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Seattle Post-Intelligencer wisely chooses evolution over death
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Plenty of people will bemoan the end of the print edition of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer tomorrow, and with good reason. Civic duty and journalistic missions aside, any institution that serves a city for 146 years has no choice but to bond with its readers and with its community. It's a legitimate passing, a lifestyle change for so many accustomed to picking up their copy of the P-I every morning, not to mention the staggering job losses both directly and indirectly tied to the paper stopping the presses forever.
But by choosing to continue operations rather than merely fold, the P-I may have also made the single most important decision in recent publishing history. As a major title in a major city (with the luxury of Hearst's backing), the P-I has the access and the institutional memory to actually execute journalism rather than mere aggregation, and has a chance to set the agenda for online news endeavors. Yes, every paper has a website but that's just what they are: a newspaper's website. A companion or complementary piece to a print edition.
The Post-Intelligencer's news operation is now absolutely free, not in price, but in actual execution. Free from lead times. Free from ad inches, free from escalating production costs and free from news stories growing stale waiting to be committed to ink. A formless, autonomous news and journalism entity with 146 years of credibility behind it. Other enterprises should be so lucky.
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