The Seattle Post-Intelligencer, which has chronicled the news of the city since logs slid down its steep streets to the harbor and miners caroused in its bars before heading north to Alaska’s gold fields, was to print its final edition yesterday.
Seattle becomes the second major US city to lose a newspaper this year, following Denver, as many US dailies face uncertain futures, battered by quickly declining ad revenue in the age of the Internet and a teetering economy.
Hearst Corp, which owns the 146-year-old P-I, said on Monday that it failed to find a buyer for the newspaper, which it put up for a 60-day sale in January after years of losing money.
PHOTO: AP
The P-I’s roots date to 1863, when Seattle was still a frontier town. It will now shift to another frontier for newspapers: the Web.
“Tonight will be the final run, so let’s do it right,” publisher Roger Oglesby told the newsroom.
The P-I’s closure leaves Seattle with one major newspaper, the Seattle Times.
The Rocky Mountain News in Denver closed earlier this month after its owner, E.W. Scripps Co, couldn’t find a buyer. In Arizona, Gannett Co’s Tucson Citizen is set to close on Saturday, leaving one newspaper in that city.
And last month Hearst said it would close or sell the San Francisco Chronicle if the paper couldn’t slash expenses.
The US newspaper industry has seen ad revenue fall in recent years as advertisers migrate to the Internet, particularly to sites offering free or low-cost alternatives for classified ads. Starting last summer, the recession intensified the decline in advertising revenue in all categories. Four newspaper companies, including the owners of the Los Angeles Times, the Chicago Tribune and the Philadelphia Inquirer, have sought bankruptcy protection in recent months.
Hearst’s decision to abandon the P-I’s newspaper format in favor of an Internet-only version is the first for a large US paper, raising questions about whether the firm can make money in a medium where others have come up short.
While the P-I’s Web site 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 Web site 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.
Eleven people, including a former minister, were arrested in Serbia on Friday over a train station disaster in which 16 people died. The concrete canopy of the newly renovated station in the northern city of Novi Sad collapsed on Nov. 1, 2024 in a disaster widely blamed on corruption and poor oversight. It sparked a wave of student-led protests and led to the resignation of then-Serbian prime minister Milos Vucevic and the fall of his government. The public prosecutor’s office in Novi Sad opened an investigation into the accident and deaths. In February, the public prosecutor’s office for organized crime opened another probe into
RISING RACISM: A Japanese group called on China to assure safety in the country, while the Chinese embassy in Tokyo urged action against a ‘surge in xenophobia’ A Japanese woman living in China was attacked and injured by a man in a subway station in Suzhou, China, Japanese media said, hours after two Chinese men were seriously injured in violence in Tokyo. The attacks on Thursday raised concern about xenophobic sentiment in China and Japan that have been blamed for assaults in both countries. It was the third attack involving Japanese living in China since last year. In the two previous cases in China, Chinese authorities have insisted they were isolated incidents. Japanese broadcaster NHK did not identify the woman injured in Suzhou by name, but, citing the Japanese
RESTRUCTURE: Myanmar’s military has ended emergency rule and announced plans for elections in December, but critics said the move aims to entrench junta control Myanmar’s military government announced on Thursday that it was ending the state of emergency declared after it seized power in 2021 and would restructure administrative bodies to prepare for the new election at the end of the year. However, the polls planned for an unspecified date in December face serious obstacles, including a civil war raging over most of the country and pledges by opponents of the military rule to derail the election because they believe it can be neither free nor fair. Under the restructuring, Myanmar’s junta chief Min Aung Hlaing is giving up two posts, but would stay at the
YELLOW SHIRTS: Many protesters were associated with pro-royalist groups that had previously supported the ouster of Paetongtarn’s father, Thaksin, in 2006 Protesters rallied on Saturday in the Thai capital to demand the resignation of court-suspended Thai Prime Minister Paetongtarn Shinawatra and in support of the armed forces following a violent border dispute with Cambodia that killed more than three dozen people and displaced more than 260,000. Gathered at Bangkok’s Victory Monument despite soaring temperatures, many sang patriotic songs and listened to speeches denouncing Paetongtarn and her father, former Thai prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra, and voiced their backing of the country’s army, which has always retained substantial power in the Southeast Asian country. Police said there were about 2,000 protesters by mid-afternoon, although
RSS