There's always a little sniping and one upmanship between news organizations, but honestly, I'm sad to see PubliCola go, and wish Josh and Erica the best of luck. PubliCola attempted to fill a gaping political news hole at a time other newsrooms were cutting back, and the fact that they lasted as long as they did is impressive in itself. They should also be incredibly proud of the way they so quickly built credibility, becoming an integral part of the local political debate, virtually overnight.

Of course, I'm a little biased, as one of PubliCola's dirty little secrets was my role in getting it off the ground.

After he left The Stranger I raised $2,500 from my readers to hire Josh to cover the final few months of the 2008 election season for HorsesAss.org, an experiment that worked even better than I had expected. Washington's political press corps had recently lost Neil Modie, Dave Ammons, Robert Mak, Ralph Thomas, David Postman and other longtime journalists, and Josh's "HA'08" coverage helped fill that gap. It was Josh's coverage of a gubernatorial debate that helped shine the spotlight on Dino Rossi's support for cutting the minimum wage, an issue that provided an important pivot for Chris Gregoire in the governor's race, possibly influencing its outcome.

Josh obviously thought the experiment worked well too, because he immediately went to work launching PubliCola. I had absolutely no role in establishing PubliCola's editorial direction (a direction I often disagreed with) but I initially did all the grunge work behind the scenes, designing and building their first website, and actually serving it from HA's Wordpress installation for the first year or so. I also shamelessly plugged PubliCola from HA, driving as much traffic as I could to their startup venture.

And yes, I did all this for free.

Why? Because I believed in what Josh was doing, and believed that we needed more political coverage not less. I believed that an online-only news site could build a significant audience, and that unlike my foul-mouthed partisan blog, it could be perceived as credible too. And PubliCola proved me right on all counts.

But thanks to my own experience selling ads and begging for money at HA, I never believed that there was a for-profit business model that could support a state and local political news site in this market. I told Josh that from the outset, even as I helped him build his site. And unfortunately PubliCola proved me right there as well.

It would be easy to criticize PubliCola for its missteps (for example, the way they sometimes leaned over backwards to try to prove their nonpartisan bonafides when what readers really want is more honestly partisan coverage) or to make fun of it as a business failure. Well, most businesses fail, and Josh at least had the balls to make a go of it against very steep odds. And honestly, in my book, PubliCola was not a failure.

Josh and Erica proved that there is a market for wonky, ultra-local political news coverage (if not a paying one), and that credibility is something you earn, not something that can only be inherited through five generations of newspaper mastheads. PubliCola proves that if the thorny issue of how to pay for it can be solved, there are viable post-newsprint alternatives to delivering the news.

And if Josh and Erica ultimately land at Crosscut in permanent paying gigs, PubliCola will also have proven to be a means not an end, in the same way that my own failure to make a living at HA ultimately earned me an opportunity here at The Stranger.

So yeah, I'm proud of my own small contribution to PubliCola. But not nearly as proud as Josh and Erica should be.