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Up the hotel elevator I would head, then down the long hallway until I found the right room. Finally, I would knock on the door, then wait a few moments until it was opened by John Updike. Or Joan Didion. Or Stephen King. Or Caroline Kennedy. Or Terry McMillan. Or Greg Louganis. Or Katharine Graham. Or Ian McEwan. And then, once pleasantries had been exchanged, it would begin – the strangely intimate song-and-dance known as the author interview, usually lasting an hour, just the two of us in a hotel room, my questions, the author’s responses.

No more. My job as a newspaper book critic came to an abrupt end this week when the Seattle Post-Intelligencer (Washington’s oldest newspaper, established 1863) ceased publication on Tuesday, the latest casualty in the national newspaper implosion that also claimed the Rocky Mountain News just 19 days before. The P-I became the first major American metro paper to revert to an online-only presence, but seattlepi.com will operate with only a skeleton crew of 20 people, mostly younger staffers, plus a few star columnists turned freelance contributors, but no feature writers, no arts critics. We joined 150 fellow P-I journalists whose last interviews had the tables turned – exit interviews conducted by Hearst Corporation human resources personnel, some from as far away as Houston, discussing our severance packages, unemployment claims and other important facets of our newly jobless lives.