In a new article on paidContent.org,
former Seattle Post-Intelligencer reporter Joseph Tartakoff remembers the uncertainty of the days of the newspaper and the tension that built as some employees were asked to stay on for the Web-only operation.
Tartakoff describes the empty boxes, recycling containers and shredding bins that started arriving in the
Seattle Post-Intelligencer newsroom on March 10.
An all-staff picture had been taken, news budgets were nearly bare and a final, commemorative issue was about to go to press.
Sixty days had passed since
Hearst Communications announced that the paper would close if it could not find a buyer. Days later, there was still no word whether the 146-year-old paper would cease publication. There was, however, an overwhelming sense that the paper would not fare well:
"The newsroom collectively screamed -- via a chain of famous quotes with not too subtle undertones that staffers e-mailed out to the all staff list. (Samples: 'I wear black on the outside 'cause black is how I feel on the inside' -- Morrissey; 'Nothing so focuses a man's attention as the prospect of being hanged" -- Samuel Johnson.) We designated a dog as the employee of the month. Still no word."
Tartakoff, who reported on Microsoft for the P-I and wasn't among the 20 staffers chosen to stay on for the online-only version, suggests the selection process for that operation may have delayed the paper's ultimate demise.
While the Post-Intelligencer publisher declared in shuttering the paper that "the bloodline" of the P-I would live on through its Web site, Tartakoff writes that the operation would merely be "a skeleton of its former self."
Many of those who weren't chosen to stay, he said, "celebrated" with drinks. Saying goodbye to his job, he packed an empty box.
