Steve Smith and Carla Savalli are my latest heroes.

They both resigned from the newspaper when the recent layoffs were announced. They did this for different reasons and without new employment. They acted on their own ethical principles. In both cases, this was not done lightly and it took guts.

As a man who loves newspapers in general and The Spokesman-Review in particular, it pained Smith greatly to be forced into dismissing people who also love news.

“This is the right thing to do,” Smith said afterward. “I have to have pride in my work and that will not be possible given the latest round of downsizing. I have no idea what I will do next.”

Savalli’s reasons were different, but it also gave her great pain to leave a newspaper she loves. She decided that it is time to move her life into another direction – what happened on Oct. 1 was just a push in that direction.

“I’m leaving because it seems like the right time to make a change,” she said. “I love the S-R and am deeply saddened by the cuts, but this is a personal decision. I know the journalists who remain will continue to give their all to our readers because that is what we do.”

As someone who has lived through personnel cuts, I keenly understand how difficult it is for the newsroom survivors. Not only must they do more work with fewer people, but I’m sure some of them have “survivor’s guilt,” in which they cannot understand why other people lost their jobs and they are still working.

Yet the news goes on, and these reporters and editors continue to do their work with the same passion that brought them here in the first place.

Of course, there is a question to be begged: Exactly why were these cuts necessary? Jim Kershner, president of the Spokane Editorial Society, which represents the editorial department, said the layoff numbers – 27 in news – were “brutal,” and questioned the need for them in the Oct. 2 story by Jim Camden. Kershner said there is a question here because, “I have never heard anybody claim we are actually losing money.”

Spokesman-Review publisher W. Stacey Cowles said there is a general decline in revenues industrywide and this is a form of pre-emptive strike.

“On average the industry’s revenues are 15 percent below last year’s,” Cowles said. “While we have yet to see this extreme, we anticipate that the wave will hit us. It’s fair to say the cuts are an attempt to address both declines in revenue and profit.”

Another troubling issue is the question of continued quality in the newspaper. The reporters and editors who stay will continue to do their best, simply because that is what they do.

But the paper will continue to use writers who may not be journalists to cover local areas. Where this is disquieting is that these writers are less expensive for the paper to employ on a part-time basis. With fewer journalists on staff to monitor and edit, it is possible that more errors of fact and ethics will creep into the paper’s columns; and some events may not have depth of coverage.

Cowles said the paper is planning on continuing local coverage.

“ ‘Local news is our franchise’ is our mantra and that isn’t about to change,” he said. “We are going to have to make more frugal decisions about what gets covered in depth and still maintain a high story count. We are going to move increasingly to a hybrid model where readers get a preview in the newspaper, but may have to look increasingly to the Web for coverage depth and nonlocal news – which of course many are already doing! We’re interested in engaging our readership even more closely in a conversation about what matters and what’s news. We hope to continue our movement toward using e-mail, blogs and social networking software to do that quickly and efficiently.

“With respect to the quality of outside sources for news from out of the region, our plan is to continue to rely on news organizations we trust who share our commitment to delivering news in a timely, accurate and fair fashion. These include respected national and international wire services and syndicates as well as regional newspapers.”

Everyone’s crystal ball is cloudy; it is impossible to tell what lies ahead. What I do know is two very passionate people have now left The Spokesman-Review. Love them or hate them, they gave this paper all they could. To step aside for ethical reasons is a gut-wrenching decision that is never made without great and careful consideration, a thought process that matches the fervor of their beliefs.

To do it so publicly, at least in my book, makes them ethical heroes.