I was fortunate to be among that first team of journalists to create a new paradigm for visuals at The Trib: a consistent form of storytelling that allowed for — no, encouraged — strong photography and presentation.

My time at The Trib began in 1987 when I was 30, just out of graduate school, and ended five years later when I went on to National Geographic magazine as a picture editor.

The sound of then-managing editor Jack McElroy's voice asking in the first meeting of the day — "What are we going to make people talk about tomorrow?" — still resounds.

That approach to a news meeting is starkly different from most you'll see in daily newspapers. The usual process is for a series of text editors to spout what their reporters are doing that day, with whatever appeared to be the strongest stories running on the next day's front page, with whatever photo worked best with that word story.

We were different. We wanted to set Albuquerque's agenda; we wanted readers to respond; we wanted to give them an experience and engage them, with all of our abilities at full throttle.

So day after day, this is what we did. And we succeeded. Regular folks — not just newspaper people — recognized what we were doing.

A friend and I were riding the hotel elevator with a bellboy at the Albuquerque Marriott, and we were talking about photography. The bellboy piped up: "You should look at The Tribune. They run some amazing pictures."

The papers of those days are mostly remembered for long-term projects that received much national attention. But I remember telling photographers early on that they couldn't begin projects until the daily paper's needs were met. So each of them had to put into motion their own ideas for the daily paper, ideas that also led to strong word stories.

Some project was always in the works, thanks to Tim Gallagher, the newspaper's editor at the time. But it's no great mystery as to why there was so much success.

In a creative endeavor, if you can say the body of work lived to its potential, you have succeeded. Yet it's a rare environment that allows potential to be reached — especially across disciplines.

That willingness to reach has made The Trib all the more rare.

Our band from those early years has largely disbanded, though scores of other Tribune photographers have since stepped up and carried on.

But no more.

The loss is not measurable.

Davis is the features picture editor at the Oregonian in Portland.