As part of Roll Call’s 70th anniversary, we’ve asked several notable alumni to reflect on their time working for the paper. We’ll run these columns throughout the summer.

It was early November 2008, and I was sitting inside the Johnny Rockets at Union Station, agreeing to join the enemy.

Maybe “enemy” is a bit too strong, but at that point I had spent the better part of four years at The Hill newspaper in a daily foot race with the reporters at Roll Call. I’d wake up at 5:30 in the morning and open my computer to see if John McArdle or Jennifer Yachnin had scooped me on the Capitol campus beat. When I began to cover House Republicans, I was facing a whole team of seasoned reporters.

But now, Charlie Mitchell, the editor-in-chief, was sitting across from me, offering me a job. I was going to be one of them. This meant, in addition to joining the ranks of my former competition, I’d be part of a place where some of the reporters and editors I admired the most had once worked, and whose scoops had reverberated far beyond Capitol Hill.

Even so, I didn’t understand at the time just how much I would learn in three short years.

Because what Roll Call was during my tenure is something that’s increasingly rare in today’s news business. It was not only a training ground for young reporters, but also a place where someone could make and build a career.

My editor, Erin Billings, a relentless reporter in her own right, quickly became a mentor. As a result, I was challenged constantly and grew tremendously.

There was nothing worse than looking at my BlackBerry in the morning and seeing an email from Erin asking: “Do we have this?” Second on that list was simply “close?” around deadline (for the record, dear reader, I was almost never “close”).

I learned that a relatively small staff can dominate a news cycle, and collaboration is a force multiplier.

And, despite the long hours, cold hallways and vending-machine dinners, we had fun doing it (looking at you, Anna Palmer).

My most enduring takeaway was to appreciate the moments when you are part of a team that is firing on all cylinders. When you are in that place, it’s easy to forget how remarkable the feeling is and how quickly circumstances can shift. And, of course, they did. People took other jobs. Management turned over. The vibe was never the same.

But even as lives changed, some of us moved from D.C. and others left journalism, a bond has remained. Not just among many of the reporters and editors I worked with directly, but with everyone who worked there. For some reason, and I don’t pretend to understand why, Roll Call is more than just a great newspaper and a line on a resume. It’s just a special place.

(Jackie Kucinich worked at Roll Call from 2008 to 2011. She’s now the Washington bureau chief for the Boston Globe.)