The news that NASCAR Scene’s editorial staff was decimated by layoffs Tuesday was a sucker punch to the gut, a terrible blow to the fine and dedicated men and women who worked there, as well as to readers. They will be poorer for the loss of stock-car racing's best weekly, which apparently now will only exist online, not as a print publication.

For more than 25 years, Scene was to NASCAR what the Wall Street Journal was to business reporting or the Washington Post was to political coverage: Definitive and authoritative. If you heard a rumor, it wasn’t true until it appeared in print in Scene. Period.

At one point, Scene had paid circulation approaching 150,000 and was a cash cow for its owners, Street & Smith’s Sports Group. But the switch to first digital and then social media made a weekly print racing magazine as obsolete as a buggy whip, no matter how good the writing and photography.

I don’t pretend to be even remotely objective about the death of Scene. I was executive editor there for four years, during which time I busted my ass alongside some of the finest people I’ve ever had the pleasure to call friends and colleagues.

Like the folks here at SPEED, absolutely no one at Scene worked there to collect a paycheck. They were there because they were passionate about racing and loved being around NASCAR and they treated their bond of trust with readers with the respect and honor it demanded.

At times we worked insane hours and pushed ourselves to the breaking point, just like those who came before us and after us. Some of the memories are vivid and poignant – 18-hour days at Texas Motor Speedway when “weepers” and massive crashes caused chaos.

I stood in the darkroom with photo editor Phil Cavali sobbing soundlessly, tears rolling down our cheeks as we picked out the photos we would run to honor Adam Petty after his death in 2000. They had to be perfect, and of course Phil made sure they were.

When Earnhardt died at Daytona less than a year later, we put together a Herculean tribute edition to NASCAR’s greatest hero, me working from Daytona and Jeff Owens doing a masterful job of organizing things back at the office.

People got to witness history through our eyes, and we did our level best to make sure those eyes were alert and focused while we were on the job.

I got to write about Tony Stewart doing the Indy 500-Coke 600 double and Rick Hendrick’s battle with cancer and the feds. About Mark Martin racing on through the pain of his father’s death, and Jack Roush and Ray Evernham sparring during Tiregate. There were cheating scandals and great races, superb young talents barely old enough to shave racing against grizzled veterans in the twilights of their careers.

Once, a driver threatened to give me an ass whipping because we ran a picture of his wife giving Geoff Bodine the universal No. 1 signal at Bristol.

There were too many late flights and missed family opportunities, too many lonely nights in fleabag hotels in places like Dover, Del., and Anniston, Ala. There’s nothing quite like getting food poisoning at 4 a.m. when you’re 2,000 miles from home.

There were moments of great fun and levity, too. Often involving late nights and alcohol. We hung out at blues clubs from Daytona Beach to Phoenix, and the occasional gentleman’s clubs, too. I saw guys fall out of chairs in bars, a woman remove her prosthetic leg so a writer could autograph it, and overserved partiers stage diving on the hardwood floors at the Waldorf-Astoria at 3 a.m. And those are the stories I can repeat.

I met crazy race fans — including folks who named their son "3" — and, once, a young woman who worked three jobs: Bartender, lingerie model and sign language instructor for deaf high school students.

At Scene, we worked hard and we played hard and we always had each other’s backs. That’s how it goes on the road. You earn a spot on the team through your work, and you the earn respect and trust of your teammates through your relationships.

If you do your job right, you earn the trust of the readers and the people you report about, too.

I am deeply and profoundly saddened for all my friends at Scene who lost their jobs Tuesday. But they are all good people, talented and capable, and hopefully most of ‘em will land on their feet.

And as a news guy, I’m also saddened that a great publication is no more, that all the hours of sweat, the labors of love people put into it wasn’t enough to save it. And I am sorry for the readers, too, who won’t have Scene to read in print every week anymore.

So to everyone who ever worked at Scene or its companion publication, NASCAR Illustrated, tonight I will raise a glass to you and congratulate you on being a part of something that once was the best there was, but today sadly is no more.

Hold your heads high, folks. You all did work you can be proud of and left a legacy that will endure, even if the publication doesn’t.