannett and across the industry, and of many people in the community who I’ve had the honor to work with as well.

It’s been a great run. There’s more ahead. Peace.

Douglas Ray is former executive editor of the Gainesville Sun, Ocala Star-Banner and Leesburg Daily Commercial