Slog
News & ArtsTuesday, January 12, 2010
City One Year Later: What's That Globe Downtown?
Posted by Eli Sanders on Tue, Jan 12, 2010 at 11:10 AM
- Andrew Saeger
Last night a friend who moved to Seattle just a few months ago told me he'd been down to the Olympic Sculpture Park over the weekend and noticed some spinning globe thing along the waterfront skyline.
"Something about pi," he told me. "What is that?"
This is the future, Seattle: a city filled with new arrivals—as it has always been, as it should be—many of whom are so new they have no idea what the Seattle Post-Intelligencer was. They don't see the paper on the streets. They don't necessarily read SeattlePI.com. They don't get the significance of the turning neon globe on Elliott Bay. And they certainly aren't marking anniversaries like the one that passed on Friday.
It was the anniversary of the announcement by Hearst Corporation that it would be putting the Seattle Post-Intelligencer up for sale and, if no buyer was found, closing down Seattle's oldest daily, founded in 1863 and—until last March, when Hearst did, in fact, shut down the P-I—the oldest continuously operating business in Washington State.
I'm not sure many people outside the circle of former P-I staffers noticed the anniversary on Friday. Probably more attention will be paid to the one coming up on March 17, the day that will mark one year since the P-I staff finished putting together its last print edition. Meanwhile, the city goes on, the globe still turns (though with a little less public comprehension than it used to), and former P-I staffers are moving on to other things, like today's story about cancerous parking lots on MSNBC.com by Robert McClure, a former P-I staffer who wrote the piece as part of InvestigateWest, a project launched by former members of the P-I's investigative staff.
But one wonders: With all the intense emotion attached to the newspaper-ending events of last winter, what are people feeling today?
Hm?
Do you miss the Seattle Post-Intelligencer?
1
seattlepi.com was, and is, one of the first websites I open daily to read news. There isn't as much content anymore. Guess they need to work on that.
I'd love it if they worked more with people who want to soapbox. I always love to read the letters to the editor section of a newspaper. I loves me some filtered public ranting.
If the PI had a section of professionally edited soapboxes, and then attached real forums with threaded conversations, they'd have infinite page views for ads.
I'd love it if they worked more with people who want to soapbox. I always love to read the letters to the editor section of a newspaper. I loves me some filtered public ranting.
If the PI had a section of professionally edited soapboxes, and then attached real forums with threaded conversations, they'd have infinite page views for ads.
2
I still check the PI first thing online, before I bother with the ultra-right-wing Suburban Times.
But most of the online forums are filled with really old white disgruntled anti-tax zealots who hate America, and it's not as much fun as SLOG, where people are way more easily offended.
But most of the online forums are filled with really old white disgruntled anti-tax zealots who hate America, and it's not as much fun as SLOG, where people are way more easily offended.
4
Last Friday was also the 9th anniversary of the vote that ended the Seattle Times' PNW Guild member strike.
5
Q: What's the meaning of the globe with Seattle and PI?
A: The PI refers to the ratio of the Planetary Initial population of hipsters to the population of hipsters in Seattle, which value is currently at 3.1416 and increasing as hipster in-migration outstrips the pace of individual evolution within Seattle.
A: The PI refers to the ratio of the Planetary Initial population of hipsters to the population of hipsters in Seattle, which value is currently at 3.1416 and increasing as hipster in-migration outstrips the pace of individual evolution within Seattle.
6
@5 - originally, it was a sign that spelled P-I-E but a band of crows got hungry one day and ate the last letter.
7
Whenever I see a delivery van with the P-I logo on it I get a little wistful. I feel like the Times is purposely rubbing salt in my wound by making remember the better daily.
9
The only reason I think about it at all is that I can see the globe from my desk and walk past the building on the way to and from my favorite deli/teriyaki place.
11
You know, the globe isn't as visible as it used to be, back when all the building were one or two stories tall.
It's kind of hidden now.
It's kind of hidden now.
13
none of the above. just like the stranger and most other sources of my daily written news consumption, it's still online.
14
If you were a newspaper reader, then the P-I is missed every day. Compared to the Times, the P-I was a breath of fresh air and original thoughts. The Times is mostly huge ads now, and the online crap the "P-I" puts out isn't even close to the print version. Go ahead and get your online content, but it isn't the same P-I as the one that closed on 3/17.
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