Mónica Guzmán of the P-I's Big Blog: Not Just Newspaper Hot...

Not even merely Blog Hot. She's actually approaching TV Hot. Check her out in this (unfortunately un-embeddable) video clip from KOMO4.

However, while KOMO has decided she's attractive enough for TV, the Pacific Northwest Newspaper Guild has decided her employment at the P-I is egregious enough to warrant a lawsuit. They say she's a reporter and belongs in the guild's bargaining unit. The P-I maintains that she's some kind of new media person and not a reporter in a mind-numbingly rote report earlier this week.

That staffer, Mónica Guzmán, writes only for the P-I's Web site, not for the newspaper. On July 2, the guild filed a grievance over the creation of her position, arguing that it should be performed by a union member. Guzmán declined to comment Tuesday.

On Aug. 30, the union submitted a demand to arbitrate the grievance, but two weeks later, the P-I told the guild it would not arbitrate.

The P-I's position is that a contract signed in February 1998, known as the New Media Agreement, addresses the issues raised in the grievance. That agreement discusses what sorts of online work guild members may be assigned to do, and it exempts online workers from guild membership.

There's also a slightly less boring version over on a Seattle Weekly blog.