And so it goes: Another one bites the dust

Instead of growing more apathetic and desensitized to the demise of my fellow newspapers all over the country, each paper fold cuts my heart more deeply to the core. Today Hearst announced the Seattle Post-Intelligencer (P-I, as we call it in the journo world and in the NW region) is putting its last paper to bed tonight.

Thankfully, unlike the Rocky, the P-I will be staying in business in a fully-digital format.

What that means for the staff: reduction from 150+ employees to around 20. I can't help wondering what it would feel like to be one of the 20. I'd be relieved, but I imagine the object of much envy and bitterness. It would suck.

My Seattle Courant contact wrote about it from the unique perspective of an already online-exclusive news source in the same city.

Tweeted:

“Seattlepi.com isn't a newspaper online—it’s an effort to craft a...dig biz w/a robust, comm. news & inf. Web site at its core.” --Swartz.

RT @moniguzman Mng. Ed. McCumber at last P-I budget meeting: "We're gonna put out a great @$#% newspaper today. Any questions?"

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It is not the end of the world as we know it, but it makes a lot of us wonder where we're heading and how long we'll have jobs. The bread-and-butter of newspapering is disappearing, and so those of us trained in the great news reporting tradition feel our skills becoming obsolete.

Oddly, in the midst of all this horror, the local community newspaper seems to be doing well in comparison with the corporate-owned larger city and national newspapers. But how long will that last? Do enough citizens out there care anymore that their most effective mediator to the government is being slain? And not in the dark of the night, but in front of their very eyes in the broadest of daylight?

Do they realize that when the newspaper as such is gone, so is their freedom of speech and their ability to participate in democracy? Who will inform them, when this bloodbath is finished?

What does your local newspaper mean to you and your community?
Does it effectively fill its role as a public watchdog?
Does it seem to be surviving?
Are you reading it?
How could it better meet your community's needs?

Please share thoughts. I particularly want to hear from the readers.