Seattle Post-Intelligencer staffers are describing what this city will have lost when, after tomorrow, the newspaper's print edition ceases to exist. Here's P-I reporter Lewis Kamb, wondering who will fill the void:

The P-I's closure certainly means the passing of an era for this city—and I'm not just talking about the nostalgia. A lot has been said about history dating to the Civil War, the infamous characters of newsrooms' past and the paper's iconic contribution to Seattle's skyline.

But what's really lost with the P-I is the devotion and dedication to journalism that I've seen in my decade at the paper. Truly, my colleagues under the globe, by and large, were as dedicated a crew to the whole glamorous notion of the profession's nobility as any I've seen in the movies or read about in any book.

Day in, day out, folks stayed late to file stories, make just one more phone call, read over their copy one last time, all the while missing family dinners, anniversaries, birthdays and holidays, and doing it all for a pauper's salary.

I truly believe some of the best watchdog journalism, narrative writing and commentary in the country came out of the P-I in recent years. This wasn't just puffery prettied up to win awards. This was quality, daily beat reporting, stellar photojournalism and the periodic long-term project that took on sacred cows, spoke truth to power and ferreted out corruption. This was telling stories for the powerless and voiceless. This was honest-to-God real HL Mencken, public service kind of shit—you know, "Comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable" ...

I can’t pretend all of what we did was gold. There was drivel. Lots of drivel, and I wrote my fair share of it. Day-after weather stories and stale holiday festival features, “news” written simply to fill space—perhaps a symptom of an industry’s out-dated business model and failure to innovative quickly enough during the rise of New Media.

But the stories I'll cherish most were timeless pieces of reportage—deft storytelling and hard-nosed, shoe-leather reporting, the kind of journalism that can be held up with honor during any era.

I’m most proud of being a part of a paper that strived to dig up and dog issues no one else in this city would touch—unpopular stories and causes other reporters ignored or were too afraid or lazy to take on.

Doing that kind of work ties your stomachs in knots. It’s shaking out public records, and cajoling and convincing sources to talk. It’s calling and calling and calling again that politician ducking comment. It’s showing up on doorsteps where you’re not wanted, and feeling the blood rush into your face as you ask questions you wouldn’t dare to ask anyone, ever—but had to, to do the job right.

It was putting your ass—and your byline—on the line, time and again, and accepting what came from it. It was waking up in a cold sweat at 3 a.m., sick with worry about whether you spelled that name right, or summarized that report correctly, or left out that word in the third graf, and then, finding yourself in the half-light of dawn desperately thumbing through a notebook or re-reporting facts in your mind, even as the morning paper thumped onto your doorstep.

It was exposing real problems that needed exposure. Stuff you had to grab up with all your journalistic might by the scruff of the neck, and yank out into the light of day for the public see in all its gory details before change could come. It was the kind of journalism that takes guts—and takes tolls.

Behind the scenes, people in this city and beyond talked about problems at the King County Sheriff's Office for years, but no one ever systematically tackled and reported anything about them. We in the media all heard rumors about Dave Reichert's rise through the ranks and the folklore surrounding some of his heroism, but no one ever took the time to collect the personnel records, or track down aging supervisors long retired and out-of-state, or convincing those still on-the-job to break their code and go on the record.

Until we did.

We took a lot shots from public officials, drew dozens of insults, ridicule and the occasional death threat, even accepted some of the bullshit that stuck to us for doing the kind of reporting you dream about in J-School—watchdog reporting that held up our end of the bargain for the public, as members of the hallowed "Fourth Estate."

And that’s what made it all worth it. Compensation came not in the weekly paycheck from the Hearst Corporation, it came in results: When six sets of human remains were identified because of our reporting. When a commission was empanelled to investigate police abuse. When lawsuits were filed, laws were passed, investigations launched because of our stories. It was then that you realized, Hey, this job matters. This bullshit job that seemingly half the time left you bitter and broke was your calling. Even as a measly, son-of-a-bitch reporter for the pissant Pee-Eye—as so many readers liked to remind us that we were every so often—your work could actually make a difference.

And it wasn’t just the investigative stuff. Primarily, it was the beat reporters who day in and day out watch-dogged Sound Transit budget overruns; attended mind-numbing school board meetings; questioned the mayor's unchallenged usurping of City Hall power; pored over campaign contribution reports; obtained hopelessly hard-to-get prison health care records; knocked on doors of reluctant witnesses to gang shootings; dug deep into potential impacts of the latest Tim Eyman initiative, rode and re-rode Metro buses overnight or waited in the rain outside of homeless shelters to find that elusive source.

Painfully boring endeavors, the sausage-making of good reporting. But all of it stuff that, in the end, can deeply matter to your neighbors, your kids, your friends, your city.

All of this may sound like a lot of self-righteous, self-aggrandizing bunk. And maybe some of it is, looking through the tinted glasses of hindsight.

But what I truly fear will be lost with the P-I is the kind of dogged scrutiny and spotlight reporting of local issues that takes guts, sourcing, time, space, patience, experience, even the backing of media lawyers, that a newspaper willing to accept its public responsibility as watchdogs and chroniclers of its community takes on.

In the P-I’s absence, I wonder if the West Seattle Blog will take up that slack? Hell, will the retooled Seattlepi.com?

Will anyone fill that void? And if no one does, where's that leave this city?

Illustration by Andrew Saeger.