Last week marked a quiet, sad moment in the annals of Seattle media, with the publication March 25 of what appears to be the final issue of the Seattle Press. It will be missed.

The Press, published by Terry Denton and Liz White since 1986, was a secret treasure among the city's otherwise disposable community papers. Rather than reprinting garden club notices and local Chamber of Commerce press releases, Denton et al performed a function unique in Seattle: actual neighborhood reporting. If you wanted to know what happened at the school board meeting, or whether the Parks Department intended to respond to the neighborhood petition, or what evil redevelopment scheme was in store for your block, nobody in Seattle told you. Except the Seattle Press.

It's been a bad year already for local print media. The Seattle Weekly absorbed Eastside Week, robbing the Eastside of its own voice (and bringing down the quality of the Weekly in the process); The Seattle Times has folded subsidiary papers in Highline, Federal Way, and Des Moines; even the Snoqualmie Valley Reporter has disappeared. But the Press is the biggest loss to Seattle's media and political landscape.

Publisher Denton says the paper can be profitable, but he needs to move on and the right buyer hasn't come forward. Perhaps there's time. If you want to buy a 20,000 run free newspaper with a solid ad base and a valued niche among its readers, give Terry a call at 206-547-9660. Meanwhile, our thanks to him, and all the SP's other contributors, for the years of good, largely unnoticed work.