First they ripped out my heart by discarding so many of my friends as useless relics as the BJ newsroom went from 250 to 34 people.

Now they are stomping on my heart by moving the BJ to a rubber shop by September to November, depending on how long it takes to prepare it for a daily newspaper office on the seventh floor.

The BJ is moving to the AES Building, named for the Advanced Elastomer Systems company that fled from Akron in 2015.

The structure at 388 South Main Street began in 1925 as Goodrich Building 41.

Charles S. Montague aka Chasm capsulized all our feelings best with this email to me:

“Well, it seems a tradition I started at BJ is ending.

“On the copy desk, Kathy Fraze would say
Where are we (meaning copy flow — making deadline).

“Smartypants me would reply, ‘44 East Exchange Street.’

“Somehow, 388 South Main Street or whatever the new address is doesn’t sound the same.”

The move also means I no longer can refer to the BJ location as Ol’ Blue Walls, the color of the paint that some genius decided to roll onto the walls and hallways of every floor of the 44 E. Exchange Street building decades ago.

Except in nostalgic remembrances.

Canada-based Black Press Ltd., the Beacon Journal’s previous owner, is asking $3 million for the Exchange Street building, which was built in 1929 and occupied in 1930 by the Akron Times-Press until it was sold in 1938 to the Beacon Journal.

The BJ’s news, advertising and administrative operations will move into the AES building and share the 7^th floor as a satellite office for Beacon Journal news partner News 5 Cleveland.

Circulation/subscriber services have relocated to offices in another GateHouse property, the Record-Courier in Kent.

John S. Knight, the best owner I worked for during my 43-year newspaper career, built his father’s debt-ridden newspaper into the finest media group in America. From Akron to Miami and elsewhere, Knight became a symbol for newspaper quality.

But the Internet came along and decimated Knight-Ridder, along with the rest of America’s newspapers. Democracy is poorer for it because there are so few watchdogs left to keep politicians and corrupt businesses from raiding the henhouse.