After near­ly half a cen­tu­ry of ser­vice to the Seat­tle Post-Intel­li­gencer and its online suc­ces­sor, seattlepi.com, my friend Joel Con­nel­ly today clocked out for the last time as a full time employ­ee of Hearst, the P‑I’s own­er since 1921.

As a con­se­quence of his retire­ment, there is no longer any­one left at the P‑I who worked for its print incar­na­tion, which ceased pub­li­ca­tion in 2009.

It thus tru­ly is the end of an era.

Few jour­nal­ists around these parts have a record of ser­vice or a lega­cy of good works as long and as sig­nif­i­cant as Joel’s; he is a league of his own.

With Joel hav­ing filed his last sto­ry as a Hearst employ­ee, it’s fit­ting that his many con­tri­bu­tions to the Pacif­ic North­west as a P‑I reporter and colum­nist be rec­og­nized and laud­ed. Whether cov­er­ing fed­er­al, state, local, or even Cana­di­an pol­i­tics, Joel has con­sis­tent­ly helped a lot of peo­ple make sense of the issues of the day with mean­ing­ful analy­sis and mem­o­rable metaphors.

Joel’s long career at the P‑I began in the ear­ly 1970s. As he relat­ed in an inter­view with fel­low Notre Dame alum­nus J.P. Hick­ey:

My dream to go into acad­e­mia was inter­rupt­ed, between my M.A. and Ph.D. by a sum­mer replace­ment gig at the Seat­tle Post Intel­li­gencer. It changed my career path abrupt­ly. Two weeks into the job, I wrote a sto­ry that helped block a land exchange at Larrabee State Park, where I had worked sum­mers. The exchange would have tak­en Chuck­anut Moun­tain out of the park, after which its trees would have been clear cut and shipped off to Japan.

The exchange died of news­pa­per expo­sure with­in forty-eight hours. The pow­er of the press helped define my per­ma­nent vocation.

The state’s sec­ond largest news­pa­per hired me full time and gave me “tenure.” We were a union shop secured by the Pacif­ic North­west News­pa­per Guild, which on occa­sion would dri­ve me nuts.

Nev­er­the­less, Joel per­sist­ed, and after start­ing with week­end work, he even­tu­al­ly became a wide­ly regard­ed and well known mem­ber of the staff.

“I would write end­less­ly of wilder­ness bat­tles in Wash­ing­ton, Ore­gon, British Colum­bia, and Alas­ka,” he told Hick­ey. “Three years of my life were con­sumed by slop­py han­dling of nuclear waste at Han­ford, and a nuclear plant con­struc­tion pro­gram of the Wash­ing­ton Pub­lic Pow­er Sup­ply Sys­tem (WPPSS, immor­tal­ized as Whoops.) Its cost over­runs threat­ened to melt down the Northwest’s economy.”

Joel’s work cov­er­ing WPPSS (whoops!) would be nom­i­nat­ed for a Pulitzer Prize.

That body of work is so author­i­ta­tive, in fact, that if you pick up a book about WPPSS — like Daniel Pope’s Nuclear Implo­sions — you will find cita­tion after cita­tion of arti­cles that Joel wrote for the P‑I dur­ing the 1980s. They are present in a man­ner not unlike road­way mile mark­ers at the bot­tom of the book’s pages.

WPPSS’s nuclear ambi­tions even­tu­al­ly col­lapsed, result­ing in what was, at the time, the largest munic­i­pal bond default in the his­to­ry of the Unit­ed States. (The con­sor­tium lat­er chose to rebrand as “Ener­gy North­west” in the 1990s.)

A 1989 advert in Edi­tor & Pub­lish­er depict­ing Ron Red­mond, Joel Con­nel­ly, and Chris Han­son: “Three good rea­sons Seat­tle looks to the P‑I for news”

Lat­er that decade, Joel would go on to cov­er fed­er­al pol­i­tics for the P‑I in Wash­ing­ton, D.C., work­ing out of Hearst’s offices on the oth­er coast.

“I was the paper’s Wash­ing­ton, D.C., cor­re­spon­dent for four and one half years in the late 1980’s, the high tide of Ronald Rea­gan, the Iran-Con­tra mess, and first year of the Bush I admin­is­tra­tion,” Joel recalled. “Hearst had its bureau at 1701 Penn­syl­va­nia Avenue, a two-minute walk from the White House.”

As the 1990s approached, the Pacif­ic North­west beckoned.

“Back home, I was a nation­al cor­re­spon­dent and then a colum­nist,” Joel explained. “My heroes were two Cana­di­ans — House of Com­mons Speak­er John Fras­er (the green Tory) and Seat­tle Uni­ver­si­ty grad Dave Bar­rett, the first social­ist pre­mier of British Colum­bia — and, House Speak­er Tom Foley, from East­ern Wash­ing­ton. [He] sym­bol­ized a pre-Gin­grich Con­gress in which mem­bers were civ­il, and dis­agreed – even pas­sion­ate­ly – with­out being disagreeable.”

Joel’s In The North­west col­umn was a must-read.

As a teenage activist, I got a sub­scrip­tion to the Seat­tle Post-Intel­li­gencer in part so that I could enjoy it over break­fast with my oat­meal. I began cor­re­spond­ing with Joel in the mid-2000s and we quick­ly became fast friends.

On the day of the water­shed 2008 pres­i­den­tial elec­tion, I stopped by the P‑I news­room to talk with Joel about the his­to­ry that we were liv­ing through.

Just a few months lat­er, as the Great Reces­sion wore on, Hearst decid­ed to cease pub­lish­ing the Seat­tle P‑I’s print edi­tion and trans­form it into an online-only pub­li­ca­tion after fail­ing to find a buy­er for the newspaper.

While this move result­ed in many of Joel’s col­leagues retir­ing or leav­ing Hearst, Joel stayed in har­ness at “San Sime­on Online”, and took pri­ma­ry respon­si­bil­i­ty for the P‑I’s polit­i­cal beat, cov­er­ing three more pres­i­den­tial elec­tion cycles (2012, 2016, and the still-in-progress 2020), plus every­thing in between.

seattlepi.com sim­ply won’t be the same with­out Joel and Joel’s thought­ful report­ing, as every P‑I afi­ciona­do and for­mer sub­scriber can attest.

Most of the P‑I’s archives are not read­i­ly acces­si­ble on the open web, but here is a sam­pling of the columns and sto­ries Joel wrote in his last decade or so at the Seat­tle Post-Intel­li­gencer that I regard as some of his finest work.

2009 | I‑1033: An initiative that could turn Washington into Mississippi

“We all grum­ble about gov­ern­ment, but need it. What is growth with­out infra­struc­ture? What is eco­nom­ic recov­ery with­out a brains-based econ­o­my and brains trained to work in it? Could a state gov­ern­ment, oper­at­ing on star­va­tion rations, respond to an unex­pect­ed emer­gency — a mod­er­ate or major earth­quake, or maybe anoth­er erup­tion from one of our five active volcanoes?”

– July 9th, 2009

2010 | The amazing Patty Murray does it again

“Unlike some of Wash­ing­to­ni­an’s win­ners — often, law­mak­ers who wor­shiped at the altar of their own unap­pre­ci­at­ed bril­liance — Mur­ray gets stuff done. She finds allies. If one path is blocked, she finds anoth­er. She does­n’t toss around acronyms about fed­er­al med­ical research pro­grams. As a Sen­ate neo­phyte, how­ev­er, she gave a speech about sev­en friends who had died of ovar­i­an can­cer — and helped get mon­ey for long-neglect­ed wom­en’s dis­eases.”

– Novem­ber 3rd, 2010

2011 | Michele Bachmann for President — off, but running

“A Theodore Roo­sevelt Repub­li­can, she ain’t. But Bach­man­n’s most fero­cious prose is reserved for health care reform, which she describes as ‘the gov­ern­ment takeover of health care … the Amer­i­can ver­sion of social­ized med­i­cine’ — even though Con­gress reject­ed a Euro­pean-style, sin­gle-pay­er system.”

– June 19th, 2011

2012 | Mossyrock cop: State’s new conservation hero

“As wor­thy pro­grams get slashed in the Great Reces­sion, the Wildlife and Recre­ation Coali­tion has sur­vived and gar­nered bipar­ti­san sup­port in Olympia. Numer­ous of the state’s blue herons owe their sur­vival to beach­es and lagoons it has saved. A lot of kids use play fields it has under­writ­ten. And the Coalition’s future is look­ing bright.”

– Sep­tem­ber 19th, 2012

2013 | Coal trains, pipelines, climate: British Columbia vote mirrors U.S.

“The elec­tion is being fought in 85 rid­ings around the province.  Clark, Dix and lead­ers of the Green and Con­ser­v­a­tive Par­ties are all run­ning for seats in the British Colum­bia Leg­is­la­ture. The par­ty that wins a major­i­ty forms the gov­ern­ment. Its leader becomes Pre­mier, with pow­ers that a U.S. gov­er­nor can only dream about.”

– May 13th, 2013

2014 | Eastside Catholic and Archbishop Sartain: A case for connecting

“The Arch­dio­cese of Seat­tle is no easy flock. Its paris­hon­ers are not about dis­ci­pline and dog­ma, and will not be docile. They made the Vat­i­can back down when it tried to strip pop­u­lar Arch­bish­op Ray­mond Hunthausen of his author­i­ty. Parish­es balked at coop­er­at­ing in the ref­er­en­dum cam­paign against mar­riage equality.”

– Jan­u­ary 14th, 2014

2015 | Bernie Sanders draws 15,000 people at UW, state’s biggest political crowd since 2010 Obama visit

“Pres­i­dent Sanders? The East Coast pun­dit class can­not grasp that a self-iden­ti­fied ‘demo­c­ra­t­ic social­ist,’ from a tiny state, who has been preach­ing against cor­po­rate pow­er in his Brook­lyn accents for 50 years, could pos­si­bly mount a cred­i­ble bid for the White House.  Tens of thou­sands of peo­ple, turn­ing out at ral­lies across the coun­try, beg to disagree.”

– August 8th, 2015

2016 | Bill Bryant and Donald Trump: Silence is not golden

“Bill Bryant is an impres­sive can­di­date, a suc­cess­ful busi­ness­man whose heroes are Theodore Roo­sevelt and Abra­ham Lin­coln.  He is mount­ing a need­ed, legit­i­mate chal­lenge to the Democ­rats’ 32-year grip on the Gov­er­nor’s office. He is, how­ev­er, on the spot. Don­ald Trump has put him there. It’s not enough to have vot­ed for John Kasich in the pri­ma­ry. Bill Bryant is, to bor­row Ted­dy Roo­sevelt’s phrase, a man in the are­na. Silence is not golden.”

– June 7th, 2016

2017 | Ferguson delivers the laundry bill: Grocery Manufacturers told to pay $1.1 million

“The Gro­cery Man­u­fac­tur­ers Asso­ci­a­tion was ordered Wednes­day to pay $1.1 mil­lion in legal costs and fees to the State, on top of an $18 mil­lion judg­ment for laun­der­ing mon­ey in a 2013 Wash­ing­ton ini­tia­tive cam­paign. The legal costs rep­re­sents the lat­est vic­to­ry by state Attor­ney Gen­er­al Bob Fer­gu­son over the influ­en­tial Wash­ing­ton, D.C., lob­by. The state’s lit­i­ga­tion against the food lob­by group is turn­ing into per­haps the largest laun­dry bill in record­ed history.”

– March 1st, 2017

2018 | The summit of Mauna Kea: Hawaii heat to Hawaii heavens

“The sum­mit is an oth­er-world­ly place. The sun casts shad­ows on land, lights up the clouds, and casts pink alpine glow col­ors on the sides of eight tele­scopes at the sum­mit. All this, with the sun set­ting and cin­der cones chang­ing col­ors, unfold­ed to sounds of Yo Yo Ma from Hawaii Pub­lic Radio.”

– Decem­ber 12th, 2018

2019 | Why do pundits of the right fear young climate, gun activists?

“The loud­mouths of Fox News inhab­it TV stu­dios. They wit­ness almost noth­ing hap­pen­ing in the world around them. They pan­der to a scle­rot­ic audi­ence that demands they deliv­er the par­ty line. Once crit­i­cal of Don­ald Trump, they have been trans­formed into his amen cor­ner. The ‘kids’ are also new media savvy and a step quicker.”

– Sep­tem­ber 29th, 2019

And here’s a few of those great print columns:

• It’s up to vot­ers to pass judg­ment on gut­ter pol­i­tics (2004)
• Dif­fer­ent route, but scenery is still nice (2005)
• Alaska’s politi­cians to blame for image (2006)
• Church’s new leader tells of her mis­sion (2007)
• Low­er bal­lot races not get­ting atten­tion they deserve (2008)

If, like me, you have been a loy­al read­er of Joel’s jour­nal­ism and will miss his con­tri­bu­tions to the P‑I, I have good news. Joel is join­ing NPI as a reg­u­lar con­trib­u­tor to the Cas­ca­dia Advo­cate, occa­sion­al­ly cov­er­ing top­ics like the loom­ing con­test between Jaime Her­rera-Beut­ler and Car­olyn Long in the 3rd Con­gres­sion­al Dis­trict, the region’s most com­pet­i­tive fed­er­al lev­el race this cycle. Our staff looks for­ward to work­ing with Joel to help­ing keep you informed about the con­tests and issues that mat­ter in this epic elec­tion year.

Thanks for every­thing, Joel, and here’s to the next chapter.

POSTSCRIPT: Sen­a­tor Maria Cantwell has offered a love­ly trib­ute to Joel on the floor of the Unit­ed States Sen­ate. If you’d like to watch, here it is. Just click play!