A post by Pat
We know print journalism is in trouble for many reasons not the least of which is the competition of 24/7 TV news and the Internet. A Seattle TV station reported Thursday night that the Seattle Post Intelligencer newspaper was going to be put up for sale. The paper’s managing editor said nobody clued him in about it.
ING-TV: Seattle P-I for sale, could close
The future of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer appeared uncertain tonight after a local television station reported the newspaper is setting the stage for closure — but then the paper’s managing editor said he knew of no such plans.
… At about 5:15 p.m., according to the P-I, 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.”
The publisher of a competing newspaper was equally ignorant.
Seattle Times publisher Frank Blethen was likewise taken aback today: “I’m stunned,” he said in a hallway off the main newsroom. He later put out a statement to Times employees: “We have had no verifiable confirmation of this [KING-TV] report. We will communicate further with you once we have heard whether this information is accurate or not.”
The P-I newsroom was all abuzz.
They were like “hornets, with everybody buzzing around, saying, ‘What do you know? What do you hear?’ ” said columnist Joel Connelly.
This afternoon, the TV report was confirmed when the stunned P-I employees were gathered and told, yes, the newspaper is in fact for sale.
Seattle P-I up for sale; could go online-only
In no case will Hearst continue to publish the P-I in printed form, Swartz said. Regardless, he said, if no buyer is found, the P-I as a newspaper will not publish after the two months is up.
P-I breaking news editor Candace Heckman said the staff appeared stunned in the newsroom after the meeting.
“People cried, people are still crying, editors are slamming their doors,” she said. “There’s talking of drowning their sorrows.”
When you get scooped about yourself, it’s time to read the writing on the wall—newspapers are old news. Reports about the old media’s death are not premature.
Sink or swim baby! It’s not like this intarweb-thingy was just barfed up like a hairball from AlGores inner depths. Change with the times baby, change, it’s a commin for all your prints.
OMG STOP all this bailout nonsense before we regress so far, we will be a third world country.
Someone needs to hand Bush a friggin red, rubber Hell NO stamp. Paging VP Dicko….are we reaching?
Here is hoping that many, many more “newspapers” like the Seattle P-I bite the dust.
Earlier last year one of the best newspapers out there, The New York Sun went under and I really miss it. I hate when businesses shut down as many people lose their jobs. The Seattle Post-Intelligencer (dumb as a post?) was one of the worst left wing newspapers out there.
Also known as the Seattle P-U…love to see these left wing fish wrappers go down!Hope the Atlanta Journal-Constitution is next…by the way,Pat,know what the nickname for that paper is?
OT Has anyone seen the report that Exxon SUPPORTS a carbon tax? Have they found an angle to let them get their mitts in the cookie jar?
http://tinyurl.com/9cqjjr
According to Michael S. Malone in an ABC article he wrote October 10, 2008, he expresses shame as a forth generation journalist over the media’s obvious bias and shows recent examples (like Joe the Plumber) of its slant and viciousness.
More importantly, he explains why the main stream media has become what it is today.
To paraphrase, suppose you’re in your 50’s and you’ve spent 30 years working your way to the top of your newspaper only to find that you’re presiding over a dying industry. The internet and alternative media are stealing your advertisers and robbing you of fresh, young talent. Your peers have shrewdly donned their golden parachutes and disappeared.
Your job no longer has the power and influence it had when you began your climb to the top. The Newspaper Guild is too weak to protect you anymore and there’s a good chance that you’ll lose your job in the next ten years before you can retire with a pension.
You realize that newspapers and network news are doomed, so all that counts is to keep them on life support until you retire.
With luck, a single party government will crush the alternative media with the “fairness doctrine”, empower the unions by eliminating secret votes, and then, you hope, the powers that be will be grateful to you for helping them get there.
“With luck, a single party government will crush the alternative media with the “fairness doctrine”, empower the unions by eliminating secret votes, and then, you hope, the powers that be will be grateful to you for helping them get there.”
In other words: Screw America, screw the people, protect your dying job at all costs. Typical elitist attitude! The end justifies the means, ANY means. They need to get off their dead and dying arses and find other work, just like most of America has to do. It’s not like the writing HASN’T been smeared on the walls for a long time now.
This ME ME ME attitude has gotten us where we are now. When will they open their eyes and see it?
Sickening. The media is truly dead but they don’t even know it.
Let’s say you’re an average Seattle PI reader and you’ve just ducked into the nearest Starbuck’s from your shared apartment. It’s an early 10:45 am, the line of other dread-locked pierced customers for Veni Vidi Combibi Skinny is all the way to the door and no empty chairs exist. By the time you finally get your five and a half dollar cup of tarted-up coffee and get a seat and a piece of the Pike Place Market’s favorite fish wrap left behind by early risers with jobs, the only section not separated into it’s basic parts is the Help Wanted ads. When you finally get a glance a the op-ed page, you realize you saw it all the night before on Comedy Central from Jon Stewart. So you ask yourself, “What’s the point here? Why not buy a pound of Folgers, a garage sale Mr. Coffee, some cappuccino flavored soy milk and just stay home? The news is never farther than CNN and you don’t have to go out in the rain”.
With the NY Times, this Newspaper and others dying quick deaths, what does that tell us? I always hear the LNN (Liberal News Networks) always saying it is because people read the Pravdas online now. I’ve found that that isn’t the case. The real truth is people aren’t reading these rags anymore. So, are minds finally freeing up out there and realizing these rags are nothing more than propaganda papers, or is our society becoming illiterate? I don’t know, but the worse these papers get at reporting falsehoods, the more the Bank Stream Media reports more falsehoods. Has anyone tuned into MSNBC over the past 2 months? I have never seen a television station that is so full of idiots before in all my life! Literally. They literally are reporting lies. I’ve even found them reporting inaccuracies about their loved one Barky. Like they are literally in denial of the man’s real history.
On the other hand, the Post-Intelligencer had a great name. So appropriate for a post-intelligence world.