Age: 57
Home town: Boston, Mass.
Residence: Peoria (Bradley area)
Job: Business reporter
Years at the paper: 8 1/2

Best thing about my job: The variety. You're always learning something. You always have a chance to do something new.

Worst thing about my job: Most recently, saying goodbye to a lot of good people who worked for so many years at this paper.

Family: Wife, Kris and four children -- Maya, Adam, Mallory and Alex.

What got me into newspapers: I'm from the pre-Internet era when newspapers were where it was at. I can recall the so-called underground press when papers sprung up all over the place, offering a colorful respite from the establishment line. Power to the people!

My responsibility to you: To listen, to be honest and to be interesting.

Age: 25
Hometown: St. Charles, IL
Residence: Peoria
Job: Copy editor/designer -- I proofread, write headlines and then combine stories, photos and graphics into a (hopefully) cohesive whole that forms part of the newspaper you pick up each morning.
Number of years at the paper: 2 years, plus an internship that followed graduation from Bradley University

Best things about my job:
1. Catching a mistake and correcting it before you, the reader, has a chance to see it.
2. Coming up with a clever headline or pleasing design that catches your eye and draws you into a story.
3. Seeing the finished product, or hearing someone say "...I saw in the Journal Star that ..."

Worst thing about my job: It's hard to keep a normal life -- watch TV, meet friends for lunch, etc. -- when it's a nine-to-five, Monday-through-Friday world and we put together the newspaper between 3 p.m. and 1 a.m.

Family: Single. One college-aged brother in Iowa and my parents in St. Charles.

What got me into the newspaper business: I've always been interested in current events, from elementary school on through today, and was fortunate enough to have parents who enjoyed vigorous dinner-table discussions/debates and teachers who nurtured my love of the printed word. I've also always loved history, and newspapers are often called the first draft of history. Put that together with being the editor of my high school and college papers, a healthy streak of wanting to poke around, listen and find out the full story -- not just what people want me to know -- and you have the makings of a journalist.

My responsibility to you as a copy editor: Accuracy, fairness and interest. Copy editors are one of the last lines of defense, often the last people to really see a story before it's on your doorstep. If something's misspelled, if two facts conflict, if numbers don't add up right, it's our job to scratch our heads and ask why before you're doing the same thing. It's our job to write headlines that capture the story fairly, not put in a slant to serve our own purposes. And it's our job to put everything together in an interesting enough way that you actually stop to read it, not throw the paper straight into the recycling bin or cancel your subscription.

Age: 25
Hometown: Peoria, Ill.(graduate of Woodruff High School and Bradley University)
Residence: Peoria
Job: Copy editor and page designer. I edit stories, write headlines and combine stories, photos and graphics to create newspaper pages.
Years at the paper: 2 1/2 at current job. I was also an intern and worked part time in the sports department during college.

Best thing about my job: The best thing about the job is the sense of accomplishment I get when I see the completed newspaper, which I worked on for hours the night before, in people's hands or on newsstands the next day. It's gratifying to hear people discussing the news and looking at the pages I designed.

Worst thing about my job: The irregular hours. I work at night, usually until 11 p.m. or midnight.

Family: Unmarried. My mother and younger sister also live in Peoria.

What got me into the newspaper business: I grew up in Peoria and remember my parents getting both the morning and afternoon editions of the Journal Star, which I would thumb through even as a child. I have always loved both reading and writing, so journalism seemed a logical choice for a career field. I wrote for my high school and college newspapers and later was an intern at the Journal Star, which was challenging and addictive. The newsroom hums with noise and activity, and each day brings something new, which you don't find in every job.

My responsibility to you: As a Peoria native, I feel a strong connection to the community, its struggles and successes. Each day, the newspaper helps to inform thousands of area residents about ideas and events that affect their lives. My role is to help choose and shape the stories that land on your doorstep each morning. I always try to keep in mind my main goal, which is to create a product that informs and entertains the readers of central Illinois.

Age: 27
Hometown: Springfield, IL
Residence: Peoria
Job: Regional Reporter
Number of years at the paper: Seven

Best thing about my job: My general assignment duties throw me into different issues every day, which works well with a short attention span. Those duties also throw me out of the office -- a necessity for a guy who would prefer torture to a desk job.

Worst thing about my job: "Man on the Street." I successfully avoided asking random people what they thought about the issue du jour for a few years until the other day. Then I remembered why the feature would more aptly be titled "Creep on the Street," based on the majority of reactions I receive.

Family: A daughter, Felicity, who will turn 3 in April.

What got me into the newspaper business: Poetry. I'd try to explain, but that would involve deciphering my logic while I was a civil- environmental engineering major in college.

My responsibility to you as a reporter: Tell the truth the best way I can.

Age: 40
Hometown: Buffalo, N.Y.
Residence: Elmwood
Job: Outdoors writer
Years at the paper: Nine duck seasons. I started in 1998.

Best thing about my job: The people I meet while hunting, fishing, hiking and just generally enjoying the outdoors. Laughing is something I love to do and it's easy when you get to spend time with folks like Chef Todd, Roger Cox or the many other characters of the outdoors world.

Worst thing about my job: Have not yet discovered this. But the current uncertainty about our future at the Journal Star is very unsettling. I would hate to have to leave a job I love. And I don't even want to think about uprooting my family.

Family: Wife Monica and two sons, Henry, 5, and Victor, 4.

What got me into newspapers: I delivered The Buffalo News from the time I was 11 all the way through high school. In high school my brother and I had a morning and afternoon route at Sisters of Charity Hospital. We had a special dispensation from our principal that let us be late to home room every day.

If that didn't hook me, what did the trick was a summer spent as an intern in the Buffalo News sports department. One assignment stands out in my mind: covering the Prince of Wales Stakes at gorgeous Fort Erie Race Track in Canada. During the course of the assignment I was fed like a king. There were drinks of all varieties within easy reach of my seat in the press box. Plus, there were no lines at the betting window. And the guy next to me, Robert Summers, had good tips on each race. I remember winning money, eating well and getting paid. Plus, the next day I wrote a decent story about a jockey named Jocko Lauzon who rode despite a cracked rib.

My responsibility to you: To tell you when fish are biting, when ducks are migrating and when ice is forming. To find interesting outdoors folks and tell their stories. To report on new laws that impact outdoors enthusiasts. To explore grasslands, forests, lakes, creeks and rivers that might interest outdoors enthusiasts. To tell stories for those readers who can't get out as often as they'd like but want to recall the memories being outdoors produces.

Age: 40
Residence: Granville (graduate of Putnam County High School, Granville; Illinois Valley Community College, Oglesby; and Southern Illinois University, Carbondale).
Job: Assistant news editor. I also edit stories and write headlines as part of the design of newspaper pages.
Best thing about my job: I play a part in the selection of national and world news and the presentation of the local news that is important to the newspaper's readers.
Years at the paper: 6 years

Worst thing about my job: When I first came to the Journal Star, the copy desk editors all shared desks, computers and telephones, with the predictable results in the cold and flu season. (Happily, the work arrangement has been improved.)

Family: I have been married to my wife, Paula, since 1992. We have three children, a daughter, Carolyn, age 7, and two sons, Preston, 3, and Jonathan, 7 months.

What got me into the newspaper business: As a freshman in high school I was a freelance correspondent, reporting mostly on sports, for the Putnam County Record in Granville and the News-Tribune in LaSalle. At the time, my father was basketball and track coach and my mother worked for a children's magazine publisher, so you can say the fruit didn't fall far from the tree.

Since then, my journalism career has taken me to newspapers in Missouri, Texas, Georgia and South Carolina. However, the opportunity to return to central Illinois, live in my hometown, and work for the Journal Star was irresistible.

My responsibility to you as an editor: The best journalists are, at heart, storytellers. As an editor, that means presenting a story in words and pictures that is as compelling, engaging, informative and entertaining as I can possibly make it. When the reader relates to the story in some fashion, perhaps by empathizing with the subject or by being enriched by the material, then I've met that obligation.