(Photo/Alex Stonehill)
In October of 1980, marinating in joy and alcohol, I staggered down the cobbled streets of Pioneer Square right after I’d scored a job at the paper and sang softly to myself, “I’m in the PI.”
Only the PI would have hired me, an instinctive fantasist with no prior newspaper experience. I learned from the staff how to be one of them. Today, if somebody asked if there’s a journalist in the house, I’d feel comfortable raising my hand.
Following its March 17 demise, the PI continues online as a ghost of its unruly and hard-hitting self. A small team of real reporters still work there, but what they do is strangely not featured and even hard to find on the site, where cute puppies and hot chicks get clicks.
The demise of the paper is now a documentary short (It’s In The PI) being screened Friday night as part of the Seattle Film Festival. I heard about the film for the first time today from Facebook. I’d feel strange to be so outside the loop, but Curt Milton (former PI page designer) didn’t know. When the paper was a paper, he knew everything.
Brief clip from the brief film here, featuring Joel Connelly quoting Edward Abbey:
When the situation is hopeless, there’s nothing to worry about.
On a more positive note, there’s a community tribute to the PI on June 3 at Town Hall Seattle. Free admission. Both laid off PI people and the online-only PI people will show up to pretend everything’s peachy. That should be fun.
Of course we now know there was no repreive for the PI but I thought I’d repost the eulogy I’d written for that paper. I do this as a way of suggestion towards a possible fate of that magnificent globe.
Here it is-
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Eulogy for the PI
Is there no last minute reprieve? After getting this publication delivered for the past twenty four years, I’m saddened. I think I’ll hang in there for the last scoop. I wouldn’t think of abandoning a dying friend who was good enough to share my morning meals and who showed up at my door faithfully with the news day after day.
If the paper goes down then they ought to sink that globe in the middle of Puget Sound and let it sit alongside some ancient cedar snag.
Let it nestle amongst the bones and artifacts of those who have gone before.
Let it become sanctuary for octupus and sea life.
Place it upright.
Give it some final pride.
In our brave, and new, and disposable,(see “right to die”) world, it’s hard to imagine the ancients looking down, wondering towards our next move. If you believe in anything then you must believe that all that we do with our time on earth cannot be for naught. A newspaper isn’t just a paycheck for those who work there. There’s the soul of human thought contained within those pages.
So please, for the sake of the Emmett Watson’s, and the Ivar Haglund’s, and the Denny’s, and the Boren’s, and the Bullitt’s and old Jim Svien, and for all those fish that were cleaned and wrapped within the PI’s pages, let’s have the decency to give our paper a little bit of viking honor.
Lets set that globe gently down beneath the waves of our beautiful Puget Sound and, oh yes, please be kind enough to have that golden raptor face us and not look away.
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