“Suddenly the pages of the Niagara Falls Reporter, once a well-respected weekly that people sought out and generally enjoyed reading, were filled with sexism, racism, the mockery of immigrants, the condemnation of gay men and lesbian women, crude demeaning political tirades, and poorly-written, loopy cultural points-of-view that drew attention, but lacked depth and a coherent understanding of the history and progression of the cultural touchstones being discussed.”

I continued to write for the Reporter, which under its new owner was slowly altering its content. Perhaps he was feeling his wings, or perhaps he had the complexities of running a new business to occupy his mind, but I was still in print. I soon noticed something disconcerting. The Reporter’s two important female staffers, the managing editor (the wife of the founder/editor) and the senior editor no longer had their names on the masthead.

I was communicating with other members of the Reporter by email and no one seemed to know much about the future of the paper. Both women refused to go into detail about what was going on. They said they didn’t know things. Soon other familiar names on the masthead were disappearing. Not only were the women gone, but some talented men were gone, too. Then, new names began to appear on the masthead. The newspaper’s stories were poorly-edited as typographical errors and grammatical mistakes became commonplace. The tone of the content was changing. I can’t write that the content was evolving because “evolving” hints at positive development.

It didn’t take a ton of bricks to fall on me to realize that the new owner had a female problem. He did not like what women were becoming. He did not like the modern world as it applied to the feminine mystique and the power of females. Hell, it didn’t take one brick to fall on me.