Countdown Is On For Print Seattle P-I



Editor & Publisher picked up on a mention in a David Horsey interview that the final print edition of Seattle's Post-Intelligencer should be out in the next week or so. In fact, today is the final day for the paper to find a buyer, which never seemed likely. Horsey has apparently been employed by Hearst rather than the P-I in recent years, so his work will continue although now he'll supply all of the Hearst papers including whatever on-line form the P-Inow takes.

While I'm glad for the Pultizer Prize-winning Horsey and Seattle-based fans of his work, the actual news depresses me. The P-I ran my strip on-line and in its Sunday paper, for which I'll always be grateful. Dozens of cartoonist are going to lose a solid, high-paying client, and now that the Times (itself in trouble) no longer has to compete for the best strips no one will have their strip purchased just to keep it out of the other paper's hands and the survivor is free to cut their strips without the P-I using it as a competitive leverage point. In addition, the P-I had a really easy to access on-line archive of comics that I can't imagine will survive intact into the on-line only iteration.

Another thing that strikes me about the P-I closing is that unlike problems at some newspapers where some idiot or band of idiots bought the publication at hugely leveraged prices and cuts are about the balance sheet rather than keeping the institution solvent, Seattle seems more a lesson in the newspaper being historically outmoded. When I got to Seattle in the 1990s I really liked the way the papers were set up. The P-I came out in the morning and was a decent enough rag to consume over breakfast. Then the Times came out in the evening and you got basically a full report on what happened out East during the business day and what seemed like a lot more heavy hitters columnist- and feature writer-wise to have a nice afternoon coffee sit down. With The Stranger being a pretty good free weekly and the Seattle Weekly acting as the bloated and pleased-with-itself free weekly (this has changed over the years and is undoubtedly not an accurate description now), I thought Seattle had it all. But with shifting readership habits, changes in the way everyone advertises, the failure of newspapers to change their staffing model or up productivity on the content side in the Internet age, the decision in general by newspapers to chase the broadest readership no matter what, and the decision in general by newspapers to regard themselves as service providers rather than the providers of a particular service, and none of what's happening now surprises. It sure depresses, though.

Update: A few Seattle readers have written in to say that word on the street is that the last print edition will come out tomorrow.
 
posted 8:20 am PST | Permalink
 

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