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Just last month, Colorado's oldest paper, the Rocky Mountain News, shut down forever. Recently the San Francisco Chronicle was on the chopping block, with parent company Hearst Corporation saying that without union concessions, since agreed upon, the newspaper would fold, leaving SF the only major N.A. city without a major newspaper.
In Seattle, despite the folding of the print edition of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, its larger rival, the Seattle Times will still be in print. But the 146-year old newspaper, Seattle's oldest business, will cease publishing.
Still, the company tried to spin the move positively, noting that the Seattle Post-Intelligencer's online presence, SeattlePI.com, will still be around.
Editor and Publisher Roger Oglesby said:
"Tonight we'll be putting the paper to bed for the last time. But the bloodline will live on. The thing that should not be missed here is that the P-I is not going away. The P-I is going online. Nobody is happy about the newspaper going away. That's a sad thing. The editorial voice is still going to be here."
Steven R. Swartz, president of Hearst Newspapers added that SeattlePI.com was going to become more than just a news source:"Seattlepi.com isn't a newspaper online—it’s an effort to craft a new type of digital business with a robust, community news and information Web site at its core. It will feature the breaking news reporting of Chris Grygiel and others covering City Hall; Levi Pulkkinen reporting on the court system; popular staff blogs like Seattle 911 with Casey McNerthney and the Big Blog by Monica Guzman; columnists like Joel Connelly, Art Thiel and Jim Moore; and of course, the cartooning and commentary of two-time Pulitzer Prize winner David Horsey. The Web is first and foremost a community platform, so we'll be featuring new columns from prominent Seattle residents; more than 150 reader blogs, community data bases and photo galleries. We'll also be linking to the great work of other Web sites and blogs in the community.
"On the business side, we are assembling a staff to form a local digital agency that will sell local businesses advertising on seattlepi.com as well as the digital advertising products of our partners: Yahoo! for display advertising, Kaango for general marketplaces and Google, Yahoo!, MSN and Ask.com for search engine marketing. The site will also feature a digital yellow pages directory powered by Hearst's yellow pages unit, White Directory Publishers.”
Here's a transcript provided by the Seattle Post-Intelligencer of Seattle P-I Editor and Publisher Roger Oglesby as he addressed staff in the newsroom Monday morning.
Tonight we'll be putting the paper to bed for the last time. But the bloodline will live on.
Hearst is announcing today that the P-I will become an online-only news operation. The last print edition will appear tomorrow.
We have copies of the press release for you, as well as a letter from (The Hearst Corp. CEO) Frank Bennack and (Hearst Newspapers President) Steve Swartz. But first I have just a couple of things to say.
This is a hard day for all of us. We were fortunate to be part of a great newspaper with a great tradition, and we've been blessed to be part of a wonderful group of talented people. We all hate to see that end.
But we knew it was coming. Hearst fought for years to keep this place going, but time and these rotten economic conditions finally caught up with us.
But there's another part to the story, and I'm not going to let you forget it. It's the part that has to do with what will live on and who's responsible for it. Tomorrow, SeattlePI.com will be reborn, outside the JOA. It will continue, and it will thrive, and it will be a strong and vital voice of this city for years to come.
Some of you will part of that ongoing effort, and you have an exciting road ahead of you. But we should all remember that everybody at this paper helped to build SeattlePI.com and the foundation on which its future will rest. Every one of you, everyone at this paper, should take pride in that. I will, and you should, too.
As for the paper, tonight will be the final run. So let's do it right. This is a great newspaper and has been for a long time. Let's show the world it still is. Let's show them what we can do, one more time.
Farewell to the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, and as more and more move to the Internet, is this the beginning of an age in which we may no longer have print newspapers? Time will tell.
Posted March 16th, 2009 by Michael Santo
