Death of the American Newspaper (a continuing saga)

Well, it finally happened. Again.

I didn't make a big deal over the passing of the Rocky Mountain News. Perhaps because it was a tab. Perhaps because Denver has never struck me as a real two paper town. Perhaps because the alt weekly Westword is good enough to fill in the gap left by the loss the Rocky. Perhaps because I just missed it.

But I am not going to let the passing of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer go without notice. Seattle is a big town, with a news community covering a wide region, and stories that involve border and trade and international issues. So this is a big deal.

Of course we've all seen the trend, and shouldn't be significantly surprised by this. But it's happened, and now we have to deal with it.

Perhaps Seattle, once the city of grunge, then coffee, and of course always online (always if you only go back to the early '90's) is one of only a handful of major communities that can weather this situation. The city is disproportionally online, so that argues for people being able to continue to get news and information. And it's a young place, with a dynamic University community, and plenty of folks who aren't restricted by old media or old standards.

Still, a paper means something to a community. Perhaps even more than a sports team, or a museum, or even an orchestra. In this case, the PI had been operating in Seattle for 146 years. And even as it morphs f/t into an online publication, it won't be the same.

The question will be whether this is an example of change for the better, and whether other cities, when their papers fail, will be able to incorporate these changes as well as Seattle will likely be able to do.