Last Wednesday I got in a car and drove to Mount Baker, not to see a cell-phone signal or a newspaper again until Sunday afternoon, when I was shocked by the news about the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. Eli Sanders's truly great coverage of the situation is here, and the devastating video of the Hearst brass telling the newsroom it is being boarded up while the police scanner is still going is here.
My first thoughts went to Regina. Regina Hackett has been art critic at the P-I since 1981, and while she and I have been fierce opponents in debates about art, across the battlefield we've also occasionally felt the twinge (often uncomfortable) of recognition. This is not to say that we're reducibly similar, but that our similarities are uncanny to each of us because of our pretty significant differences. At one point I had to stop reading her blog because I so often found her dead wrong; at another point I started stealing glances because I slightly envied her particular brand of madness. (I hope that makes some sense to those readers who, caring about art, have little choice but to follow both of us.)
In any case, Hackett was not in the newsroom when that video was made—the one in which the corporate lackey stood in the newsroom, praised the journalists, and all but assassinated them without apology. Hackett was somewhere else; out reporting, I'd guess. By the time I got to her today she was pretty sanguine—beyond sanguine. She was like a person who's been told that her life is ending. She was liberated. Frankly, it made a certain sense.
"I have loved having this job," she said in an interview by phone in the P-I newsroom, where she felt self-conscious for laughing. I'm just going to let her talk for a while.
And especially recently. I feel greatly reinvigorated by the last five years. ... For me personally it might be a good thing, because I'm like some demented duckling stuck on this island—stuck on the P-I—so if I am forced to do something brave and move on out there, it might be good for me, and I am being forced. ... It's just, there's a broken business model. Whoever was in business did not respond to this fast enough. And then there's the economy, which again is over my head, but I gather it's not doing well. I think that we could have all been okay with one term for George Bush. It would have been bad, but at that time, in 2004, I thought, this is crushing, and it was crushing. I feel hopeful about Obama but I also feel we're not on the brink—we're over the brink. I am thrilled that I lived long enough to see Barack Obama elected president. And this is carrying me through right now. ...I am sad, but I think there's opportunities here, and I'm gonna take them. I have to be forced to be brave. I have collected a salary my entire career and been a good soldier. Now it's not going to be about how many clicks can I get, how popular can I make this, it's going to be about my best shot, my best shot, so I'm going to take that. I don't think I would have done it if this place were here. I think I would have just continued to trudge on and to love my job. But I think if it's just about writing, I think I might be able to do better on my own. And it's gonna be about art. I am a one-trick pony. I was thinking about my skills. Let's see, could I be a waitress? I'll mix up everyone's orders. I add and subtract on my fingers and I have to go through the whole alphabet to get to one letter. So there's some ways in which I'm not completely up and at 'em—but I'm not going to bother with that. All I need to do is get by. I interviewed Suzanne Bouchard, the actress, she said she wasn't going to be an actress anymore in about 1991, but then she got married to someone at Microsoft and could keep going. And I thought, is it going to be like this for us? You meet somebody at a party and you say, I cover the environment or I cover city politics but I can afford to do it because I'm married to someone who teaches or who owns a gas station? I mean, there are no jobs for us. I have certainly written things that could have been rethought. But I went for it. And I think in the future I am promising myself not to worry about the numbers. The thing about being online is, they can tell what your numbers are. So I've been in a numbers crunch on my blog. Before the blog, I was basically like some kind of used car salesman in here telling them that my car's the best, and this is visual culture, and I'm vital to your success, but online, they can tell. Last month, everything considered, I got 100,000 total and 53,000 on my blog. And that's a huge number but that's not the reason I'm going to do it now. I don't think our job is really to chase a big number.
Hackett's been working on a book about Northwest contemporary landscapes for a long time; she says now she means to finish it. She plans to move her blog and to rename it—she's considering "Another Bouncing Ball."
The funny thing is: It's impossible to think of Hackett as a hedger, a number-watcher, a holder-back. She's been the opposite. She's been incredibly unselfconscious, both to her advantage (passion! omnipresence!) and to her disadvantage (she's been sued, she's been wrong, and she's what people politely call eccentric). Still: I say if she has more hounds to release, bring them on.
"The hard part will be getting paid, but I think I can do it," she continues. "Everybody hopes that the P-I will continue online. But what will that be? Thirty to forty people? I don't know what a role for me would be there. No one has described it but they have described a greatly reduced staff. It's not in my plans. Anyway, I hope I have the fortitude to move on. I hope I don't say well they'll pay me $30,000 less but I have to cover the rent—I hope I don't go there. Frank McCourt didn't write anything until he was done teaching, and I think this is my moment to be done. I think something better will happen."
What was the word I used earlier to describe Hackett—sanguine? Never has a critic sounded less sanguine, actually. She sounded downright fired up.
"When I will be crushed," she said in conclusion, "is when the New York Times goes out. But I don't think I can afford to subscribe anymore."
