Seattle Post Intelligencer for sale. Likely to close.

[pscot]

Source: KING 5 news

KING 5 news is reporting the the Seattle Post Intelligencer is being put up for sale by the Hearst Corporation. According to KING's report, Hearst does not expect to find a buyer, and the paper is likely to be closed, possibly as soon as February. The P.I is Sesattle's oldest newspaper. It began publication in the 1850's.

No link yet.

[LisaM]

1. WHAT?

That would be terrible. They have had a JOA with the Seattle Times, and the Times nearly drove them out of business a few years ago. This is sick.


P.S. - this is EXACTLY what we're being warned will happen. During these tough times, lots of brands will go under. Those that survive will become stronger AND more monopolistic.

[antimatter98]

2. Wish: that oranized labor and indy media would buy the paper.

The return (I'm assuming) of a paper devoted to working Americans (not just
unionized) and the issues concerning them.

Couple this with a web site and internet radio shows tied to the paper
and stories in it.

Could this become a national paper (with national subscription base?)??

Just thinking/dreaming out loud.

[pscot]

11. I know you gotta have a dream,

but you have an extremely vivid imagnation.

[maseman]

12. In all fairness "These Times" are not the newspapers problems

Newspapers refued to get with the program 10 years ago when internet came around and closed their eyes to the world-wide web. Rather than own the web and morph their dailies into a web copy they mostly ignored the web. In the meantime other companies such as Huffington Post, ESPN Sports, funny sites like Fark, local sites with local news, etc. came about and took a lot of readers and ad revenue.

Newspapers are dying because of the web. I get the local paper here only on Friday, Saturday and Sunday and many times never read it. I almost feel guilty but I will spend two hours reading online and 10 minutes with the local paper. I get much local news from the talk radio station (not Rus or those assholes) but local news announcers.

[LisaM]

13. What I get online and what I get from papers are two separate things

I use the newspaper for local news, obituaries, sports (except the PI's sports page is terrible), crossword puzzles, comics, etc. I use online for more interactive stuff. While I think you can blame the internet for the hard times newspapers are having (and for the short attention span and demand for instant gratification emerging new readers have), I still get lots of things from papers that I don't from the internet.

[maseman]

24. I agree with you

I still love to get on an airplane and read the whole paper. The comics just don't translate for me online. But I think you and I are becoming a quick minority of newspaper readers.

[high density]

3. Seems to be a bad rumor?

The P-I's managing editor said he knows of no plans to sell the paper. At about 5:15 p.m., soon after the report was aired, managing editor David McCumber told the newsroom's staffers, "If this is going on -- and I don't know that it is -- it's going on at a level that's far above me, and nobody has seen fit to clue me in. I think it's a bunch of rumor. You look at the state of this business -- it wouldn't surprise me if something was going on, but I have no knowledge of what that something is."

McCumber said that he had spoken to P-I editor and publisher Roger Oglesby by phone a few minutes before and that Oglesby "said almost exactly what I'm telling you."

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/business/395362_newspaper...

[WannaJumpMyScooter]

23. so they went with a rumor on their

front page?

[villager]

4. Link:

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2008605...

[CLANG]

5. Damn, that was a hell of a paper!

[liberalmuse]

6. I hope this is not true.

The SPI is our liberal paper.

[KamaAina]

7. Please close the (Behind the) Times instead!

Seattle is one of our most progressive cities. It deserves better than to be stuck with a right-wing cat box liner. But then again, so does SF...

[Norrin Radd]

32. I second that motion.

But we'll still have The Stranger.

[KamaAina]

8. Does Tacoma have a daily?

Maybe it could rebrand itself as "The Puget Sound Bugle" or whatever and move in, like the San Jose Mercury News does as "The Bay Area's Best".

[Newsjock]

9. The (Tacoma) News-Tribune

... has always had its sights on the south side of the Seattle market. They're a McClatchy paper, too, but they're struggling mightily as well.

[UpInArms]

10. bad times for print media

there's little money for the costs involved in producing a paper of any substance

[Xithras]

14. Yep, papers in general have been in a death spiral for years.

The current economy has just steepened the rate of the dive. Those 24 hours news channels started eating into newspaper circulation decades ago, but the explosion in channels (Faux, MSNBC, etc) has been steadily luring away older readers. Younger readers typically get their news from the Internet and are not replacing them. Most newspapers have adopted a hybrid model and now publish to the Internet as well, but ad revenues are much smaller. Even the classifieds, once the bread and butter of newspaper budgets, have been relegated to second-class status by Ebay and Craigslist. Once upon a time, if you had something to sell, you took out a classified ad to do it. Nowadays you just post it online.

The local paper where I live, the Modesto Bee, was recently "reorganized" for the same reasons. All but a handful of reporters were fired, the production staff was laid off, and the printing presses were shut down and outsourced to the Sacramento Bee production facility 90 miles away (common owner). The Modesto Bee, which has been a popular local paper since the 1880's, is now just a branch of the Sacramento Bee with a few local stories tossed in to give it local interest.

Newspapers are dying, and nothing is going to prevent that.

[rvablue]

15. Wow, Xithras, used to live in CA and hadn't heard this about the Bee in Modesto

in-freakin'-credible???

Do my eyes deceive me, did I really just read what you wrote??

Of course, I'm being facetious, I'm just in shock?!?!

Wow, just, wow?!?!

Have you happened to hear if the same treatment went down at the Fresno Bee?

This is a huge harbinger of what is coming hard and fast for newspapers....will it be the death of REAL journalism?

Because so far, IMO, cable and Interent have not caught up to the level of newspapers as far as ethics and investigations/digging and so forth.

Thanks for posting this, or else I never would have heard about it.

[Xithras]

26. Yep, pretty much.

I had a discussion with a longtime Modesto Bee reporter after the "reorganization". He said the offices are a mausoleum now compared to what they used to be. The place is very quiet with only a fraction of the old staff still around. Reporters are expected to cover multiple "beats", the vast majority of the content is now syndicated, and a lot of it comes from Sacramento. The paper itself is now completely printed in Sacramento. The Modesto staff just assembles the local stories and wires them up there for printing. The paper is a shell of what it once was.

I know they reorganized the Merced Sun-Star at the same time, but I don't know if they did the Fresno Bee as well. Since there's 175 miles of crowded freeways between the two cities, I doubt they were pillaged quite as badly.

I happen to agree, by the way, that it's very bad for real journalism. The Bee used to be a great newspaper and one of the few centrist/liberal voices in an otherwise conservative region. It was also the only way many in the northern SJV got their news since the Sacramento TV market rarely reports on anything south of Stockton. Nowadays, 90% of the calls made to their tiplines are met with a response of "I'm sorry but we don't have any reporters free right now." The quality of local news coverage has plummeted.

[rvablue]

34. Thanks for the reply...really just amazing....the "Bee" franchise/name (even though just part of

McClatchy) always had cache, so to speak, as far as being good, decent papers in CA.

What a shame...and one can only imagine what else will go down the tubes in those towns without the eye of the press on them.

I think we are going to see a lot more of this and it scares me to think what will happen to society as a whole (government, police, etc.) without the watchdog of beat reporters out there.

[Newsjock]

16. Seattle P-I up for sale

Source: Seattle Times

The Seattle Post-Intelligencer, which first rolled off the presses in 1863 and has been the state's longest-publishing newspaper, is up for sale, according to the paper's Web site.

The newspaper's staff was called into a closed meeting today by publisher Roger Oglesby. Present at the meeting was Hearst Newspaper President Steve Swartz, who told the newsroom that Hearst Corp. is starting a 60-day process to find a buyer. If a buyer is not found, Swartz said, possible options include creating an all-digital operation, and shutting down the paper.

The options include moving to a digital-only operation with a greatly reduced staff, or completely shutting down operations. In no case will Hearst continue to publish the P-I in printed form, Swartz said.

Swartz said the company is not interested in attempting to purchase The Seattle Times.

Read more: http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2008609...

---

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/business/395463_newspaper...

The Seattle P-I is being put up for sale, and if after 60 days it has not sold, it will either be turned into a Web-only publication or discontinued entirely.

"One thing is clear: at the end of the sale process, we do not see ourselves publishing in print," said Steven Swartz, president of the Hearst Corp.'s newspaper division.

Swartz addressed the P-I's newsroom at about noon Friday, flanked by P-I editor and publisher Roger Oglesby and Lincoln Millstein, Hearst's senior vice president for digital media.

[LisaM]

17. It said in no case will HEARST continue to publish it

but if someone buys it, a print edition could continue.

This news really, really, sucks.

[Newsjock]

18. Fixed

I found an actual story from the Times.

It also seems extremely unlikely that a buyer would emerge. Perhaps if, like in SF, Hearst pays someone to take it off their hands.

[Taverner]

19. We should pool our money together and buy it

And start a Liberal Newspaper Empire

[WannaJumpMyScooter]

20. wow.... that was always one of hearst's

golden eggs

[struggle4progress]

21. dupe

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph...

[Phred42]

22. Damn it - MORE consolidation

[Joanne98]

36. Yep.

[The abyss]

25. I would not under estimate the fact…

That it was the main stream press that continually repeated the lies about WMD and repeatedly sold the need to invade a foreign nation based on those lies. Yes, the print media is dying because of the digital communication. I feel an even bigger role in this demise is the fact that people simply got tired of sub-scribing to a cheer leading service for a government that had clearly gone insane.

Local news and local human interest is the only reason I read a paper. Sites like DU and many others are where I’ve gone for years to find out what was going on in the world.

I was linked to DU during the height of the abu ghraib scandal. DU provided some of the best information and commentary during that time.

[Blue_Tires]

27. very sad...how many more must we lose?

[superconnected]

28. We'll probably lose them all - to internet.

[Blue_Tires]

29. terrible times

i used to be a reporter, and i still have some friends trying to survive in the industry...brings a tear to my eye

[superconnected]

30. I agree. They are still needed, whether they are on paper or internet.

This is very sad for Seattle as well as the people that work for the PI.

[Zavulon]

31. And yet the NY Post and Washington Times continue to survive.

[No Elephants]

33. So many papers merging, going out of business, etc. scares me. If they cannot

stay afloat or pay the news services for content, where is our news going to originate? Rush Limbaugh?

[Joanne98]

35. And their bonds will be worthless too!

[Agent William]

37. I'd rather it close than...move to Oklahoma City...

If you know what I'm talking about..