Losing the Seattle P-I would break my heart

Published 7:15 pm Friday, January 16, 2009

This is a strange column to write, but I have a confession to make.

For nearly 30 years I have kept this secret from all but my closest confidants. But now it’s time to come clean.

I love the P-I.

There. I’ve said it.

It started simply enough. Working in a variety of reporting and editing jobs at The Herald, I had to read both of the Seattle papers, the Times and the Post-Intelligencer, every day to see if we’d been scooped or to get ideas for things we might want to do ourselves.

After decades of doing that, I came to like the P-I better. The Times seemed to be better at the longer, more in-depth pieces. You know, the boring stuff.

But the P-I just seemed more fun, more scrappy and just more on top of breaking news in Seattle.

The P-I has become as much a part of my morning as my first cup of coffee. I love The Herald, too, but it’s OK to love more than one newspaper. It’s just not fashionable these days.

Liking it as I do, I was saddened by the news that the P-I is up for sale and will be shut down in 60 days if a buyer isn’t found. Many newspapers, especially those in metropolitan areas, are struggling these days. Most big cities have just one paper, not two. In a business sense, a two-newspaper town has become an unwanted luxury.

So the conventional wisdom is that the P-I will shut down or become something much different online.

I hate to hear about the passing of any newspaper. The idea that we might lose the P-I saddens me even though it is a business competitor. Maybe I’m just sappy, but I have always thought of newspapers as not just a product to be bought and sold, like laundry soap.

To me, newspapers are a living, breathing entity.

They’re a combination of the people who work there. And the right combination of people can produce something really good.

P-I cartoonist David Horsey is a good example of that.

His work has won two Pulitzer prizes, journalism’s most prestigious honor. And he earned both of them with hard work and wit.

Back in the early 1980s, when I covered the Legislature as The Herald’s politics writer, I got a chance to watch Horsey work. I always assumed that cartoonists sat around their offices scribbling and writing down a few verbal barbs and, voila, there was a cartoon.

But Horsey actually drove from Seattle to Olympia regularly to watch the lawmakers in action (or sometimes in inaction).

He came early and stayed late to understand their politics, their mannerisms and their favorite phrases, and then he lampooned them with something that was honest, accurate and usually tremendously funny.

Horsey is a funny and a fun guy, and you can see that in his work.

I’ve never met P-I sports columnist Art Thiel, but he also makes the paper something more special to me than just words on a page. More than once, he hammered the lying idiot who bought and then moved the Seattle SuperSonics. I couldn’t have said things better. I can’t imagine not getting to read what Art has to say about a major sports event.

There are many other people who have made the P-I special over the years, and not all of them are writers and columnists. Many people whose names you never see have made important contributions to the paper.

A couple of weeks ago, I was looking at some newspaper clippings from a job candidate who had been an intern reporter at the P-I and later worked at the Spokane newspaper. You would have expected his work while still in college to be of lower quality in comparison to what he did later. But his P-I stuff stood out.

Why was that, I asked?

He acknowledged that his editors at the P-I may have helped made his work a little better. That doesn’t surprise me.

It’s a little early to be writing about the P-I’s demise. But things don’t look good. So I thought I’d better just say it while I still have the chance.

I love the P-I.

Mike Benbow: 425-339-3459, benbow@heraldnet.com