I’ve been thinking about what I meant when I told Andy Bromage of the New Haven Advocate that I didn’t know if the new regime at Courant/Fox61 could succeed with “half-broken soldiers.”

I was trying to say that there are a lot of people at the Courant whose spirits and loyalty to the company have been damaged by events, making it hard for them to put their heart and soul into their work.

I should expand on that, however. The people I worked with at The Courant were, for the most part, highly talented and consummate professionals. They do their work to the highest standards because of it. They do it, I’m sure, for its own sake and their own, even if not for the new bosses (or old ones) who were the instruments of change.

For sure, with fewer of them, they are able to do less collectively. For sure, there is resentment among them for what has been done to their beloved newspaper. There is fear, too, for their jobs. There is a level of mistrust that didn’t exist before.

But it would be a mistake for the good reporters and editors of the Courant to pursue the future any less vigorously because of it. It would be a mistake to let a bunch of boobs be the only drivers of change in the business.

The new owners are correct when they say that change is inevitable and necessary. The news professionals I know at the Courant will need to show the newbies how to make that change without losing the fundamental value of what they do. They will need to be agents of positive change, not the demise of the industry.