News-Record.com

I am sorry to see the demise of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer for more than one reason.

The first is obvious: It is yet another sign of the treacherous state of the newspaper industry.

It also is the second daily recently in a two-daily newspaper town to take a fall, preceded by the Rocky Mountain News in Denver.

I worked for a while in Denver at the height of the Rocky's war with the Denver Post. I was on a sabbatical from teaching journalism and spent most of my time on the Post's copy desk.

I remember requesting an interview with the editor of the Rocky at the time -- Ralph Looney -- and haviing him accuse me of being a spy for the Post. He kicked me out if his office. True story.

But I digress.

My connection to the P.I. is its inventive editorial page editor, Mark Trahant, whom I met about 20 years ago as a fellow judge for what was then called the Penney-Missouri Journalism Awards at the University of Missouri.

He is one of the brightest people in the business.

He is also out of work.

Mark, by the way, is Native American. He is the guy who asked President Bush about tribal sovereignty at the UNITY Convention of minority journalists in Washington in 2004.

The president was not prepared and stumbled through an answer that basically said his opinion of tribal sovereignty for American Indians was that it was, well, sovereign.

The rest, as they say was history and it was broadcast live on C-Span.

As for Mark, he was always forward-thinking.

And he is now.

Richard Prince reports that Mark shared this message with colleagues on the P.I.'s last day:

"So what's next? My plan is to write. I have a couple of books rolling around in my mind (one, a monograph on Sen. Henry Jackson, the late Washington state Democrat who championed defense issues, is well past deadline). It's time to extract these ideas and transfer them to paper. I'll also be giving speeches — contact me, if you're interested — and tackling any other project that suits my interests (while wondering, 'does it pay?') I'm ready for the challenge and excited by the outlook because I know it's only black until dawn — and I've always loved mornings."

In the good times and the not-so-good, a class act.