Recently, I was thinking over some of the harshest criticisms I’ve received in my career, and how I’m thankful for them now.

I decided to have some fun with this idea, so I pinged some journalist friends with this challenge: “I want you guys to try to remember things that editors have said to you, that shaped you, and which weren’t very nice.”

So, here is what my friends and I came up with. I’ve changed every female name to “Jennifer” and “Lauren,” every male name to “Bob.” My friends were more comfortable sharing this way, particularly because some of them are now at the top of their fields.

I’ve also obscured the names of the publications.

I hope they give you a good laugh. And if you happen to be new to this field or any other, know that the best professionals got that way in part thanks to tough love.

Please share yours!

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“Hey Jennifer, over the weekend, why don’t you read the New York Times and learn how to fucking write.”

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“What do you do? Be a fucking reporter, that’s what.” — Editor, after I called up and complained that nothing interesting happened at a Chicago city council housing committee meeting.

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The editor walks over and slaps a draft printout of my “tech bits” write-up on my desk.

“You read that first sentence and tell me if it makes you want to read the rest of the story.”

I read my lede. It didn’t.

As he walked away, he said, “Don’t be boring.”

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“He hung up on you? Go to his door so he can slam the door in your face instead.” –Editor

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If I were responsible for keeping the books, I would’ve shut it down too. It has taken me a year to realize that and admit it.

With its spinning neon globe overlooking Elliott Bay, the printed Seattle Post-Intelligencer was a West Coast institution. It was the state’s oldest business. A home for elegant scribes and scrappy diggers. Quirky. Artistic. Majestic. Beloved. Hated. Respected. Feared.

Working there as a reporter was a personal dream-come-true. I loved that place and proudly showed off my business card to whoever asked, “What do you do?”

After years of moving around the country and seeking a home, I’d found one in the P-I. I belonged at a newspaper. That newspaper. In a major city. In Seattle.

So when the Seattle P-I stopped printing one year ago, I felt shattered. “How could they do this to this city? To us?” I wondered about Hearst Corp., the New York-based company that owned the P-I.

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One of my favorite blogs to read is one on voluntary simplicity, by Emily Achenbaum Harris.

Harris quit her reporting job at the Chicago Tribune last year to pursue a simpler life. She gave up the city, the stress and the suits, and now blogs about all that she has gained in return.

At the time, I admired that she admitted in her final Tribune column that she isn’t independently wealthy. Translation: Any of us could shun the material stuff and do what she’s doing.

Part of my fascination with her blog is that she and I went opposite ways — I traded journalism in for high heels, stock analysis and finance.  She left to start a family and grow her own vegetables.

She’s also a good writer, which makes reading her blog a guilty pleasure.

Today, she has posted a guest post from me. It’s an essay I wrote about my irrational love for my car.

Check it out, and leave a comment!

Seattle P-I employees hear that their paper might close (Andrea James/Jan. 8, 2009)

It was this day last year when news of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer’s impending shut-down hit the airwaves.

If you haven’t heard the story before: The P-I staff first learned of this terrible news by watching it on television.

It was after 5 p.m. and the staff was putting the paper to bed. A major winter storm had hit Washington state, and thus most of our daily coverage focused on that – I believe that I wrote something about hindered truck shipments into Seattle. Overall, it had been a satisfying day — plenty of news to fill our pages and I had beat deadline by about an hour.

But I wouldn’t be going home anytime soon.

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When I was a reporter, I would try to incorporate Bruce Springsteen’s lyrics into my articles whenever I could.

Now, I never altered a story to fit the lyrics and out more than 1,000 articles I wrote in my journalism career, it only happened about twice.  One was an article about cities that suffer from brain drain as youth flee to bigger cities in search of education, jobs, opportunities. In that one, I quoted, “Born to run.”

I also composed many of my articles while listening to Bruce. I’d put on my headphones and make sense of all of my data gathering while jamming away. The music helped me to focus and to feel lighter than I am, which enabled me to think faster and meet deadline.

Not only do I adore Springsteen’s music, I relate to it. Which creates a deeper connection than simple enjoyment. (My family hails from the same county in New Jersey that he does, and I have cousins who grew up in his hometown. But I think that his fans, no matter where they are from, universally share a connection to his music.)

Today, I wonder if my affinity for Springsteen’s music had an effect on how my articles shaped themselves. Did it influence me by making me write according to some theme of which I was not consciously aware? Would an analysis of my articles reveal a Springsteen bias?

New York Times columnist David Brooks, in an editorial that is half reflection-on-life and half ode-to-Springsteen, explores how Springsteen contributed to his non-formal education. He also remarks that our non-formal education contributes more to our happiness than what we learn in the classroom. I encourage you to check it out.

You are:  In charge of marketing for a corporation. Organizing an event. Planning a wedding. Starting a blog.

You want: Beautiful, memorable photos.  Images that will grab the viewer’s attention, and hold it. A new head shot. A creative Christmas card.

You need: A photojournalist with daily newspaper experience.

Here’s why:

1. Photojournalists don’t make excuses — Things do go wrong, but a photojournalist who has worked for a daily newspaper is trained to do superior work, and quickly. She cannot come back to the office with no photo. The paper is coming out tomorrow, a photo is needed. She is used to operating under pressure.

2. Versatility — What I love about newspaper photographers is that they can do anything. My P-I colleagues often found themselves shooting a natural disaster one day (they all own rubber boots), a concert for the arts section the next day, and then a cake  for the food section the next.

3. Consider your moment captured — How much would you pay to make sure that THE moment of your event is captured forever? This is what photojournalists are trained to do every day. At my own wedding, I knew that I didn’t have to worry about making sure our photographer (and friend) was capturing crucial moments. He was everywhere. When I saw the photos, I was delighted and saw new aspects of my own wedding that I had missed.

4. Photo journalists are problem solvers – Tell me, how do you make a photo of a technology company interesting? As a business reporter for nearly five years, I got to profile some really cool companies — but a lot of times, these companies performed a service that just wasn’t visually interesting. But I rarely worried about this — I knew we’d have a publishable photo for the newspaper because the photographer would think of something I never could have.

5. They’re the best of the best — Newspaper journalism is cutthroat. Thousands of people want to shoot photos for newspapers, particularly in a big city like Seattle. However, just a dozen actually get to do it.  In short, they’ve been vetted.

Following are links to three Seattle-based photojournalists and companies whose work I can vouch for, and that I respect:

1. Stuart Isett — New York Times photographer, freelancer. He also shot my wedding. (Link to his Web page.)

2. Red Box Pictures — Seattle photography studio business started by former Seattle P-I photographers. (Link to company Web page.)

3. Marcus Donner — Newspaper photographer formerly with the King County Journal. He also teaches an excellent class for amateurs — to really help you get the most out of your point-and-shoot, or higher end camera. (Link to his Web site.)

Why did I write this post?

Newspaper photojournalists are best-kept secrets in terms of professionals-for-hire. They often let their photos speak for themselves, but I wanted to give some other concrete reasons beyond pointing out that they take good photos.

I did not get any money or anything from listing the above photographers. Stuart shot my wedding in 2008 and we paid full price, as any professional deserves.

Also, I’d recently read this story about a U.K. couple whose wedding photos were abysmal, and they sued the photographer. It occurred to me while reading it that I never had any such worries. Because I hired a photojournalist.

And finally, all three photos at the top of my home page index were shot by photojournalists. Their names are at the bottom of the page.

Do you ever think about how much of our lives are in “the cloud?”

Students at my college were big users of AOL Instant Messenger (oh so 2000!), and we religiously updated our away messages. “I’m sleeping.” “I’m writing a paper.” “Sexiled.” (Remember that one?)

After Sept. 11, 2001, during which I was in D.C., I began thinking a lot about my own mortality. For the first time, I realized that I could die unexpectedly. I would think, what if I died from a bomb on the Metro? And the next immediate thought was, “Who would update my away message?”

In 2007, I’d said on Poynter that journalists should be users of social media. (This is back when journalists were actually debating it. Now, it’s a given.) If we are to report on the world we live in, then we have to fully live in it.

But what happens when there’s a technical glitch?

My Facebook profile has been inaccessible for two days.  The company is having some sort of problem, according to this message board thread. And people are getting upset.

One frantic user writes, “OMG!!!! I’m about to lose it…. My birthday is coming and I don’t want to miss my birthday wishes. This is really annoying!!! I’ve been waiting for 5 long and awful days….This is a serious issue. No one seems to care.”

I don’t know this user’s age, but I found her comment adorable and completely honest. Before you judge her, consider this: People communicate now via social mediums, some people exclusively so.

And when the medium goes down, we lose our social.

Spare me talk about the old fashioned way of communicating — face to face and via phone — and how it’s so much better. No it’s not.  And if you think this way, you probably leave too many voicemails. (Voicemail is dead.)

In the capstone thesis class during my senior year of college, one student wrote her paper on social technology, concluding that technology only enhances the social qualities that we already have — thus, social people are even more social online.

To me, it is not an insult to wish someone happy birthday via text message. Go a few years younger than me (I’m 28) and the communication methods are even more drastically different. True story: My college-age younger brother’s home burned down last month. I learned about this via his Facebook status update.

I then communicated the news to another family member via e-mail, who then responded to me the next day via text: “WHY DIDN’T ANYONE CALL ME?” (This 40-something family member only texts in capital letters. We love him. He tries.)

Another example: My birthday this year happened to coincide with my first day as a non-journalist. It was mostly a lonely day of packing for my next adventure, interrupted only by jaunts over to my open laptop to read my birthday messages from all my friends. So great!

The day that I expected to be filled with the radio silence of losing my public voice was instead filled with dozens of messages.  I was no longer a working reporter, but I still had friends. And those friends chose to share via Facebook.

I wouldn’t have it any other way, especially after having moved to a new city six times in the past 10 years. Keeping in touch is so easy, thanks to the social media that have become my lifeline.

There is just one upside to the fact that my Facebook profile is down: It freed me up long enough to write this blog post.

Last month, a professional in the information business asked me, “What’s Twitter?”

This question came from a smart and capable guy, and so I was stunned. The best definition I could come up with at first was something stupid like, “Twitter? Uh, it’s . . . Twitter, you know, where you tweet?”

Business people: You are allowed to not like Twitter. You are allowed to not get Twitter. But c’mon, you’ve got to know which technologies are changing how people communicate. Or else, you’re going to get blindsided.

Journalists seem to be having a love affair with Twitter. (Guilty.) But can you blame them for trying? They know what it’s like to be blindsided.

The newspaper implosion shocked a lot of us in print media. McClatchy CEO Gary Pruitt said 2008 was the “worst year” of his life. “By far.” He may have been talking about money, but down in the ranks, we were shocked by our loss of authority. We shouldn’t have been. The clues were there all along.

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What an intriguing voicemail, I thought.

I looked down at the scribbles on my reporter notepad. “Hey Scott,” I said to my editor, “I just got the strangest message. There’s this investment bank that is looking to hire someone to do corporate research, and they got my name.”

Scott didn’t miss a beat: “Call him back.”

I Googled the firm and the stock analyst who’d left the voicemail. He’d been recently quoted in Forbes. I called him back.

That was about one month ago. Fast forward to now. August 12 will be my last day reporting and writing for seattlepi.com. In a few weeks, I will start as a research associate at the investment bank.

If you’d told me last year – nay, last quarter – that I’d quit my journalism job to go work for an investment bank, I would have said, “Get out.” (At least, that was the reaction of my former business editor Margaret when she heard the news, followed by, “Congratulations!”)

But then again, a lot has happened in the past year that I wouldn’t have thought possible. First, I attended the inauguration of the first black president and sat near the front row. Then, Lady Fortune came out of nowhere,  took a big swig of liquid economy, picked up the baseball bat marked “career,” and whacked most of my friends. My newspaper shut down. WaMu disappeared. Back to the point. . .

I’m excited about this transition into a world to which I’m already connected. Often when a business stumps me with some change of direction or unique accounting charge, I turn to analyst experts for help. After about six years of covering the markets and business, now I get to learn what makes Wall Street analysts tick. I never could resist the allure of learning new things!

And so, off I go.

Journalism asks: How can you leave me?

Please do not interpret my leaving seattlepi.com as foreboding about the news site’s future. The Web site commands a high readership and from what I hear from management, the already robust content will get fuller and better with each new partnership and added revenue stream.

Journalism industry watchers would do well to keep an eye on Seattle’s online journalism experiments, from what Hearst is doing at seattlepi.com to the rise of community news blogs that are rich with engagement.

Journalism is a rapidly changing industry, and for the past few years, I’ve had a front row seat.

The future will include more democratization of data, more citizen engagement, more unpaid writers, fewer generalists, more amateurs with fan followings, a greater appreciation for quality business reporting, and a whittling down of traditional journalistic authority against the rise of the niche-hobbyist-turned-pro.

The notion of journalists as gatekeepers is obsolete — those who pridefully struggle to hold onto that antiquated view will watch helplessly as information flows around, over and beneath the gates. Those who humbly embrace these changes will become the new stars, appreciated for their ability to generate unique content while at the same time navigating and making sense of the information flow.

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Witnessing and writing about the death of one’s own newspaper is not something I’d wish on any reporter.

Dan Richman and I kept it together enough to write the front page headline story for the last edition of the newspaper:

The online version has a different lede than the version that ran in print, which read:

The Seattle Post-Intelligencer has printed its last edition. You’re reading it.

The newspaper sold out all over the city. It comes wrapped in a commemorative edition with essays and stories by our best writers.

Hearst gave me the option of sticking around as a business reporter with seattlepi.com, and I accepted the offer.

Here’s the squiggly pink worm that I bit like a hungry fish: The Seattle Post-Intelligencer would be the first printed newspaper in the country to transition to an all-online model. If it works, I’d have witnessed something remarkable, the future of general news daily journalism.

Curiosity overwhelms me. What is it like to witness the death of a newspaper, and a rebirth? Do I want to see this first hand, in all its pain and glory? Yes, I do.