As Window to Sell Seattle P-I Closes, What We Know About Its Future

By Julie Moos

Today is the end of the 60-day period during which Hearst Communications Inc. is accepting offers to buy the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, and once that window closes, it appears the company is preparing to cease printing and turn the 146-year-old paper into an online-only enterprise.

P-I reporter Jon Naito described the new P-I this way to The Seattle Times: "It looks like the site's going to be blog-heavy and link-heavy, with a couple breaking-news reporters."

Last week, about 20 staffers were offered jobs with the online-only P-I, according to the paper. Some declined.

Chuck Taylor offered this breakdown of possible positions:

• Two or three senior-level editors or producers
• Five frontline online producers
• Two frontline editors
• A Web developer
• A general-interest blogger/reporter
• A breaking-news reporter
• Two business reporters
• A political columnist/blogger
• A photographer

When will the paper publish its last print edition?

The Stranger, one of Seattle's independent papers, reported that "deadlines for stories that are being specially-prepared for the P-I's last print edition were recently moved up to last Friday. Editors and reporters spent the weekend readying those pieces to run on a moment's notice."

Many in the newsroom, The Stranger reported Monday, "seem to believe it's today, tomorrow, or the next day -- and today the money seems to be on Tuesday as the last normal workday, with Wednesday as the day that the last printed P-I ever rolls off the presses."

P-I employees took a photo at the iconic Globe atop their building on Monday, expecting the picture to appear in the paper's final edition. While there is no official etiquette for closing a newsroom, some staffers might see a benefit to the Rocky's recent abrupt ending. "As one reporter put it last week, the current vibe in the newsroom is: 'Put us out of our misery already,' " reported The Stranger.

Hearst has made no announcement yet about the timing. The Pacific Northwest Newspaper Guild blog reported, "As the Hearst Corp. said in its WARN Act notice to the Guild, the P-I will cease publication 'no sooner than March 18, and no later than April 1.'"

The WARN notice requires employers to provide 60 days notice before mass layoffs.

In a memo about the last day and other matters, Guild administrative officer Liz Brown also addressed "whether P-I employees put themselves and their severance at risk by engaging in efforts to start other news ventures, including Web sites."

There are at least two Web ventures being considered by P-I staffers: an investigative project for Western states similar to ProPublica and a community-funded nonprofit focused on local news.

Why is the paper closing and what role did/will the JOA play?

In a meeting about the sale, the president of Hearst's newspaper division, Steven Swartz, told employees, "Since 2000, the P-I has lost money each year, and the losses have escalated and continue to escalate in 2009."

Swartz noted increasing tensions between the JOA partners as a factor. Poynter's Rick Edmonds has explained the declining value of JOAs:

The law, incorporating several agreements authorized before 1970, waives anti-trust regulations and allows papers in a given city to pool business functions while maintaining separate editorial staffs -- hence preserving two distinctive editorial voices.

The idea was that the resulting savings could check a market dynamic in which circulation and advertising flowed to the stronger of the two papers and eventually drove the other out of business.

 

It didn't work, though. Most often the second paper grew so weak that it was losing money for its owners and dragging down the JOA "agency" as well. From a peak of 28 JOAs, the herd had been thinned to nine at the beginning of 2009.

Questions remain about whether or how the JOA will affect this new enterprise. The Seattle Times said:

It's still not known how Hearst would handle the non-news aspects of an online-only successor to the P-I. The company has said it would operate any such venture outside the joint-operating agreement (JOA) that has linked the P-I and The Seattle Times for 26 years.

Under the JOA, the Times and P-I have separate newsrooms, while the Times handles advertising, circulation, printing and other business functions for both.

That includes selling advertising and running the servers for Seattlepi.com. If the site operates outside the JOA, Hearst would have to perform those duties itself.

The JOA doesn't automatically expire when the P-I stops print publication. But even if the Times objects to an independent online-only P-I, it's losing money itself and may lack the resources to mount a legal challenge.

Previous coverage:

3/9/2009		P-I offers employees a "Last Visit to the Globe"
3/5/2009		Hearst makes offers to staffers for an online-only P-I
2/27/2009		About 150 gather for "Seattle As a No-Newspaper Town" discussion
2/24/2009		P-I's Thiel now wishes he had taken a woodshop class in high school
2/18/2009		P-I union to discuss an employee buyout of the paper
2/10/2009		Claim: The odds of Seattle P-I becoming an online-only entity are slim to none
1/27/2009		Don't write off the print edition yet, say P-I optimists
1/19/2009		"It's time to come clean: I love the Post-Intelligencer"
1/16/2009		P-I reporter: "Medill didn't teach me how to handle a closing newspaper"
1/15/2009		Hearst seeks P-I staff's ideas for an online-only operation
1/14/2009		Newspaper JOAs Reach End of the Line
1/14/2009		"The Post-Intelligencer has resisted it's-all-about-us journalism," says columnist
1/13/2009		"The next sixty days around here won't be dull," says Post-Intelligencer editor
1/12/2009		A former Seattle P-I newsman how to save the paper
1/12/2009		Seattle P-I veteran: "Friday was the day I didn't believe would ever come"
1/10/2009		"P-I employees were silent. Some of them shed tears."
1/9/2009		Confirmed: Seattle Post-Intelligencer is up for sale