A fellow student at Southlands College in London grew up in the Washington DC area — Columbia, Maryland to be exact. He had many stories of growing up in a planned city around the time it was founded. One story wasn’t about Columbia though — it was about when he was a paperboy, delivering the Washington Post. He remembered when he delivered the Post at the time of the Watergate scandal. I could tell he was proud to have been a small part of providing his neighbors the news about Watergate. I was very impressed. I’d heard of the Washington Post, but had never read it.

In 1985 my husband and I moved to the DC area and one of the first things we did was subscribe to the Washington Post. We read it daily, and spent much time reading the thick Sunday edition. Dean read the news, sports, and editorial sections. I might have read the news, but was mostly interested in the Style and Food sections and Book World. I may have also read the comics. I was proud to be a Washington Post subscriber and may have name dropped it occasionally when talking to friends and family who did not live in the DC area.

In 2000 I answered a question posed on Twitter by Jay Matthews, education writer and columnist for the Washington Post and he used my story in an article on teaching creative writing — in fact he used my story as the lede! To go from thinking the Washington Post was a magical publication to subscribing to it to being featured in it was quite a trip.

We’ve kept a subscription to the newspaper for the entire time we’ve been in the area — that’s over forty years. It has often been the first source of breaking news, especially when it was available to read online. When Jeff Bezos purchased it we were not alarmed.

Over the years I’ve come to rely on the Capital Weather Gang for skilled weather reporting, Ron Charles for book reviews, and Tom Sietsema for restaurant reviews. I even corresponded a bit with Tom Shales — once the TV critic for the Post. We bonded over both having been born in the same Illinois town. I found his TV recommendations perfect.

About the time the Washington Post refused to endorse Kamala Harris for President, I started reevaluating my relationship with the Washington Post. I know several people who cancelled their subscription then. I couldn’t do it. We had history.

But now it’s different. Earlier this month The Washington Post cut a third of its staff, including Ron Charles and Tom Sietsema. Except for the Capital Weather Gang, I have no reason to read the post anymore. (Tom Shales was laid off in 2010.) Like many others, I feel betrayed by the Washington Post. I should have seen the warning when Bezos bought it. When Harris was snubbed.

Dean and I are going to think on it a bit before we pull the plug on our 40+ year relationship with the Washington Post, but the only reason I’m keeping it now is for the weather and the archives.

*or is it ‘I’?