Ray, who covered the Iraq war for the Tribune, spent 14 years of his journalism career at the paper. He tells me: “that part of my life is over. I am completely at peace with it.”
Ray says he has met many newspaper reporters who are still having a difficult time coping with leaving the industry and are still looking for their “dream” newspaper job. He tries to give them a somber perspective to the current reality of the business by sharing the story of a soldier he interviewed in 2003, later killed in combat.
“When I asked him what he was going to do when he got home, he said something like this: “I’m going to surround myself with friends and family more often; and stop being so hard on myself. I’ll see where that takes me.”