Hearst will maintain online P-I

The company quietly made about 20 offers this week to current staffers -- most below 35, and none in sports -- to work for the website after the print edition goes away in the next couple of weeks.

They're offering worse pay and worse benefits, and forcing those who accept to forgo their P-I severance, which in many cases is asking them to leave tens of thousands on the table. Apparently they figure people are desperate enough that they'll decide something is better than nothing.

Only one guy admits to getting an offer, and he told them to take a hike.

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/business/402470_onlinepi06.html

 

About 12 percent of the staff would stay on. Makes these furloughs/layoffs/buyouts seem like a bad warmup act.

 

Higher health insurance, lower pay, no overtime and lose any severance and all your accrued vacation time.

And what makes them think the folks they do this to are going to produce a product anyone wants to read?

 

And 80% fewer staff.

For everyone who wants to say that journalism will still exist in "some form," this is the form. Get a good, long look.

 

A couple of friends got offers and, while I support them if they do stay (because I know they love what they do .. and know the state of the job market/industry), I think they should join their (soon-to-be-former) coworker and tell 'em to take a hike.

The guy who told 'em to take a hike is a good guy -- great reporter, great writer, has a cool family. Despite his 'He worked at one of my former papers before I got there and I randomly met him while selling stuff on craigslist (I know, blasphemy) when I moved ... he bought my couch for one of his kids' apartments. And yes, his "too tech oriented" comment makes him seem not with the times, but he is. Online-only stuff isn't for everyone.

 

The draconian conditions of employment under the New Deal should provoke all
involved to get very, very serious about that new PR career, pronto.


Mr./Ms. Employee: You want to save the ship? Eat shit, or die.


No, thanks.

 

The employees who got let go should open their own P-I online site. It'd kick the shit out of the one with the leftover employees.
Why don't people see this as an opportunity? The online PI will be a piece of shit.
Make your own website, people of Seattle who were let go.

 

Nobody will read the online P-I. Especially if Art Thiel and Dan Raley aren't involved, and it sounds like they won't be. Those two are the best writers on staff, in any department.

 

Maybe the Times will hire Thiel like the Post did with Krieger?

 

Love Thiel's work but there's no way he attracts enough ads and readers to pay him, as an incremental move by the Times. No one of us does. Most P-I customers who switch to Times will do so because it's the only paper option left.

It's always been the critical mass of a full-feature, properly staffed newsroom that makes the product worth paying for. You cut here, you cut there, you cut here, you cut there and soon you're left with nothing worth paying for.

The good news is, a start-up online option becomes more viable with every cut the mainstreamers make. That said, I agree with this too:

 

If you admit to getting an offer and turning it down, will that mess up your unemployment benefits?

 

Usually you can turn down a job, at least right off the bat, if the pay is substantially less than what you were making.