After 1,250 Columns, It's Time to Shift Gears

But this work breeds humility and frustration, too: No matter how many times I wrote about the folly of zero-tolerance policies, bureaucrats held dear to rules that treat kids like crooks and punish them as we never would adults. Reporters like to think that merely shining light on a problem will lead good people to solve it. Sometimes that's right, but often it's not: I wrote over and over about how to move homeless people into housing at relatively low cost, yet many readers found my energy misplaced, preferring to rely on the old canard about the homeless being on the street because they want to be.

And readers consistently told me that I was dead wrong about privacy issues, even when it was clear (to me, anyway) that rules supposedly designed to protect people were instead preventing the public from learning about wrongdoing (this comes up especially on mental health and crime issues, such as after the Virginia Tech shootings).

This gig was always huge fun. I staged stunts: Amid the security hysteria after 9/11, I walked along downtown sidewalks wearing a gas mask and crash helmet to see how people would react (to my joy, most got the joke). I took the Virginia and Maryland standardized tests that are inflicted on eighth-graders (I'm still lousy at math). I watched 24 hours of the D.C. government's self-promoting cable TV channels (I might have been the first customer to call the cable company requesting an outage).

In the column and on the Raw Fisher blog, which started in 2007, I have learned how deeply many of us crave community. The more atomized our lives become, the more we yearn to be part of something larger. Yet we also live in a time of great skepticism about the motivations of others. "Leave me alone" does constant battle with "hold me tight."

The daily newspaper, like TV news anchors and radio DJs, was for many years a regular visitor in most homes. Newspaper columns were an invitation to a relationship with a reporter who would take you to places and introduce you to people you might not know firsthand but were part of the place you called home.

That much hasn't changed: Readers taught me early on that while editors worried about whether we were writing about each locality in the Washington region, what mattered was the people and the stories. Even those who live miles away and take pride in never setting foot in the District would clamor for more on the city, because it is the central depot of our collective awareness. People want to talk about the great characters whose antics, agonies and achievements we all know, whether that be Marion Barry appalling us, Dan Snyder disappointing us or President Obama stirring us.

There are a million stories in the naked city, someone once said, and I told 1,250 of them here, and 1,200 more on the blog. I heard from readers 250,000 times, and I tried to respond to all of them. I could stay on this road for years to come, I love it so. But this path feels worn and familiar, and the challenge now is to hack out a new one.

Newspapers are in a fight to survive, desperately searching for new ways to reflect the world to an audience that is less trusting, more distracted and diffuse. For many people, digital connections seem to trump geography as the central definition of home. But those electronic ties don't fulfill all our needs. Where we live still matters. Starting next month, I'll be putting together a group of writers whose job it will be to tell the truths of the Washington area in compelling and essential ways, combining traditional storytelling with new forms that involve and engage the people who live here.

The ideas are the same ones that drove this column: to figure out what connects us -- even when that something is paradoxically the very thing that divides us. To introduce readers to the characters whose stories tell us something about ourselves.

I'm grateful to the many who have come along on this ride, who have argued with me, fed me tips and steered me right. Thanks to all who shared their stories and even to those who splattered venom all over my e-mail queue. I'm off to expand my collection of funhouse mirrors and point them somewhere new.

Join me at noon Thursday for a farewell edition of "Potomac Confidential" at http://www.washingtonpost.com/discussions.