'A good run': Joel Connelly announces retirement from Seattle Post-Intelligencer

Since 1973, in any of the Seattle Post Intelligencer's buildings, one figure has been a constant in a newsroom that's a microcosm for the turbulent last few decades in news media.

Chances are, at any given hour of a weekday, if you stumble into the P-I newsroom you've seen a man hunched over his desk, furiously typing or grumbling to himself after a politician blew him off over the phone — although sometimes the grumbling was instead an exclamation of triumph after a particularly delicious interview.

Joel held a lifetime of knowledge about the Pacific Northwest. He grew up in Whatcom County, not far from the hometown of another iconic journalist, Edward R. Murrow. Joel left the state briefly for a few years at Notre Dame, as well as a few summer quarters at Western Washington University. After school, he got a job with the P-I and never looked back.