Some months ago when I was at a social gathering in Cedar Hill, someone came up to me and said, “If Today Newspapers goes under, your job is going to get a lot harder. You realize that, don’t you?”

Well, that day has come.

Today Newspapers, which covered Cedar Hill, DeSoto, Duncanville, Lancaster and Grand Prairie, published its last issue on July 2 after nearly 50 years in business. Publisher Kim Petty told The Dallas Morning News that the decision to cease publishing was made after efforts to find a buyer were unsuccessful.

Yes, Today Newspapers was a competitor, but once upon a time, it was also a member of my family.

I worked for the company from 2004-07, hired initially to cover Midlothian before I was quickly moved in to the Cedar Hill editor’s position. I made a lot of friends there and a lot of connections that are invaluable to my job today with neighborsgo.

At Today, we were a small, extremely underpaid staff, as are almost all journalists who work for small companies.

Journalists have been called the lowest-paid white-collar workers in the world, and I can’t argue with that. Except for those who make it to the big leagues in print or TV (markets that are shrinking by the day), many reporters look up in envy at the salaries of other underpaid members of our society – people like teachers, police officers and firefighters.

But the reporters and editors who worked for Today were underpaid to an extreme degree. When I interviewed and was asked how much I hoped to get paid, I was laughed out of the office when I provided what I thought was a very modest salary figure – but it was still a few thousand more a year than what Today wanted to pay me.

They hired me anyway – at their salary figure, not mine.

The low pay created a bit of a bunker mentality, but it also drew us closer together. We laughed at the absurdity of it all, but then did our jobs as professionals. The low pay also created a revolving door for staff members. At the first Cedar Hill City Council meeting I covered, Mayor Pro Tem Cory Spillman asked me, “So, are you going to be here more than a month?”

I made it three years.

For journalists, Today offered a tremendous amount of freedom. I can’t recall anyone ever telling me what I had to put in my paper, which was Cedar Hill Today. The only thing I was told I had to cover was Friday night high school football.

Other than that, just about anything was fair game. I could put whatever I wanted on the front page. For a journalist with decent experience, it was a lot of fun. For one fresh out of college or without any experience, it could be a challenge because there wasn’t much time devoted to training.

Today was also a place that understood that no one – particularly someone who isn’t getting paid much – was going to work there forever, but if you moved on and found out you didn’t like your new job, you were always welcome to return to Today.

Not too many places are like that.

Unlike a lot of small-town papers, particularly weeklies, Today Newspapers wasn’t there to be an echo chamber for local government bodies. Sure, we did our share of boosterism, but we didn’t shy away from news.

Although we really didn’t have the budget or the staff to do much ongoing investigative reporting, we kept a reasonable eye on things. My old boss there told us, “Sometimes it’s good to make people mad.”

We made our share of mistakes, too. Boy, did we ever. I recall getting a phone call from one irate woman one day, screaming about something I couldn’t understand. She finally calmed down enough to tell me what had happened: The advertising department had produced a special section highlighting the dangers of drinking and driving. The cover art was a photo of tombstones in a cemetery. A real cemetery in the local area. With real names on the tombstones. No one had thought to at least digitally erase the visible names on them, and suddenly we had a lot of people calling us saying that we had defamed their deceased family members – none of whom had died because of drinking and driving.

I can’t blame them for their outrage. It was a stupid mistake.

I was also on the receiving end of a change in editorial policy one day after I had written a column after the gay-marriage ban passed in Texas. We had been encouraged to write columns, and many of us wrote about national and world issues, in addition to local ones.

I had the temerity to defend the concept of gay marriage, and a few people canceled their subscriptions. That caused my boss to announce a ban on political columns about anything other than local issues.

I knew the writing was on the wall for my stint at Today Newspapers the day my boss announced that continued tough economic times meant that the company could no longer afford to pay its portion of our health insurance costs.

At that moment, I knew my days there were numbered.

I continually ran into my former colleagues while we covered the same events, and almost from the moment I left, I started hearing bad things. Checks were bouncing. People weren’t getting paid. Jobs were eliminated, and some longtime employees were let go or cut back to part time.

A joint agreement with the Lancaster Independent School District to restart the dormant Lancaster edition was a disaster from a public relations standpoint for the school district, but it must have worked on some level, because when Today’s last edition was published, circulation numbers revealed that Lancaster’s subscriber numbers topped those of the other cities.

In the end, separate editions for all four cities were combined into one, leaving only Grand Prairie as a standalone paper.

The always-evolving Best Southwest neighborsgo section can’t afford to be static in the wake of disappearing news outlets such as Today. You can help me prevent this by continuing to share your news -- in the form of stories, photos and blogs -- directly online at neighborsgo.com.

The closing of Today Newspapers is an extremely sad event for me, one that I struggle to put into words. The employees were my friends, and they still are. I learned a lot from them and am grateful for the time I got to spend with them.

Rest in peace, old friend.