It seems a bit ludicrous now, given the carnage in print journalism, how important “beating” the local opposition was for us.

When I wrote a long blog entry, in 2008, I declared an end to what was nearly a 100 Years War between two suburban newspapers in the Inland Empire of Southern California.

I worked 31 years for one of those newspapers, and being better and faster than the other guys was something everyone in the newsroom cared about.

First, let’s link to the post of May 19, 2008, in which I declared the war over — with us at The San Bernardino Sun, being defeated by our arch-rivals at The Riverside Press-Enterprise.

And how a decade after that, it appears all the sturm und drang wasn’t victory or defeat, it was just another step in the implosion of print.

For reminding us of that, I give thanks to a reader who has the perspective of another decade-plus, and both newspapers are pretty much a smoking ruin.

Let’s have a look at the email from the person who chose to give his/her name as Belo Joe.

The email:

This article seemed on-point at the time, but history works in funny ways. Years after this post was written, Belo shed its unprofitable Riverside asset, setting off a chain of events that saw The Press-Enterprise dragged kicking and screaming into the same MediaNews/Digital First blob it thought it had defeated in San Bernardino. Today’s Press-Enterprise is little more than a rump edition of the San Bernardino Sun mixed with the Orange County Register, with little local reporting. Who’s laughing now?

History is always being rewritten, usually by the winners, but in this case there are not any.

The effort and striving at the Riverside newspaper to dominate and make nearly irrelevant their ancient rivals … that looked like a coup, in 2008.

Eleven-plus years later, nobody won, except maybe for the hedge-fund managers and a handful of executives at the head of the table — the people who made money over the diminishing of newspapers and monetizing them.

Sometimes it takes a little time to figure out who really won a war — newspaper or otherwise.