Never having met a metaphor he could not twist beyond recognition, Art has been illuminating, agitating, amusing and annoying Puget Sound sports readers for a long time.

Along with Steve Rudman, he co-founded Sports Press Northwest because it didn’t seem right that the Google monster should aggregate daily journalism into oblivion without at least a flesh wound from somebody.

Thiel and Rudman labored under the Seattle Post-Intelligencer globe until the print edition died an undeserved death in March, 2009. Art continued on at its online successor seattlepi.com while working on SPNW’s creation. His radio commentaries can be heard Friday and Saturday mornings and Friday afternoon on KPLU-FM 88.9.

In 2003 he wrote the definitive book about the Seattle Mariners, “Out of Left Field,” which became a regional bestseller. In 2009, along with Rudman and KJR 950 afternoon host Mike Gastineau, Thiel authored “The Great Book of Seattle Sports Lists,” a cross between historylink.org and Mad Magazine that has become mandatory reading for any sports fan who has an indoor bathroom.

A graduate of Pacific Lutheran University as well as two dead papers and a live one, the News Tribune of Tacoma, he has become a fan of entrepreneurial online journalism because it allows him to continue a lifelong passion to take the English language to places it rarely visits willingly, and does not involve the cleaning of kennels or stables.

Paul Gackle grew up in the newsroom and he’s determined to carry journalism into the future.

Gackle started covering sports for his family’s newspaper, the McLean County Independent, in North Dakota as a teenager and he recently reported on the Giants, 49ers and A’s as a columnist for the San Francisco Examiner.

In addition to the Examiner, Gackle has published work with the East Bay Express, the Winnipeg Free Press and PBS Frontline.

Growing up in Canada, Gackle fell in love with hockey. He blogged about the now-defunct San Francisco Bulls in his first iteration of The Gackle Report and was the team’s color analyst on for radio on KNBR.com and TV with Comcast Hometown Network.