Long-service award. The very phrase sounds quaint and vaguely fusty, like mothballs. It prompts images of forelock-tugging clerks and crusty railwaymen with gold watch chains draped across their barrel chests. So it was with some trepidation, as they say, that I took a break from The Herald scriptorium yesterday for a brief ceremony to mark the 30th anniversary of joining the paper. Anniversaries prompt reflection.

It certainly doesn't feel like three decades since I nervously pitched up at the office in Mitchell Street (now The Lighthouse) and, finding the front door closed, had to rely on the kindness of a cleaner to show me the staff entrance up a side lane. "Good luck, hen," she yelled cheerily as she waved me off to the newsroom, and it felt like a good omen. It was New Year 1978, and, as apparently the most sober person in the office, I was immediately dispatched to write that day's splash, about a fatal accident on London Road. This feat was achieved only by dint of employing the services of the photographer as an interpreter because Bridgeton Scots sounded like a foreign tongue to me then.

Yet, if that day remains fresh in the memory, it is hard to exaggerate the social changes that have intervened. As our lifespans have stretched, the longevity of our relationships seems to be shrinking. So while the sales of 90th and even 100th birthday cards increase exponentially, those to mark diamond weddings will soon start gathering dust, as the number of couples achieving six decades of official togetherness tails off in the wake of later coupling, divorce, single-parenting and the era of informal shacking up. A parallel revolution has transformed our working lives, driven by downsizing, short contracts and itchy feet. Will long-service awards go the same way as diamond anniversaries - and does it matter if they do?

From the employer's point of view, the answer lies, or ought to lie, in a blend of youth and experience. Yet the average person embarking on a career in journalism today expects to stay in one job for just five years. My colleagues seem more restless than I was, constantly moving in and out of different publications and different careers, or going off to travel or study. It's easy to put a negative construct on this. The longest-serving employees in any organisation can be heard muttering: "Things ain't what they used to be."

But if I mourn the dog-eared contacts books and breadth of knowledge of some of my former colleagues, I enjoy the energy and breadth of ambition of my new ones. And for them, though too many work more hours than is good for them, there's a much greater awareness of the need for home/life/work balance.

This has much to do with women. In 1977, on the Evening Times, and when I joined The Herald the following year, I was the only woman in the newsroom. The then Herald news editor had a theory that it was handy to have one woman on the rota but two or more would fight. Really. You can imagine what negotiating maternity leave was like in this cultural climate. Progress has been slow and piecemeal, but today women account for about half the news staff. That's fairly typical of the industry. Yet with one shortlived exception, no woman has ever edited a Scottish daily newspaper, prompting talk of sticky floors and glass ceilings.

There is certainly a serious issue here but for some of us it is an irrelevance because we define success in different terms. I'm not alone. The "thirtysomething female lifestyle survey" published today by Red magazine has two astonishing statistics: just 1% of those questioned said work was the most important thing in their lives and only 5% said they would choose to work full-time after having children.

Nearly two-thirds of those in full-time work say they would work fewer hours, given half a chance. Calling them "the Nigella Generation" may be pitching it a bit far but today's women are spending so much of their income on their homes and mortgages, we can't blame them for wanting more downtime to enjoy them. The current preoccupation with the quality of parenting is also a factor. As half of The Herald's first (and very hard-fought for) jobshare, I salute them.

Effectively, I put my career on the back burner for nearly two decades, which is pretty drastic, admittedly. Unsurprisingly, I will never become an editor but, as American senator Paul Tsongas said on retiring early: "When I'm on my death bed, I doubt if I'll wish I spent more time in the office."

The other quite astonishing change in the industry as a whole is the way it has tackled alcoholism. Three decades ago, it was the elephant in the room. Resisting your colleagues' attempts to drink you under the table (or worse) was a given. So was covering for them when they overdid it. "Elevenses" did not necessarily involve coffee and biscuits, and boozy lunches were the norm. Few journalists today are pillars of the Temperance Society but they keep their drinking until after work.

Am I nostalgic for anything? Yes. There were some turbulent times in newspapers in the 1970s and 1980s but we never doubted the centrality of our place in things. Then along came 24-hour rolling news and the internet, and people seemed to get busier. One response to this information overload from a nation in a hurry has been a tendency to simplify and trivialise news. Serious journalists depress themselves by scanning the BBC online's "most read" stories. Yesterday they were a Ryanair advertisement row, Madonna's wealth and a ship on stilts respectively. Last week Jeremy Paxman's underwear edged out the crises in Kenya and Pakistan. We must not allow ourselves to be seduced by this. Every newspaper needs a mix of serious and light journalism, but in these uncertain times we must stick to our core function: delivering and illuminating the news. In a world too often reduced to black and white, quality newspapers must provide the shades of grey.

This isn't easy, not only because of perpetually constrained budgets, but also because of a shift in society away from intelligent debate towards a brand of poisonous unfettered individualism, characterised by the "me" generation. Road-rage incidents and boorish behaviour on public transport are paralleled by a tendency to rant rather than listen. The quality press is, interestingly, poised between the old etiquette and the new culture of contempt that risks poisoning our public spaces. I plead innocent to a charge of false nostalgia for the smoke-filled, alcohol-soaked, neanderthal newsrooms of yesteryear but we cannot put too high a price on the notion of listening to arguments and agreeing to differ.