Over two years ago in the fall of 2008, I went into the Bailey/Coy bookstore on Capitol Hill to talk to Chris Kissel, the Seattle U junior who was always working the counter. Kissel had been an all-star intern for me at The Stranger, and now that I was planning to start a new online news site, I needed all the all-stars I could find.

Kissel and I headed over to Vivace coffee a few blocks down, and I told him about PubliCola. With a decimated capitol press corps in Olympia, I was going to focus on "This Washington." And with with local interest in D.C. soaring after the Obama election, I needed someone to do a "That Washington" column.

No, I couldn't send him to D.C., but by working the phones, he could get the inside track on how the Washington State delegation, both Democrats and Republicans, were fitting in to the historic 111th Congress. And since the PI and the Times weren't in D.C. either, our coverage would be just as on point.

Kissel, who would later tell me didn't even know who U.S. Rep. Jim McDermott was at the time, was in. And after a few more months of planning, it was Kissel and I who debuted this goofy looking news site on January 19, 2009. (We had lined up an ObamaNerd and a TechNerd by then too.)

In between studying for his econ major and working his part-time job and playing in his band and rehearsing his play, Kissel dug in to the cap and trade debate, the stimulus package, health care reform, and the other major issues—interviewing the delegation and filing great copy. (We were  probably the first local site to pick up on U.S. Sen. Maria Cantwell's opposition to President Obama's Wall Street reforms, a story that would blow up a year later. Kissel also filed what I think was the first story on Keli Carender and the local Tea Party movement.)

I was paying him in pizza and beer (he famously got the Cola team kicked out of a bar in Greenwood because he wasn't old enough to be there), and recently in rent money and rock shows.

Kissel split for the summer of '09—he wanted to spend his last student summer goofing off in New York. But he didn't feel right bailing on the Cola, and he ended up writing our NerdNerd column from Brooklyn.

He came back in the fall and with the exception of another summer jaunt (this time to work in a Civil War museum in Mississippi), Kissel's been the main man on our masthead for two years, writing about the Fitzgibbon/Heavey race, the initiatives, ed reform, Jaime Herrera, and more. He's also been the main person writing our Afternoon Jolt column.

Aww hell. Kissel was just offered a job with a "digital strategy agency" in Manhattan that helps radio stations with their online content. It pays much better than PubliCola and he's 22 and it's in Manhattan.

I don't feel right taking his name off the masthead. And maybe I won't have to. Erica says he'll be back. I don't think he will be, but that doesn't settle the masthead debate.