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P-I Says Last Print Edition Is Tuesday
Posted: 9:44 am PDT March 16, 2009
Updated: 10:40 am PDT March 16, 2009
SEATTLE -- The Seattle Post-Intellingencer says it will print its last edition on Tuesday, ending a 146-year run.
The paper's owner, the Hearst Corporation, said the P-I will become the nation's largest daily newspaper to shift entirely online.
"Tonight will be the final run, so let's do it right," publisher Roger Oglesby told the newsroom.
Hearst's decision to abandon the print product in favor of a Web-only version is the first for a large American newspaper, raising questions about whether the company can make money in a medium where others have come up short.
David Lonay, 80, a subscriber since 1950, said he'll miss a morning ritual that can't be replaced by a Web-only version.
"The first thing I do every day is get the P-I and read it," Lonay said. "I really feel like an old friend is dying."
Seattle follows Denver in becoming the second major city this year to lose a daily newspaper. The Rocky Mountain News closed after its owner, E.W. Scripps Co., couldn't find a buyer. In Arizona, Gannett Co.'s Tucson Citizen is set to close Saturday, leaving one newspaper in that city.
And last month Hearst said it would close or sell the San Francisco Chronicle if the paper couldn't slash expenses in coming weeks.
The newspaper industry has seen ad revenue fall in recent years as advertisers migrate to the Internet, particularly to sites offering free or low-cost alternatives for classified ads. Starting last summer, the recession intensified the decline in advertising revenue in all categories.
Four newspaper companies, including the owners of the Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune and The Philadelphia Inquirer, have sought Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in recent months.
While the P-I's Web site ensures it a continued presence in the Seattle news market, it will likely be a pared-down version of its former self -- operating with a skeleton staff and a heavy reliance on blogs and links to other news outlets.
In February, the P-I Web site had 1.8 million unique visitors and 50 million page views, according to Nielsen Online. Meanwhile the newspaper's print circulation was down to 117,000 from nearly 200,000 in 1998, according to the Audit Bureau of Circulations.
Hearst did not immediately say how many of the P-I's 181 current employees would work on the Web product. This month top executives made provisional offers to about two dozen staffers.
It's also unclear how the online-only venture will affect the P-I's larger rival, The Seattle Times, which is controlled by the Blethen family and has a circulation of 199,000. The Times has had severe financial troubles of its own and has cut 500 positions in the past year.
Since 1983, the P-I and The Times have shared business operations in a joint operating agreement in which The Times handles advertising, printing and other business functions for both newspapers.
The P-I has had a feisty rivalry with The Times, which intensified when the Times shifted from afternoon to morning publication in 2000.
The P-I's roots date to 1863, when Seattle was still a frontier town and James Watson founded its precursor, the Seattle Gazette, as a four-page weekly.
The paper changed hands, names and offices several times -- including when the 1889 great Seattle fire destroyed its office -- before newspaper baron William Randolph Hearst bought the paper in 1921 through a representative. Hearst later revealed his ownership of the paper in an editorial, according to the P-I archives.
"Every idea, every movement, every debate in Seattle's civic life was reflected on the front page of the paper," said Leonard Garfield, executive director of the Museum of History and Industry in Seattle.
Some of the paper's more famous employees over the years included novelist Tom Robbins, columnist Emmett Watson and Frank Herbert, author of the science fiction novel "Dune."
Former P-I columnist Susan Paynter, who retired in 2007 after 39 years at the paper, said the P-I pushed the envelope on stories, running early pieces on abortion and the Equal Rights Amendment.
"The P-I was really on the forefront of telling the average person's story and why it mattered," Paynter said.
David Horsey, the P-I's editorial cartoonist who won the paper's only two Pulitzer Prizes in 1999 and 2003, said much would be lost when the print product ceases publishing.
"A daily newspaper tells the stories of a community and lets the people of a city know who they are, who their neighbors are, and the life and issues they share," said Horsey, who is under contract to continue drawing for Hearst's other newspapers. "When you lose any one newspaper, you lose a piece of that."
I guess it's really just evolution or even progress, but it feels like failure to me.
