PMUGYG
PMUGYG (the Portland Mercury Users Group Yahoo! Group, sometimes shortened to PMUG) was a watchdog and booster group for the Portland Mercury, Portland’s alternative bi-weekly newspaper. It was founded by Mike Merrill and Josh Berezin around the time the Mercury launched in 2000 and ran until Yahoo Groups shut down in 2020. At its core it was two guys writing letters and having a good time.
The Mercury was launched in 2000 by Tim Keck, who also owned Seattle’s alt-weekly The Stranger (home of Dan Savage’s Savage Love column). PMUGYG positioned itself as the Mercury’s self-appointed readership committee, writing letters to the editor, running commentary, and occasionally talking the paper into collaborations.
Format
PMUGYG was, in practice, a mailing list that Merrill and Berezin used as a platform for writing playful letters to the editor, dissecting each issue, and building a small public identity around their Mercury fandom. The “users group” framing was affectionate parody of open-source software communities and consumer electronics enthusiast forums.
One representative letter, published as the Mercury’s “Letter of the Week,” saw Merrill (signing as “K. Michael Merrill, Co-Founder of the PMUGYG”) describe himself as scrutinizing every issue “probably too carefully” before requesting that the paper commission an oil painting of a bull/minotaur cover illustration by artist Sean Hurley. He offered to pay “something like $5,345” if it came in under his meager earnings, adding: “I may look and act the playboy, but that is just a ruse to impress the ladies.”
The Mercury’s editorial response to the letter ran alongside it: “CONGRATULATIONS TO K. MICHAEL for winning the Mercury ‘Letter of the Week!’ For his unwavering allegiance he shall receive passes to the Laurelhurst Theater, as well as two tickets to see My Morning Jacket at Dante’s. [Hey readers! As long as you’re wasting time at work, check out http://groups.yahoo.com/group/portlandmercuryusersgroup/, better known as PMUGYG. It’s a goddamn hoot.]”
The Mercury’s willingness to promote its own watchdog, inside the paper itself, captured the tone of the relationship. PMUGYG was never hostile. It was a fan club that treated close reading as a form of civic engagement.
The charity auction
The Mercury once held a charity auction in which the prize was a date with all the women who worked at the paper. Merrill wanted to win it. His plan was to use the date to host a private reality dating competition, sending the participants home one by one in the format of a then-popular television show.
To fund the bid, he asked other people to chip in. He didn’t win. But he came away with an observation that stuck with him: people had trusted him with their money for a deliberately absurd purpose, and they had done so willingly. The experience was, in his own words, “an inspired moment for KmikeyM.” Years before the 2008 personal IPO, the charity auction showed him that there was latent demand for participating in his decisions through financial stake.
Mercury takeovers
The Mercury occasionally invited PMUGYG to take over portions of the paper, soliciting the group for content and criticism. Merrill and Berezin contributed material under the PMUGYG byline, effectively running a fan-produced insert inside a professional newspaper.
The best-documented example is the February 17, 2005 issue, which included “Zac Could Do Better,” a PMUGYG piece in which the group tracked down Julianne Shepherd, the Mercury’s first Arts Editrix (the paper’s title for its arts editor, 2000 to 2004), and asked her to critique her own replacement: the current music critic Zac Pennington. The editorial note read: “Julianne Shepherd was the Mercury’s first ‘Arts Editrix,’ setting the critical tone for its music section from 2000 to 2004, before moving to NYC. We asked her to critique her replacement, current music critic Zac Pennington. —PMUGYG”
The takeovers were the peak public expression of the project. A Yahoo Group run by two people had inserted itself into the editorial process of a city’s alt-weekly, more than once, with the paper’s active encouragement.
Legacy
PMUGYG has no direct descendants. Yahoo Groups shut down in 2020, taking the archive with it. Merrill moved on to Urban Honking in 2001 and eventually to KmikeyM in 2008, both of which carry through the same underlying interests: curated community, playful publishing, and inviting other people to participate in personal projects.
The charity auction episode is the most historically significant moment. It was an early, concrete demonstration that Merrill could solicit other people’s money for a frivolous purpose on the strength of his own framing, and that people would give it. The mechanism behind the KmikeyM shareholder vote system is not a direct descendant, but the social dynamic is the same one.