By Marjon Rostami

June 30 was my one-year anniversary at The Arizona Republic.

I came to the paper on a Pulliam Fellowship just as the company was offering buyouts, and I felt guilty when I was hired.

A few months later, I was there for the layoffs.

A couple months after that, I witnessed two quarters’ worth of furloughs.

Now, by the end of the day on which I’m writing this piece, more layoffs will become final.

As I anxiously wait — phones charged — my mind wanders to a couple of springs ago, when I was writing cover letters in my sleep, perfecting my clip package, rehearsing possible interview questions and putting school, graduation, friends on the back burner while my newspaper job-search was my first priority.

So I got a job and I’ve lasted a year so far. I’m grateful and thankful to have a job in this economy and to be working in the field of my passion. But as the waves of furloughs and layoffs come, it is harder to keep a positive attitude about the industry.

A standard interview question I faced went more or less like this: How do you feel about the state of industry? Why would you want to get into an arguably dying industry?

My standard, painfully honest (at the time) answer went like this: I’m excited to enter the newspaper industry armed with the multimedia skills that will enable me to adapt to the changing, not dying, industry. As news moves online, it’s important to understand the needs of the news consumer to want information immediately as it happens and in different modes. The shift toward online is an exciting challenge for newspaper reporters to cater to a changing audience. As long as there are stories to tell, there will be a need for the storytellers. As long as there are news consumers, there will be a need for news-gatherers — gatherers from an ethical, trusted news source. The opportunities for newspaper reporters are expanding to different mediums.

Now, a year later, I’m immersed in the changing environment. Only, I’m having trouble naming the phenomenon of newspapers shutting down, moving to online only or laying off the employees whose minds are fountains of undiluted institutional knowledge.

Is that changing, or could that be dying?

Marjon Rostami is a reporter for The Arizona Republic in Phoenix. A journalism graduate of the University of Texas-Austin, Rostami was a senior fellow in UT’s College of Communication and a member of Kappa Tau Alpha, a national journalism honor society. She spent six weeks traveling in China and writing for ChinaOnTheBrink.com in 2008.