Four weeks ago I told my love I was leaving. Twenty-eight days seemed decent notice for a relationship of 27 years. She asked me to stay but shed not a tear. She knew I still loved her, Grande Dame Post-Gazette. (You know when someone dresses in as frilly a masthead as the PG's, the person is of the feminine persuasion.)

Barbara White Stack, one of the best journalists around, is leaving the Post-Gazette editorial page to work and write for the United Steelworkers of America (wstack@nauticom.net).

Announcement made, I had to figure out how to actually go. Casting about, I turned to Paul Simon who claimed in his 1975 song that there are 50 ways to leave your lover:

"Just slip out the back, Jack." Sneak out, Mr. Simon? I don't think so. I'm surrounded by trained observers.

"Make a new plan, Stan; You don't need to be coy, Roy; Just get yourself free," Mr. Simon further advises.

Make a new plan. How did I intend to explain getting myself free to co-workers who had supported and nurtured me for 27 years? Maybe because all journalists are insecure they would understand that, like Wayne and Garth of SNL's Wayne's World, I feel I am not worthy.

I am so undeserving that I'd not make it through journalism school today. Shortly after I graduated, many schools limited admittance by requiring applicants to pass entrance exams. Aspiring journalists needed to know the difference between gorilla and guerrilla. And how to spell both.

They'd have eliminated me right there. I could never spell. In second grade I misspelled the word "white" on a spelling test. That might not be too surprising, except that my last name at the time was White.

Maybe bad spelling isn't a fatal flaw for a journalist, but lack of credibility is. Accuracy is the hallmark of great reporters, and yet I am the person who organized a surprise 60th birthday party in the newsroom for writing coach Peter Leo. As it turned out, the only surprise was that it wasn't his 60th birthday.

While credibility is essential, credulity is a flaw. To be a truly good journalist, I'd need somehow to take a spoonful of skepticism with my daily vitamins to overcome my innate naivete.

One day about a decade ago, as a group of us stood in the newsroom watching the noon news, a television reporter began interviewing a man whose elderly parents had been murdered in their home the night before.

The man sobbed into the camera light, saying his parents had been brutally slain and that he hoped the police would quickly capture the killer.

I teared up watching it, thinking how horrible it would be to lose your parents that way.

Another reporter, Gabe Ireton, immediately said in disgust, "Yeah, police will arrest the killer quickly. It's him."

I was horrified. How could Gabe say such a thing? The poor man was crying.

Police charged the guy the next day.

My earnestness ill-served my profession in other ways, as well. Schooled by nuns who carried big sticks, I think to this day that people avoid sin -- lying and such -- for fear ultimately of hell and, more immediately, of being whacked on the knuckles. As a result, like a journalist on the Polar Express, I believe.

This, however, just does not jibe with the basic tenet of journalism, which is: "Don't trust your mother when she says she loves you unless you've got a second source."

I've also learned that, as an intact-knuckle rule-follower, I don't have the moxie of a good journalist. A dozen years ago, I stood outside juvenile court in Oakland with a young woman right out of journalism graduate school, Ann Belser. It was so cold the ink froze in our pens. But there was no way I'd consider entering the warm building because journalists and the general public were barred by court order.

Ann, however, was cold and wasn't going to take it anymore. She suggested we enter as lawyer and client, me appearing to be the attorney with my briefcase, she the child in her jeans. Like Adam, I was seduced.

We passed through security that way, never specifying who we were or weren't, then searched for the family we needed to interview. When our questioning made it clear we were reporters, guards evicted us. But our ink had thawed and we had our quotes. Ann's got what it takes to be a real reporter. And she can spell.

So, really, while Mr. Simon suggests taking leave of my love is as simple as, "Just hop on the bus, Gus; you don't need to discuss much," I do need to explain. The fact is that I am so unworthy, I'm lucky the P-G isn't booting me.

"Just drop off the key, Lee," Mr. Simon sings, "And get yourself free." I will do that. But I feel guilty about leaving my love when she's having a hard time.

Newspapers are suffering, laying off reporters, shrinking newsprint, losing profitable classified ads to the Internet. The PG says it is drowning in red ink millions of dollars deep.

Despite that black-and-white-and-read-all-over joke, American newspapers must swim in black ink to help ensure a viable self-governing democracy. Cynical, spirited, spell-checked scribes must scrutinize the three branches of government and report their triumphs and their shenanigans to the people so citizens can make informed decisions at the ballot box.

And so I leave my love with this: Fare thee well journalism; fare thee well Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.