Seattle Post-Intelligencer: a brief history

The Seattle Post-Intelligencer has survived strikes, the Great Depression, new owners and several name changes to become one of the most prominent news sources in the Northwest.

The P-I, the longest-lived newspaper in Seattle, has DNA tracing back to 1863, when James Watson started publishing the four-page weekly, The Seattle Gazette.

The Gazette changed hands "half a dozen times" before being bought in 1867 by Samuel Maxwell for $300, according to the history, "A Century of Seattle Business."

Maxwell changed its name to the Weekly Intelligencer. The paper became a daily in 1876 and took its modern name in 1881 when it bought its competitor, the Post.

William Randolph Hearst bought the paper in 1921. Eventually, the Post-Intelligencer emerged as one of the city's two surviving daily newspapers, along with The Seattle Times.

The paper has had a turbulent relationship with The Times. It entered into a joint operating agreement in 1983, enabling the two papers to consolidate business operations under Times ownership while maintaining competing newsrooms and editorial pages.

In 2003, a legal war broke out when the Blethen family, owners of The Times since 1896, sought to get out of the agreement. At one point, Hearst announced the P-I was for sale, only to rescind that less than two months later.

The two sides reached a financial settlement in 2007 that allowed both newspapers to continue under the agreement.

The P-I has won two Pulitzer Prizes, journalism's most coveted award. Both went to current editorial cartoonist David Horsey.