On a personal note, I am deeply saddened today to hear that my newspaper, The Seattle Post-Intelligencer, will be shut down after more than a century of publication unless a buyer can be found in the next 60 days.

While we have been busy making music and entertainment here for free on these pages, the real folks at Real News Network also have been putting out the P-I day after day after day after day in Seattle for nearly a quarter of a century. We are part of the fabric of Seattle far more than Real News is a part of the universe here on the Web.
Over the next 60 days, we will chronicle the life and – quite possibly – the death of a newspaper and what it means to the future of the Real News Band and the world at large. Certainly, we ask that anyone who is able or inspired or inclined: please help support us in the future by downloading some of our songs or buy some of the CDs. We are using all the proceeds to help broker the freedom of our newspaper's history and keep REAL journalism thriving and alive in Seattle. This editor was interviewed today on National Public Radio and made an appeal to those in Seattle with money and wherewithal to step forward and help save what certainly is -- and has been -- a vital part of our wonderful community here. As our own personal REAL NEWS ORGANIZATION, we will seek over the next 60 days to design the newspaper of the future that can co-exist with the Web world we have spun and still give readers news and information and entertainment they can touch and feel, tear apart, fold up and read in the bathroom, in the easy chair, on the bus and train and the lunchrooms across our region. Since technically, we still work for the Hearst Corporation, we first would make an appeal to the ghost of William Randolph himself to wake his company up to the future of news, which is right here and right now before us. We vow to continue the real journalism we practice day in and day out for the real readers of the Seattle P-I and those that follow us all individually and collectively on these REAL NEWS pages here, as well. This is not journalism that we do here, it is music and satire and poetry and everything but real news.

The REAL NEWS, however, can no longer be silenced or ignored – the time has come for all of us to recognize that our jobs, our families, our community, our very way of life in this world is being endangered by the little white men in suits who have taken this country to the brink of economic chaos and panic. We will not panic and we will continue to bring you as much news as we can as long as we draw a breath of air here in Seattle. And since our newspaper is up for sale, REAL NEWS officially declares its intention to make a bid for the Post-Intelligencer and its operations, its name and its Globe – even its sports banquet. Those who would like to help or suggest financing plans are welcome to join the effort.

We will detail the vision over the next 60 days of how this newspaper can contract with an -- independent printing plant to produce a scaled-back tabloid version of the current bastardized broadsheet the P-I has become

-- a paper that would be published three times a week – Monday, Wednesday and Friday – and distributed for free at all major commuter corridors in the city, re-establishing some of the current home delivery circulation base through mail delivery, and maximizing new technology to deliver the paper in downloadable formats through internet subscriptions. -- advertising in the near future would be contracted to a local company already set up to handle a broad platform of new revenue-producing options currently restricted by the Joint Operating Agreement with the Seattle Times. Broken free of that agreement, the P-I could immediately independently develop new media synergy to fully capitalize on a Web site that legitimately produces over 2 million visits each and every day, yet sustain the operation through traditional print advertising revenue as well; underselling the daily newspaper competition in terms of rates and overwhelming the weekly competition with volume, circulation and national advertising.

Despite what circulation numbers show, the P-I, like REAL NEWS, has far more significance than meets the eye on a daily basis here in the cold and dreary days of one of the worst winters in history. Like the weather, the news never stops. It just changes from day to day.

In the cold winter storm today, this REAL NEWS editor went
running to the top of High Point Hill and looked out over the Space Needle to
where the P-I Globe still spins at the base of Queen Anne in the distance. As the sweat poured from my body, an old Neil Young song came into my ears from the iPod. It was a song he did back many years ago from a long-lost live album:
“I’ve seen love make a fool of a man. It tried to make a loser win. Well I’ve got nothing to lose I can’t get back again.”

I’ve got nothing to lose I can’t get back again; My purpose in life. My pride. My dedication. My newspaper. You can take it away, but I will get it back, even if I have to simply do it on my own right here on these wonderful Real News pages that have brought us all together for something far greater, even more magnificent to come.

Peace and joy will be
our mission, always,

Angelo