1. Welcome to SportsJournalists.com, a friendly forum for discussing all things sports and journalism.

    Your voice is missing! You will need to register for a free account to get access to the following site features:
    • Reply to discussions and create your own threads.
    • Access to private conversations with other members.
    • Fewer ads.

    We hope to see you as a part of our community soon!

Report: Seattle P-I likely to close

Discussion in 'Journalism topics only' started by WazzuGrad00, Jan 8, 2009.

  1. DanOregon

    DanOregon Well-Known Member

  2. Fran Curci

    Fran Curci Well-Known Member

    Someone asked about the San Francisco Examiner. It no longer exists in the form you recall. Here's the background from today's Seattle P-I story:

    In 2000 Hearst bought the San Francisco Chronicle. Then, because antitrust law forbade it to publish both papers, it put its San Francisco Examiner up for sale, saying it would shut the Examiner down if no buyer was found within six weeks.

    After months of political machinations, Hearst paid the politically connected Fang family $66 million to take the Examiner off its hands, according to a history published by the Chronicle.
     
  3. Drip

    Drip Active Member

    If Hearst had put more money in this venture, it wouldn't be in the state that it is in today. Great staff. Great people. This publication deserves a better fate.
     
  4. Joe Williams

    Joe Williams Well-Known Member

    Yet this remains one of the great alleged selling points of the Internet, and something for which newspapers and those who cling to some last-millennium traditions are chastised all the time: It's "interactivity" that is paramount now.

    Yeah, where might we end up, going forward, if we don't get people weighing in with comments such as the above? (wringing hands)

    If those types of comments reflect a significant portion of the P-I's readership, then it and others like it are doomed anyway. If those comments come from a minority, then clearly the majority of readers don't require the interactivity. Seems like just another one of those things that some consultants or editors at a Poynter seminar got together and decided that the industry MUST do, YESTERDAY, for its very survival.

    At the very least, newspapers -- which require proper identification of folks in stories and generally even sources -- ought to require real names attached to comments. It wouldn't filter out all the nuts, but at least fellow citizens would know who they are. Papers can always send the loonies to a separate "forum" or "board" sewer where they can spit all over each other.
     
  5. luckyducky

    luckyducky Guest

    I don't hold out a lot of hope for the survival of the P-I, but I will try to remain optimistic. I grew up on the Times (as an afternoon paper), but the P-I has developed into my favorite of the two over the past decade and, these days, it wins by a freakin' long shot (and even longer with the most recent round of Times buyouts).

    Especially since all the JOA stuff a few years back, I've felt like we were nearing the end for the P-I, but I can only hope (with that little bit I have) that either a miracle happens or, at least, the good ones all find a way to land on their feet (and those who have left recently thank their lucky stars).
     
  6. Drip

    Drip Active Member

    The places you named aren't exactly rolling trouble-free these days. Also, to many, those places are places to avoid for a variety of reasons.
     
  7. Angola!

    Angola! Guest

    The PI publisher says more info will be coming out later this afternoon and he doesn't squash the rumor, either:

    http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/business/395362_newspaper09.html
     
  8. But it's interactivity like this that is the future of our business!
    Seriously, this really sucks. Always liked both the Seattle papers. Who gets custody of the really cool revolving globe atop the building?
     
  9. JayFarrar

    JayFarrar Well-Known Member

    Hasn't the P-I always been considered the better of the two papers?
    I don't know, I've never even been to Seattle, but that was always my understanding.
    We talk about two newspaper towns, how many spots still have three or more papers?
     
  10. Lester Bangs

    Lester Bangs Active Member

    The people who post these comments seem to forget there are human beings at the other end of their spite. Our industry does little to deter this crap, but I have always been stunned that people can hate us so gleefully, like our kids don't play on the same soccer team.
     
  11. Frank_Ridgeway

    Frank_Ridgeway Well-Known Member

    An interesting sidebar is that someone's already adjusted the P-I's Wikipedia page to say: "On January 8, 2009, the Seattle Times announced that the Seattle Post-Intelligencer is up for sale, setting the stage for the paper's closure if a purchaser is not found in 30 days."

    Except the Seattle Times didn't "announce" it. It cited the TV report and quoted the Seattle Times' publisher (part of the family that owns 51.5 percent of the Seattle Times) as saying he knows nothing about it.

    Which tells us all we need to know about Wikipedia and its users' standards of accuracy.
     
  12. Frank_Ridgeway

    Frank_Ridgeway Well-Known Member

    The Seattle Times has always had a much larger staff and has won seven Pulitzer Prizes. Which one is better would be a matter of opinion, but the Times has always had the resources to do more things than the P-I, and the P-I was the "failing newspaper" in the original JOA application.
     
Draft saved Draft deleted

Share This Page