Recently, I was thinking over some of the harshest criticisms I’ve received in my career, and how I’m thankful for them now.

I decided to have some fun with this idea, so I pinged some journalist friends with this challenge: “I want you guys to try to remember things that editors have said to you, that shaped you, and which weren’t very nice.”

So, here is what my friends and I came up with. I’ve changed every female name to “Jennifer” and “Lauren,” every male name to “Bob.” My friends were more comfortable sharing this way, particularly because some of them are now at the top of their fields.

I’ve also obscured the names of the publications.

I hope they give you a good laugh. And if you happen to be new to this field or any other, know that the best professionals got that way in part thanks to tough love.

Please share yours!

—-

“Hey Jennifer, over the weekend, why don’t you read the New York Times and learn how to fucking write.”

—-

“What do you do? Be a fucking reporter, that’s what.” — Editor, after I called up and complained that nothing interesting happened at a Chicago city council housing committee meeting.

—-

The editor walks over and slaps a draft printout of my “tech bits” write-up on my desk.

“You read that first sentence and tell me if it makes you want to read the rest of the story.”

I read my lede. It didn’t.

As he walked away, he said, “Don’t be boring.”

—-

“He hung up on you? Go to his door so he can slam the door in your face instead.” –Editor

—-

“Jennifer, stop bothering Lauren, she’s on deadline. LAUREN WHERE’S YOUR STORY!?” -Editor

—-

“Bob, stop checking your email and get to work.” –Editor

—-

“Sirens in The Loop.” –Editor.  This was the extent of the conversation. I was expected to find out why.

—-

“Call them back. I don’t care if it’s 2 in the morning. Let it ring three times, and if they don’t answer, hang up.” –Editor

—-

“Wanna have a one-arm push-up contest?” –Editor, during an overnight shift. (He did 10, no problem. I did one.)

—-

“There’s no news in the newsroom! Why are there so many fucking reporters in here? Get the fuck out and find what people will care about tomorrow.” — Editor to a room full of reporters on a day with a pretty empty story budget. We all left.  We all found something decent.

—-

“Did you write this lede before or after you went to the meeting? Because it sure as fuck doesn’t tell me anything new.” -Editor

—-

Editor: “I didn’t get past the third word. Too boring. Do it over.”
Me: “The whole story?”
Editor: “If you stuck your best stuff up top, I sure as hell wasn’t going to read any more. Just start a whole new file. I don’t even want to read the filename again.”

—-

Editor: ”I read your story about the sportscaster.”
Me: “And?”
Editor: “I wanted to read the story about the felon instead.”
Me: “It’s the same guy.”
Editor: “I know that. The readers won’t though. Try again.”

—-

Scrawled across a printout of a story: ”NO”

—-

Editor: ”Your story was better last night than it was this morning.”
Me: “What do you mean?”
Editor: “I read three fingers into a bottle of whiskey. Write it so it’s good when I’m sober too.”

—-

Me: When do you need this story?
Editor: 10 minutes ago.
Me: I can’t make that deadline.
Editor: SHUT THE FUCK UP AND WRITE!

—-

Managing editor says to me and my immediate editor, all huffy, “What’s going on with this story?”

My immediate editor, throwing her hands up in the air: “Well, Lauren is going to write it but her toe just got grabbed by the criminal and she needs a little bit more time.”

Managing editor: Stares at us in stone-faced silence, as if getting one’s big toe grabbed during an interview is no excuse for being a little late.

—–

“If you think you have a rat’s chance in hell of getting hired as a reporter in New York fresh out of grad school, you are sorely mistaken.” — Journalism mentor, advising on career path options

—-

“I like everything about this story except the fact that the lede couldn’t have happened if you weren’t there. Don’t put yourself in it.” –Editor

With its spinning neon globe overlooking Elliott Bay, the printed Seattle Post-Intelligencer was a West Coast institution. It was the state’s oldest business. A home for elegant scribes and scrappy diggers. Quirky. Artistic. Majestic. Beloved. Hated. Respected. Feared.

Working there as a reporter was a personal dream-come-true. I loved that place and proudly showed off my business card to whoever asked, “What do you do?”

After years of moving around the country and seeking a home, I’d found one in the P-I. I belonged at a newspaper. That newspaper. In a major city. In Seattle.

So when the Seattle P-I stopped printing one year ago, I felt shattered. “How could they do this to this city? To us?” I wondered about Hearst Corp., the New York-based company that owned the P-I.

I felt angry and blindsided and helpless. I was one of 10 percent of the staff chosen to work for seattlepi.com — which was a blessing in that I had something to focus on and I got to keep doing what I love.

But now, one year later, I am working in finance — almost by surprise. And I realized this week: Of course. I needed to understand what happened, and to do that, I had to understand more about how business works.

Sometimes it’s hard to be objective about the things we love — even for reporters.

My new job as a junior stock analyst has helped me to see my treasured-shuttered newspaper with fresh eyes. Objective eyes.

Early into the new millennium, the P-I had become a crappy company with a business model creaking louder than the globe atop the building:

–It was losing up to $14 million a year with no future profits in sight.

–It outsourced its basic money-making functions to its biggest competitor, which also, oh by the way, was run by men who wanted to squash it dead. (The P-I’s printing, delivery and advertising sales were handled by the rival Seattle Times. This would be like if Coca-Cola outsourced its distribution to Pepsi Co.)

–It was staffed by members of a feisty union that wasn’t afraid to tussle with management.

–It was overseen by new executives in New York who didn’t put the paper into the mess it was in, and had little inclination or time to get it out of it.

–It was operating without any legal freedom to market itself.

“Shit show” is a new phrase I’ve picked up from the finance industry to describe operations like the P-I. I love the term. It’s brutally honest, doesn’t mince words and isn’t afraid of the truth: Kinda like the P-I.

The whole devastating debacle taught me two crucial life lessons:

Money matters.

Whatever can’t go on forever . . . won’t.

And that shit show reality is why you’ll never find a P-I flapping in the wind at the Pike Place Market newsstand again.

Harris quit her reporting job at the Chicago Tribune last year to pursue a simpler life. She gave up the city, the stress and the suits, and now blogs about all that she has gained in return.

At the time, I admired that she admitted in her final Tribune column that she isn’t independently wealthy. Translation: Any of us could shun the material stuff and do what she’s doing.

Part of my fascination with her blog is that she and I went opposite ways — I traded journalism in for high heels, stock analysis and finance.  She left to start a family and grow her own vegetables.

She’s also a good writer, which makes reading her blog a guilty pleasure.

Today, she has posted a guest post from me. It’s an essay I wrote about my irrational love for my car.

Check it out, and leave a comment!

Seattle P-I employees hear that their paper might close (Andrea James/Jan. 8, 2009)

It was this day last year when news of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer’s impending shut-down hit the airwaves.

If you haven’t heard the story before: The P-I staff first learned of this terrible news by watching it on television.

It was after 5 p.m. and the staff was putting the paper to bed. A major winter storm had hit Washington state, and thus most of our daily coverage focused on that – I believe that I wrote something about hindered truck shipments into Seattle. Overall, it had been a satisfying day — plenty of news to fill our pages and I had beat deadline by about an hour.

But I wouldn’t be going home anytime soon.

Over in the business news section, editor Margaret Santjer saw something alarming on the television by the sports copy desk.  She fumbled with the remote control to the business section’s television, trying to switch the station from CNBC to the local King-5 TV news.

What we saw on the screen was shocking: The Seattle P-I was up for sale and would likely close.

I fired off this e-mail to my closest friends and husband:

Subject: OH MY GOD WTF!!?!?!?!  

I’m shaking so bad. everyone in pi gathered around the TV. this breakign news. WE KNOW NOTHING.

Source: Seattle P-I to be sold, or closed
04:58 PM PST on Thursday, January 8, 2009
By LINDA BYRON / KING 5 News

KING 5 news has learned that Seattle may soon become a one newspaper town. . . .

E-mails came flooding into me from friends who had heard the news. Amidst the shock, my editor realized that we had to report this development.

I followed up via e-mail to my core group of friends, “Great. Now I get to report this story. Trying to keep my composure and make calls.”

Reporter Dan Richman and I could not confirm the TV report that evening. A source/friend at King-TV told me that some producers there were uneasy about the story, but that it had been approved from on high. “I hope we’re right,” my television friend said. And then he paused awkwardly, “I mean, uh. . .sorry. . .”

I cut off his apology. I understood.

At one point after several unsuccessful calls, I slammed down the phone and said, “Linda Byron better have a damn good source!”

Boeing reporter James Wallace responded, “No. No, she better have a f*cking lousy source!”

I have to hand it to King-5: It was a great scoop. Some people in the newsroom said it was humiliating that we found out externally — imagine being scooped on our own demise!

Strangely, I did not share that sense of indignity. I tried to summon outrage, but for me the whole situation was just ironic.

I felt like I’d had plenty of personal scoops. Also, even though the business of media was one of many topics on my ever-enlarging-as-the-staff-was-shrinking beat, a P-I closure wasn’t on my radar.

In fact, in the past month I had been developing sources and monitoring the finances and court filings of our rival, The Seattle Times. That paper was so saddled with debt that it couldn’t pay its bills, and thus had to restructure and put properties up for sale. The banks were closing in with demanding covenants, and it seemed logical that the Seattle Times was on the brink of filing for bankruptcy protection. (Our closure was probably the paper’s lifeline.)

Also, as a business reporter who routinely tried to beat companies on their own layoff announcements, I felt like King-5 was giving me my just desserts. (Six months earlier, I’d sort of done it to Starbucks. Here’s a similar one on Getty Images and another on Safeco.)

Because we couldn’t confirm the report, we played it down. It ran in the bottom left corner of the business section (newly moved behind sports). The Seattle Times put its version, also unconfirmed, on the front page. I later found out from my sources at the Times that the editors there were shocked at how the P-I played the story. The Times’ confidence in its front-page placement came from its respect for King reporter Linda Byron, who is known around town for her diligence.

Before going home that night, wires editor Maren Hunt and I grabbed a neglected, dying, flimsy potted plant — sent weeks ago by a PR firm — and posted a sign to it that said, “Seattle P-I Official Plant.”

The next day, we found out that the King-5 report was true. I wrote to CBS MarketWatch’s Jon Friedman, “Things are crazy here. I’m writing the business news story about us…can you believe that? I just gathered newsroom quotes, interviewing crying reporters while I cried myself.”

That day, Dan Richman, Margaret Santjer and I fashioned a lede on our story of which I will always be proud: “After 146 years of delivering news, the Seattle P-I faces becoming what it has chronicled: history.”

Three months later, the newspaper shut down.

Dan and I reported that story, too. (This wasn’t even the first newspaper death I’d covered — two years earlier I chronicled the death of the King County Journal.)

There is something about the time-span of one year that makes you look back and assess. What a difference one year makes: One week in, and 2010 is already shaping up for me way better than the first week into 2009. So far, so good.

The economy is rebounding — taking its dear, sweet time, but rebounding. A redesigned Seattlepi.com lives on and thrives toward profitability. And I personally have found exciting and fulfilling work.

(Sadly, the P-I staff  has scattered and some still have not found jobs. Investigative reporter Ruth Teichroeb’s “where are they now?” piece is here.)

During all of the closure mess, a film crew came in to use the P-I closure as its subject to compete in a 48-hour documentary challenge. They shot and edited this short film in just two days!

After a year of screenings at film festivals around the country, including at the Seattle International Film Festival, the video has been posted online. It stars me, former P-I managing editor David McCumber and P-I columnist Joel Connelly.

Watching it is what inspired this post.

Alternatively, here’s a link to the video where you can learn more about it.

Now, I never altered a story to fit the lyrics and out more than 1,000 articles I wrote in my journalism career, it only happened about twice.  One was an article about cities that suffer from brain drain as youth flee to bigger cities in search of education, jobs, opportunities. In that one, I quoted, “Born to run.”

I also composed many of my articles while listening to Bruce. I’d put on my headphones and make sense of all of my data gathering while jamming away. The music helped me to focus and to feel lighter than I am, which enabled me to think faster and meet deadline.

Not only do I adore Springsteen’s music, I relate to it. Which creates a deeper connection than simple enjoyment. (My family hails from the same county in New Jersey that he does, and I have cousins who grew up in his hometown. But I think that his fans, no matter where they are from, universally share a connection to his music.)

Today, I wonder if my affinity for Springsteen’s music had an effect on how my articles shaped themselves. Did it influence me by making me write according to some theme of which I was not consciously aware? Would an analysis of my articles reveal a Springsteen bias?

New York Times columnist David Brooks, in an editorial that is half reflection-on-life and half ode-to-Springsteen, explores how Springsteen contributed to his non-formal education. He also remarks that our non-formal education contributes more to our happiness than what we learn in the classroom. I encourage you to check it out.

You want: Beautiful, memorable photos.  Images that will grab the viewer’s attention, and hold it. A new head shot. A creative Christmas card.

You need: A photojournalist with daily newspaper experience.

Here’s why:

1. Photojournalists don’t make excuses — Things do go wrong, but a photojournalist who has worked for a daily newspaper is trained to do superior work, and quickly. She cannot come back to the office with no photo. The paper is coming out tomorrow, a photo is needed. She is used to operating under pressure.

2. Versatility — What I love about newspaper photographers is that they can do anything. My P-I colleagues often found themselves shooting a natural disaster one day (they all own rubber boots), a concert for the arts section the next day, and then a cake  for the food section the next.

3. Consider your moment captured — How much would you pay to make sure that THE moment of your event is captured forever? This is what photojournalists are trained to do every day. At my own wedding, I knew that I didn’t have to worry about making sure our photographer (and friend) was capturing crucial moments. He was everywhere. When I saw the photos, I was delighted and saw new aspects of my own wedding that I had missed.

4. Photo journalists are problem solvers – Tell me, how do you make a photo of a technology company interesting? As a business reporter for nearly five years, I got to profile some really cool companies — but a lot of times, these companies performed a service that just wasn’t visually interesting. But I rarely worried about this — I knew we’d have a publishable photo for the newspaper because the photographer would think of something I never could have.

5. They’re the best of the best — Newspaper journalism is cutthroat. Thousands of people want to shoot photos for newspapers, particularly in a big city like Seattle. However, just a dozen actually get to do it.  In short, they’ve been vetted.

Following are links to three Seattle-based photojournalists and companies whose work I can vouch for, and that I respect:

1. Stuart Isett — New York Times photographer, freelancer. He also shot my wedding. (Link to his Web page.)

2. Red Box Pictures — Seattle photography studio business started by former Seattle P-I photographers. (Link to company Web page.)

3. Marcus Donner — Newspaper photographer formerly with the King County Journal. He also teaches an excellent class for amateurs — to really help you get the most out of your point-and-shoot, or higher end camera. (Link to his Web site.)

Why did I write this post?

Newspaper photojournalists are best-kept secrets in terms of professionals-for-hire. They often let their photos speak for themselves, but I wanted to give some other concrete reasons beyond pointing out that they take good photos.

I did not get any money or anything from listing the above photographers. Stuart shot my wedding in 2008 and we paid full price, as any professional deserves.

Also, I’d recently read this story about a U.K. couple whose wedding photos were abysmal, and they sued the photographer. It occurred to me while reading it that I never had any such worries. Because I hired a photojournalist.

And finally, all three photos at the top of my home page index were shot by photojournalists. Their names are at the bottom of the page.

Students at my college were big users of AOL Instant Messenger (oh so 2000!), and we religiously updated our away messages. “I’m sleeping.” “I’m writing a paper.” “Sexiled.” (Remember that one?)

After Sept. 11, 2001, during which I was in D.C., I began thinking a lot about my own mortality. For the first time, I realized that I could die unexpectedly. I would think, what if I died from a bomb on the Metro? And the next immediate thought was, “Who would update my away message?”

In 2007, I’d said on Poynter that journalists should be users of social media. (This is back when journalists were actually debating it. Now, it’s a given.) If we are to report on the world we live in, then we have to fully live in it.

But what happens when there’s a technical glitch?

My Facebook profile has been inaccessible for two days.  The company is having some sort of problem, according to this message board thread. And people are getting upset.

One frantic user writes, “OMG!!!! I’m about to lose it…. My birthday is coming and I don’t want to miss my birthday wishes. This is really annoying!!! I’ve been waiting for 5 long and awful days….This is a serious issue. No one seems to care.”

I don’t know this user’s age, but I found her comment adorable and completely honest. Before you judge her, consider this: People communicate now via social mediums, some people exclusively so.

And when the medium goes down, we lose our social.

Spare me talk about the old fashioned way of communicating — face to face and via phone — and how it’s so much better. No it’s not.  And if you think this way, you probably leave too many voicemails. (Voicemail is dead.)

In the capstone thesis class during my senior year of college, one student wrote her paper on social technology, concluding that technology only enhances the social qualities that we already have — thus, social people are even more social online.

To me, it is not an insult to wish someone happy birthday via text message. Go a few years younger than me (I’m 28) and the communication methods are even more drastically different. True story: My college-age younger brother’s home burned down last month. I learned about this via his Facebook status update.

I then communicated the news to another family member via e-mail, who then responded to me the next day via text: “WHY DIDN’T ANYONE CALL ME?” (This 40-something family member only texts in capital letters. We love him. He tries.)

Another example: My birthday this year happened to coincide with my first day as a non-journalist. It was mostly a lonely day of packing for my next adventure, interrupted only by jaunts over to my open laptop to read my birthday messages from all my friends. So great!

The day that I expected to be filled with the radio silence of losing my public voice was instead filled with dozens of messages.  I was no longer a working reporter, but I still had friends. And those friends chose to share via Facebook.

I wouldn’t have it any other way, especially after having moved to a new city six times in the past 10 years. Keeping in touch is so easy, thanks to the social media that have become my lifeline.

There is just one upside to the fact that my Facebook profile is down: It freed me up long enough to write this blog post.

This question came from a smart and capable guy, and so I was stunned. The best definition I could come up with at first was something stupid like, “Twitter? Uh, it’s . . . Twitter, you know, where you tweet?”

Business people: You are allowed to not like Twitter. You are allowed to not get Twitter. But c’mon, you’ve got to know which technologies are changing how people communicate. Or else, you’re going to get blindsided.

Journalists seem to be having a love affair with Twitter. (Guilty.) But can you blame them for trying? They know what it’s like to be blindsided.

The newspaper implosion shocked a lot of us in print media. McClatchy CEO Gary Pruitt said 2008 was the “worst year” of his life. “By far.” He may have been talking about money, but down in the ranks, we were shocked by our loss of authority. We shouldn’t have been. The clues were there all along.

I still remember the Time magazine cover that arrived in my mailbox featuring a bendable mirror. The magazine’s person of the year designation at the end of 2006 was “you.”

“Welcome to your world.”

Some people called the “you” theme a cop out. I thought it was brilliant. I’d been reading the articles by Seattle venture capital reporter John Cook, and the Time report pulled it all together.

I could see “you” taking over in my own job when the Seattle Post-Intelligencer forced every reporter to stick a question at the end of articles to encourage discussion. Can’t think of a question? The default was and still is, “What do you think?”

A lot of us in the newsroom hated the policy. (I was love/hate at first but my thicker-skinned self now emphatically supports commenting.) We felt it cheapened our brand and undermined our authoritative voice. We let anonymous people tell us we were stupid, we let them post factual inaccuracies and blather. (Half the threads devolved into either, “Blame Bush!” or “blame immigrants!” or worse. “You” may be in charge, but “you” ain’t always intelligent.)

It turns out, comments were only the beginning. Next came unpaid writers and some of them were more popular than us. Lightbulb: It’s not about us. It’s about “you.”

They teach you in journalism school that it’s not about the writer. “Do you remember who wrote the story about the first moon landing?” the professor asks. “The reader doesn’t owe you anything,” says the writing coach.

They talk a good humble game, but I’m telling you the truth: The impact that “you” had on our industry shocked the smartest of us. We got blindsided.

The widespread adoption of Twitter by journalists is a determination to not get blindsided again. The journalists who are most with it are the ones who are following nearly as many people as who are following them.

Getting started

If you never got Web 2.0, and now don’t get 3.0 or whatever-the-heck we’re up to now (mobilephone.0?), here’s a video to get you started. It is 2.5 years old, still relevant, has been viewed nearly 10 million times on YouTube, and is superb. It captures so much of what I was trying to say in my former post about online journalism, and where it is heading.

(Hat tip for the video)

I have no doubt that my former colleagues at seattlepi.com understand most pieces of this video. RSS feeds and Twitter are literally in their job description. More and more businesses get what’s in this video. Every one of my friends under age 30, except maybe my favorite luddite, gets what’s in this video. Do you?

Oh, and now ”you” get to define Twitter too. Or just go to twitter.com.

Update: Here’s another video on social media:

(Hat tip for the video)

I looked down at the scribbles on my reporter notepad. “Hey Scott,” I said to my editor, “I just got the strangest message. There’s this investment bank that is looking to hire someone to do corporate research, and they got my name.”

Scott didn’t miss a beat: “Call him back.”

I Googled the firm and the stock analyst who’d left the voicemail. He’d been recently quoted in Forbes. I called him back.

That was about one month ago. Fast forward to now. August 12 will be my last day reporting and writing for seattlepi.com. In a few weeks, I will start as a research associate at the investment bank.

If you’d told me last year – nay, last quarter – that I’d quit my journalism job to go work for an investment bank, I would have said, “Get out.” (At least, that was the reaction of my former business editor Margaret when she heard the news, followed by, “Congratulations!”)

But then again, a lot has happened in the past year that I wouldn’t have thought possible. First, I attended the inauguration of the first black president and sat near the front row. Then, Lady Fortune came out of nowhere,  took a big swig of liquid economy, picked up the baseball bat marked “career,” and whacked most of my friends. My newspaper shut down. WaMu disappeared. Back to the point. . .

I’m excited about this transition into a world to which I’m already connected. Often when a business stumps me with some change of direction or unique accounting charge, I turn to analyst experts for help. After about six years of covering the markets and business, now I get to learn what makes Wall Street analysts tick. I never could resist the allure of learning new things!

And so, off I go.

Journalism asks: How can you leave me?

Please do not interpret my leaving seattlepi.com as foreboding about the news site’s future. The Web site commands a high readership and from what I hear from management, the already robust content will get fuller and better with each new partnership and added revenue stream.

Journalism industry watchers would do well to keep an eye on Seattle’s online journalism experiments, from what Hearst is doing at seattlepi.com to the rise of community news blogs that are rich with engagement.

Journalism is a rapidly changing industry, and for the past few years, I’ve had a front row seat.

The future will include more democratization of data, more citizen engagement, more unpaid writers, fewer generalists, more amateurs with fan followings, a greater appreciation for quality business reporting, and a whittling down of traditional journalistic authority against the rise of the niche-hobbyist-turned-pro.

The notion of journalists as gatekeepers is obsolete — those who pridefully struggle to hold onto that antiquated view will watch helplessly as information flows around, over and beneath the gates. Those who humbly embrace these changes will become the new stars, appreciated for their ability to generate unique content while at the same time navigating and making sense of the information flow.

Since journalists make a living out of calling people out on their contradictory statements, it’s only fair that I share mine. Before my newspaper stopped printing, I made some public declarations about how I was loathe to leave journalism.

I told Jon Friedman at CBS MarketWatch that, “I feel like I was born to do this work. I’m so curious. Give me a job where I can get paid to be nosy as hell, get my curiosity satisfied and write every day. I can’t imagine going into another field.”

And I declared via the Columbia Journalism Review that, “Journalism is just too much fun to give up. Even now. I’ve seen job openings in other fields, but I don’t want another type of job. I love learning new things. I like questioning authority and calling b.s. when I see it. I’m nosy as hell, and paid to be.”

Here’s what I think now, given the present flux in media: Trying new things maintains career growth and passion. And the same personal qualities that led me to pursue journalism — a love of writing, a desire to understand and make sense of how the world works — are what intrigue me about investment research. In short, I’ll still get paid to ask questions.

I’m not going away forever; my media connections are deep and I’ve loved the business, even as it was breaking my heart. Just last week, for example, I was scheduled to speak to a class of journalism students at my undergraduate alma mater, but had to cancel when duty called.  So, I won’t disappear for good, but I do intend to keep my head down well into the near future to learn the ropes and immerse myself in this new adventure!

Please stay in touch. After a six-month training period, I hope to set up shop back here in Seattle.

One more reflection:

Covering Seattle business has been a blast. Each day I’m reminded of how lucky I have been to chronicle the stories of our corporations, large and small, and the workers who are each threads in the tapestry of this iconic city.

The days leading up to my recent interview were a perfect example of how Seattle innovation has spread:

Wanting to look the part for my interview, I strolled into Nordstrom for assistance on buying the right outfit and shoes. Then, I flew from Sea-Tac to the Twin Cities on a Boeing 757. Once there, a placard in my hotel room declared that the coffee pot “proudly” brews Starbucks. And I was slugging a Microsoft product over my shoulder the whole way: my laptop runs Windows Vista.

I’ll be checking seattlepi.com to stay on top of all of Seattle’s news. I hope you do too.

Cheers and onward.

Update: August 11, 2009: I’ve posted a goodbye to the Seattle P-I’s aerospace blog. Read it here.

Dan Richman and I kept it together enough to write the front page headline story for the last edition of the newspaper:

The online version has a different lede than the version that ran in print, which read:

The Seattle Post-Intelligencer has printed its last edition. You’re reading it.

The newspaper sold out all over the city. It comes wrapped in a commemorative edition with essays and stories by our best writers.

Hearst gave me the option of sticking around as a business reporter with seattlepi.com, and I accepted the offer.

Here’s the squiggly pink worm that I bit like a hungry fish: The Seattle Post-Intelligencer would be the first printed newspaper in the country to transition to an all-online model. If it works, I’d have witnessed something remarkable, the future of general news daily journalism.

Curiosity overwhelms me. What is it like to witness the death of a newspaper, and a rebirth? Do I want to see this first hand, in all its pain and glory? Yes, I do.