Those of us who began as print journalists in the 1950s belong to what was probably the luckiest generation in the business – a rich and rewarding half century with a strong and confident press that knew it was an indispensable part of American democracy. But this is another era, and for me, after 55 years in the business – 31 of them associated with this newspaper – it's time to pitch it in. This is my last regular column for The Sacramento Bee.

At the El Paso Herald-Post, where I started, we still had a classic "Front Page" newsroom – reporters with bottles of bourbon in the bottom drawer; a noisy, smoky city room and a couple of cranky desk men who claimed to have covered the assassination of Pancho Villa in 1923, and maybe did. This was the era of galley shears, paste pots and "etaoin shrdlu," an occasional typo produced by the letters on the first two vertical banks on the keyboard of a Linotype machine. The editor's name was Ed Pooley, known familiarly around town as "Cess" Pooley. My first big story was covering the trial of the mayor's libel suit against my own paper.

Inevitably during those 55-plus years there were encounters with some of the more notable figures of recent history, as well as the rush of great stories associated with them: the ongoing struggle for decent urban schools and for civil rights in the South; the street battles over the Vietnam War; the rise and fall of the counterculture; the Chicago Democratic Convention in 1968 and the "police riot" that came with it.

Looking back, it was like covering history: the Pentagon Papers case, the trial of Daniel Ellsberg in Los Angeles in 1972-73 and the unraveling of Watergate with which it became linked. The last two, lest we forget, closely connected to a courageous, enterprising press. Those of us who were not on Richard Nixon's enemies list envied those who were.

There was also the chance to work with outstanding editors, writers and reporters – Willie Morris at Harper's, Carey McWilliams at the Nation, John Ciardi at Saturday Review, David Halberstam, Tony Lukas, all now gone – and to have the work of great journalists and essayists as models.

Closer to home, there was the privilege of working with Frank McCulloch, managing editor of The Bee, and reporter and editor for other news organizations, who spent much more time shaping good stories than he did on reader surveys; John Jacobs, The Bee's political columnist, who knew that writing about politics was only meaningful if it was linked to its consequences for policy, and Bee editor C.K. McClatchy, who tried to teach all who worked for him that integrity and credibility were the indispensable assets of any news organization.

It was under McClatchy, sometimes with a little nudging, that his newspapers grew out of their historic misogyny, hiring women for senior positions, coming to grips with its historic racism, apologizing for his papers' support of the internment of Japanese Americans in World War II. Thirty years ago, it would have been unthinkable to have a woman editor as The Bee has now.

My nearly 40 years in California, 19 as the editor of the editorial pages of The Sacramento Bee, the last dozen as a columnist, brought great colleagues and friends, lively exchanges with readers and some memorable characters – Willie Brown, whose meetings with journalists were the best political seminars in town, and usually the funniest; Clark Kerr, creator and biographer of the multiversity; Jerry Brown, California's leading career anti-politician; Howard Jarvis, curmudgeon par excellence – plus a large cast of bores, miscreants and mediocrities.

Sadly, however, the big story of those years was retrenchment. This was the age of Proposition 13 and other tax limitations, of ballot-box budgeting, of term limits and autopilot criminal sentencing laws, of borrow-and-fudge fiscal policies, of initiatives throwing illegal immigrants out of the public schools, and of eroding optimism and a growing unwillingness to pay for public goods. There can't be many serious Californians who would claim that California is better for it.

Reach Peter Schrag at P.O. Box 15779, Sacramento, CA 95852-0779