The Place and People I Hated to Love

For a good 12 out of my 17 years at The Seattle Times, I felt total hatred for our arch-enemies, the Post-Intelligencer. It was, I admit, my way of generating the competitive juices to engage in the daily dance of newspaper journalism and, I understand, it is not rare for the industry. I took that competitive hatred to new levels, however, generally refusing to socialize with my colleagues on the road, the way it was done in city after city across the country.

The five-year gap in my streak of “total hatred” for the opposition is the fault of Jim Moore, today one of my dearest friends and the “Go 2 Guy” columnist for the dearly departed P-I and now the renewed digital version, seattlepi.com. I fully intended to hate Jim, as I had his predecessors Kenneth Richardson, Carter Cromwell and Art Thiel. But anyone who has met him will agree that he is one of mankind’s thoroughly un-hatable members. He is the way he comes off in his column — an irreverent, say-first, think-later, life-loving carouser with a heart of gold and the quickest of any person I’ve ever met to explode with laughter and force you to do the same.

If Jim’s colleagues were people I loved to hate, he was the exception that I hated to love.

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