So I started again, to the extent that we can start anything fresh, back at the newspaper where I had received my first paycheck. My title was Assistant Managing Editor. I had three reporters, all in their twenties; an assignment editor in his late fifties who had run the section once but gotten fired; and a part-time copy editor. My staff, such as it was, seemed excited. I was a star, a prizewinner; the other things that had happened to me were so far away. They sensed that someone smart, who had played on a larger stage, had arrived at their sleepy little newspaper with something to prove. But what was it? I gathered them the first day in our corner of the newsroom and made a little speech. The room was messy with paper and broken furniture and the remnants of people’s half-eaten lunches. The News-Herald wasn’t prosperous enough to be neat.

I said I wanted to make two promises. I would help them be the best reporters and editors they could be. And I would never do anything that violated journalistic ethics. They listened politely enough to me; they must have wondered why the new guy sounded so earnest. When I was done, one of the young reporters raised his hand. He looked like a smart kid, cocky even. He reminded me a bit of myself at that age, to be honest.

“I have a question about coverage, Mr. Truell,” the young reporter said. It was the first time a colleague had ever called me Mister. He tilted his head back, looking me in the eye, sizing me up. He said he was working on an exposé of the leading auto dealer in town. He’d spent weeks looking at court records and discovered that the auto dealer had been sued more than a dozen times during the last five years by unhappy consumers. He thought he had a great story about a dishonest local businessman, but the dealer was a big advertiser and the News-Herald had never run a critical article about him. He was a friend of the publisher.

“Will you run my piece?” the reporter asked. The little group gathered around my desk went dead silent. “I need to know,” the young man said. “Because I don’t want to do any more work on the story if you’re just going to kill it the way they did the last time.”

There it was. I closed my eyes and listened to the sound of the traffic out on Highway 101. I had ended up in this little California town, trying to save what was left of my career and my self-esteem. I wasn’t trying to be a crusader. I just wanted to be a journalist again. And I knew the answer to his question. I had lived with ambiguities all my life, but this one was black and white.