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Buyouts and layoffs at The Indianapolis Star beg questions about what the city would look like without it.

When Prohibition ended, the boozy, bawdy days of the Indianapolis Press Club began. Patrons favored a martini “so potent that on the third sip” their tongues would be “paralyzed,” according to one account.

The Star has more local stuff than it once did, I’ll grant you that, and much of it is good. Sometimes, though, you must get desperate to fill space, as with the piece you ran about a deer beaten on the head with a hammer on I-70.

“Our leverage is a moral argument,” says King. “It’s about money being siphoned from an important local institution.” Although the Guild has never gone on strike, King planned to go into negotiations with every available option in his briefcase.