The Seattle Post-Intelligencer, which has chronicled the news of the city for 146 years, printed its final edition today.
Hearst Corp., which owns the newspaper, said Monday that it failed to find a buyer for the Post-Intelligencer, which it put up for a 60-day sale in January after years of losing money. Now the P-I will shift entirely to the web.
Hearst’s decision to abandon the print product in favour of an Internet-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.
Hearst’s move to end the print edition leaves the P-I’s larger rival, The Seattle Times, as the only mainstream daily in the city. The Times plans to deliver a copy of the newspaper to every P-I subscriber on Wednesday morning, spokeswoman Jill Mackie said.
Seattle follows Denver in losing a daily newspaper this year. 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.
Last month, Hearst said it would close or sell the San Francisco Chronicle if the newspaper couldn’t slash expenses in coming weeks.
The San Francisco Chronicle’s largest employees union voted 10-1 on Saturday to approve a tentative labour agreement that will allow the newspaper to lay off workers without regard to seniority, along with other cost-cutting measures.
While the P-I’s website ensures it a continued presence in the Seattle news market, it will likely be a pared-down version of its former self—with a heavy reliance on blogs and links to other news outlets.
The P-I had 181 employees, but managing editor David McCumber said the website would employ about 20 in the newsroom operation and another 20 to sell ads. He said he would not be working on the new site.
Steven R. Swartz, president of Hearst Newspapers, said the online P-I would not just be “a newspaper online.”
“It’s an effort to craft a new type of digital business with a robust, community news and information website at its core,” Swartz said.
In February, the P-I website 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.
