While Los Angeles readers will mostly have to just look elsewhere in the paper to find the news that used to appear in California, for those in Orange County this week marks truly the end of an era. Instead of a standalone "zoned" section that leaned heavily toward OC news and features, readers there will get the same news as in L.A. That means reporters in Orange County will have to squeeze their stories into the same tight space in the A section as the former California stories, those from National and Foreign, and the editorials. And from the get-go, there's no more room for longtime OC columnist Dana Parsons. He writes in tomorrow's paper:

My first instinct was to sneak out the back door and not say a word to you. Not even leave a note. Just sort of slink away and assume you'd figure things out on your own.

Isn't that just like a man?

Then it dawned on me that I owe you a lot more than that.

So, here's how the note begins:

This is my last column for the paper.

[skip]

The temptation in this final crack at you today is to go on and on, to recite my greatest hits and your most flowery e-mails and letters. Instead, I'm going to make this my shortest column ever.

After all this time, I think I know how you feel. I just wanted to make sure you knew how I felt about you, that your kindness and cleverness and resolve made me feel pretty good about the mass of humanity.

He also apologizes for the new sketch that the recent Times redesign-lite mandated run with his columns.