Death Watch for the Seattle P-I
As I type a grand old lady is dying. The staff are having a few drinks and are putting her "to bed" for the last time. She had a good run and along life, 146 years in fact, but still...
Tomorrow is the final addition of my newspaper; your last chance to actually go out and physically buy a Seattle Post-Intelligencer, the P-I, Seattle’s liberal rag. Meanwhile The Times, the conservative enemy, lives on, (for now?). I worked in the circulation department of the P-I in from 1979 to 1986 and I was there when the joint operating agreement, the JOA, was signed with the Seattle Times in 1983. The JOA gave control of the business, advertising, printing and circulation side over to the Times so from 83 on it is technically correct to say I worked for the Times but the P-I was my paper.
In the days before the 24/7 cable infotainment hysteria that passes for news. I would get home after a long night often soaked to the bone. No one was up yet and the house was quite. I had a golden hour to myself and like you I would settle down over coffee and savor the news, the real news, from front to back. The editorials and commentary were conveniently placed in a separate section. How quaint.
After the JOA the P-I kept it's own news staff and editorial board and in that respect it was a totally independent paper. Although circulation worked for The Times we kept separate circulation shops and got the P-I out every morning beginning at about 2 AM, 7 days a week. In the process I learned every back street, ally, and pig trail in the city from end to end. I knocked on a thousand doors, collected money and sold subscriptions and made lots of friends. The P-I was my paper.
Unlike the mail, the newspaper is delivered everyday, rain, sleet, snow, come hell or high water. No matter if the temp was 8 degrees and the snow 2 ft deep or if there was 6 ft of water backed up and we would have had to swim across, if that, crisp, clean, and dry, P-I wasn’t on your doorstep by 6:00 AM sharp you would call and complain. Yes you. You know who you are. LOL. We hated you and we loved you all the same because it meant that you cared. The morning paper was as important to you as morning coffee. Over time many of you found other news outlets and more and more of you stopped caring so tonight we finally sit the long expected death watch.
We thought that the JOA would be the death of the P-I but she fooled us because you cared and kept subscribing. We thought that surely the old girl would give up when the Times switched from the afternoon to become a morning paper in direct competition but you fooled us again you kept reading. Surprisingly you lasted 26 years after your first death warrant in 83. The Times tried time and again to carry out the sentence but you hung on. Finally, what The Times ownership never managed the economy and the Internet finally did you in.
The Hearst Corp put the paper up for sale two months ago and announced that if no buyer could be found that the paper would close. In this economy there are no buyers for failing newspapers so tonight is your last run. I and many others will miss you dearly.
For nearly a century and a half you have been not just the voice of Seattle but the liberal, labor, voice to this predominately liberal town, turned city, turned metropolis. Its quite ironic that in one of the most liberal cities in the nation it is your voice that is silenced. Oh, they say you will live on online but the Internet is a tough market, maybe an even tougher business model to hack than the print medium so your future is in doubt.
You were true your liberal roots; kept us informed and didn’t suck up to the corporations and the developers. Maybe I wouldn’t be writing this if you had but then you would have been The Times and not The P-I and not my paper. You had a good run and lived a long life but still....
Please support the P-I online http//:SeattlePI.com">http//:SeattlePI.com so that we will continue to have an alternative to The Times which among other things largely scuttled Darcy Burner’s race in the 8th Congressional District with a ginned up hit piece that was a total fabrication resume padding.
I would like to taken the time to write about the long history and all the Pulitzer winning journalists the paper has fielded and stories that they have covered but alas I don’t have time tonight. Tomorrow morning like many I’ll pick up a souvenir edition on the way to work. They will probably sell out quickly so get there early.
Kos did mention this in the Mid-day Open Thread but I thought he passing of a major newspaper deserved a little more coverage. I found it ironic that he took his link for the story from The Seattle Times and not the P-I itself.
Update I I picked up my final copy of the PI at 6 AM but couldn't read it for getting all choked up at
McDees. As I mentioned above I delivered the PI for years and the last night was one of those bone soaking, rain running down your nose totally miserable nights. Still it would have been an honor to be on the final delivery crew.
Update II The 150 jobs lost directly at the PI and those from The Times which printed and distributed it were living wage union jobs. The on-line site is a non-union shop. So they busted the union to stay in existence. Another 200 or so union support jobs will be lost at the Times.
Update III: Thanks for the rescue. I didn't expect to be so emotionally involved but I've been reading newspapers for 50 years and it isn't just the loss of the PI but the whole industry that concerns me. I realized that on a personal level it was similar to when they took steam engines off the main-line railroads. We live by mainline Southern Railway tracks and I loved watch big steam blast past with that plaintive whistle screaming at the crossing. I was young then but realized that something very fundamental had happened.
The newspaper industry is entering such a fundamentally irreversible era. Best wishes on the website although they need a good designer to uncluttered the place. Yes the diesel locomotive was heads about steam but for pure romance diesel locomotives never replaced steam and nothing will actually replace the visceral response to the crisp feel and inky smell of a newspaper still warm from the presses, and a hot cup of coffee on a cold wet NW morning.
On their site they talk about a lot of their history of investigative journalism, of the corruption exposed, the money saved, and wrongs that were righted. It's worth a read at http//:SeattlePI.com">http//:SeattlePI.com I don't see how 20 non-specialized people running a website can manage holding our local government and corporate institutions accountable. Maybe the economic ship will right itself and there will be more resource available in the future.
RIP-Dead Tree edition. Long live the website. In some form it is the obvious successor. In the end the content and not the medium is the message. Print journalists after all are the direct dependents of the tribal story tellers who transmitted events and group vision and wisdom around campfires built to ward of the creatures of the night. Story telling and gossip, which evolved into journalism will survive.
Thanks-A Yellerdog Democrat
Final Update: I now live in Olympia WA and was disturbed to read in this mornings Daily Olympian that they they are laying off 15 people and the Tacoma Tribune another 30. The "O" closed it's printing plant last fall and is now run in Tacoma by the Tribe and if you haven't noticed the paper has been reduced almost to the size of the grammar school "Weekly Reader". The reality is that the O is dying and probably the Tribe as well. Now we are told that the Seattle Times is in trouble without the subsidy it got from handling the P-Is printing and business. It appears that there will soon be NO daily newspaper here in the NW. Stay tuned. This is bad news.