Author Interview

Curt Milton

Remembering the Seattle Post-Intelligencer

Seattle Post-Intelligencer

From an April 2009 email interview:

Q:	What story were you hoping to tell in your video?
A:	This was meant to be a chance for the people who worked at and loved the P-I to tell their story. Much had been written about the P-I's potential sale and possible closing and about how the community felt about losing the paper, but there hadn't been much chance for the staff to speak about their feelings of loss and sadness. And this would be one of the last chances. I have to give credit here to assistant managing editor Chris Beringer who made two key suggestions: to focus on the staff and to ask the question "What will you miss about the P-I?" Those two ideas gave me vital direction and helped guide the shooting and editing of the video.
Q:	How did you decide to use the group photo shoot in the video?
A:	I always tell people there are two really difficult parts of any video project—getting the piece started and then figuring out how to end it. In this case, the opening and closing are linked. I came up with the idea of having the audio of staff members identifying themselves play under a shot of the P-I's iconic neon globe with its giant letters spelling out the paper's slogan: "It's in the P-I." The sign refers to the news being in the P-I, but I wanted people to know that we were the people in the P-I who made it all happen. And that we were the people who loved the place. It was decided that we should do a final [staff] portrait to run in the commemorative edition of the paper that would appear on our last day. I quickly realized that picture would be the perfect ending for the video. The people who were "in" the P-I would gather one last time. We'd show everyone gathering for the shot and then we'd end it with the still frame (which seemed like a very newspaper format) and the long fade out at the end.
Q:	What was it like to shoot the story and stay in your role as videographer?
A:	It was tough. Photographers talk about the camera being a shield in dangerous situations. The camera protects you. That's how it was for me making the video. I was able to focus on the details of getting the interviews and editing the piece and delay my emotional response. It wasn't until I finished editing the end of the video and saw my name come up on the credit that I really felt the sadness hit me. There were some tears and a catch in my throat. It still happens when I watch the video. Others in the newsroom started to drop by and watch the video and they had the same reaction. In a sense, we'd been using the daily production of the paper as a shield and now the enormity of what was happening was settling in.
Q:	*Do you see the video as being for the P-I* staff, the Seattle community or a larger audience?**
A:	All three, I think. Primarily the staff. I wanted them to have something that would reflect their point of view and their thoughts. So much had been written and speculated about us, more than a little of it inaccurate. I wanted this to be our turn to speak. And I knew that many people in the community who loved the paper would share our grief and would miss many of the same things we would. Plus, it would tell a larger story of what's happening to the industry and what we'll lose as newspapers go dark.
Q:	How did you come up with the idea of doing a video in the first place?
A:	I was leaving town for the weekend on the day the Rocky Mountain News closed and posted their final video. I forwarded a link to the video to Chris Beringer (an assistant managing editor who was working on the commemorative edition for our final day) and Sarah Rupp (senior producer for seattlepi.com) and suggested we might want to do something similar. Both immediately said yes and I left town wondering what I'd just agreed to do. I knew we couldn't compete with what the Rocky had done (and I purposely didn't watch their video until I was finished with ours). I had been shooting video around the newsroom since early January when Hearst put us up for sale: shots of people working, the news meeting, walking through the newsroom... stuff like that. I knew I had that material to work with. But what else to add to it? I decided pretty quickly that the best thing would be to just interview staffers and use those interviews as the core of the video. I set up the camera in the newsroom and e-mailed the staff, inviting them to come by and tell us what they'd miss. Close to 50 people did. There's something powerful about a person just standing there and telling you directly what they think. It really says, “This is who we are.”

Q:

What story were you hoping to tell in your video?

A:

This was meant to be a chance for the people who worked at and loved the P-I to tell their story. Much had been written about the P-I's potential sale and possible closing and about how the community felt about losing the paper, but there hadn't been much chance for the staff to speak about their feelings of loss and sadness. And this would be one of the last chances.

I have to give credit here to assistant managing editor Chris Beringer who made two key suggestions: to focus on the staff and to ask the question "What will you miss about the P-I?" Those two ideas gave me vital direction and helped guide the shooting and editing of the video.

Q:

How did you decide to use the group photo shoot in the video?

A:

I always tell people there are two really difficult parts of any video project—getting the piece started and then figuring out how to end it. In this case, the opening and closing are linked. I came up with the idea of having the audio of staff members identifying themselves play under a shot of the P-I's iconic neon globe with its giant letters spelling out the paper's slogan: "It's in the P-I." The sign refers to the news being in the P-I, but I wanted people to know that we were the people in the P-I who made it all happen. And that we were the people who loved the place.

It was decided that we should do a final [staff] portrait to run in the commemorative edition of the paper that would appear on our last day. I quickly realized that picture would be the perfect ending for the video. The people who were "in" the P-I would gather one last time. We'd show everyone gathering for the shot and then we'd end it with the still frame (which seemed like a very newspaper format) and the long fade out at the end.

Q:

What was it like to shoot the story and stay in your role as videographer?

A:

It was tough. Photographers talk about the camera being a shield in dangerous situations. The camera protects you. That's how it was for me making the video. I was able to focus on the details of getting the interviews and editing the piece and delay my emotional response.

It wasn't until I finished editing the end of the video and saw my name come up on the credit that I really felt the sadness hit me. There were some tears and a catch in my throat. It still happens when I watch the video. Others in the newsroom started to drop by and watch the video and they had the same reaction. In a sense, we'd been using the daily production of the paper as a shield and now the enormity of what was happening was settling in.

Q:

Do you see the video as being for the P-I staff, the Seattle community or a larger audience?

A:

All three, I think. Primarily the staff. I wanted them to have something that would reflect their point of view and their thoughts. So much had been written and speculated about us, more than a little of it inaccurate. I wanted this to be our turn to speak.

And I knew that many people in the community who loved the paper would share our grief and would miss many of the same things we would. Plus, it would tell a larger story of what's happening to the industry and what we'll lose as newspapers go dark.

Q:

How did you come up with the idea of doing a video in the first place?

A:
I was leaving town for the weekend on the day the Rocky Mountain News closed and posted their final video. I forwarded a link to the video to Chris Beringer (an assistant managing editor who was working on the commemorative edition for our final day) and Sarah Rupp (senior producer for seattlepi.com) and suggested we might want to do something similar. Both immediately said yes and I left town wondering what I'd just agreed to do.

I knew we couldn't compete with what the Rocky had done (and I purposely didn't watch their video until I was finished with ours). I had been shooting video around the newsroom since early January when Hearst put us up for sale: shots of people working, the news meeting, walking through the newsroom... stuff like that. I knew I had that material to work with. But what else to add to it?

I decided pretty quickly that the best thing would be to just interview staffers and use those interviews as the core of the video. I set up the camera in the newsroom and e-mailed the staff, inviting them to come by and tell us what they'd miss. Close to 50 people did. There's something powerful about a person just standing there and telling you directly what they think. It really says, “This is who we are.”