Let Us Pause

Dan Barry: BRISTOL, Conn.

In an office so quiet as to be disruptive, a man sits amid the detritus of his chosen career. The collected reports of the Connecticut Freedom of Information Commission, Volume One. A letter seeking publicity for an event sponsored by the Litchfield County chapter of Hadassah. Stacks of newspapers, days, weeks, months old.

Heavyset, world-weary, this is William Sarno, 63, editor of an ancient and endangered newspaper called The Bristol Press. His glorified cubicle looks out upon a dimly lighted newsroom whose collection of vacated desks gives the sense that nearly the entire staff left one day to cover a big story and never came back.