I got a call today from an old colleague who took the hint last summer and departed The Baltimore Sun when I did — with the aid of a decent buyout.

“Still have any regrets about leaving?” he asked.

“If I did, I’m over it now,” I said. We both chuckled, but the humor was bitter.

The reason for his call was news of the latest purge at The Sun. More than 60 staffers bought it this time, including many of the paper’s most experienced editors — not the big salaries at the top, but hard workers who knew their jobs, knew their community, and knew how to cover it responsibly. My friends and colleagues.

Nor was this a buyout — it was out-the-door-Charlie, with extra security guards manning the entrances. A few of the surviving managers delivered the news with some grace, but two sports writers and a photographer learned they had no jobs when they got heave-ho calls in the pressbox at an Orioles game. Members of the copy desk learned about it when they showed up for work and couldn’t sign on to their computers. Dilbert in real life.

Sure, I know that The Sun’s parent Tribune Co. is in bankruptcy, but would it have cost the creditors a penny to show even a smidgen of class?

Or was it true that Tribune had to fire people before May 1 because that was the start of the vacation season, and they would have owed everyone another week’s pay? That will really bail the company out of a $13 billion hole.

Anyway, with the staff at less than half the size it was a few years ago — and shrinking every day — it’s hard to see anything more than a death spiral for The Sun — and other papers in the same fix. The less news you print, the less reason people have to read you — online or in hard copy.

My new boss at MedPage Today asked me where I thought newspapers were headed. I wish I knew. Specialized news and education sites like ours may thrive in the new order (and I have to say it feels good, for the first time in years, to be part of a business that’s growing, not shrinking). But for old fashioned, general circulation news organizations, the future looks bleak.

For the gory details about the latest goings-on at The Sun, I recommend The Real Muck, by my ever-feisty colleague David Michael Ettlin. For a frightening glimpse of Tribune’s plans to homogenize local newspapers from the tower in Chicago, visit Charles Apple’s blog.