Editorial cartoonist and graphic artist Steve Greenberg says goodbye to the Seattle Post Intelligencer, a newspaper he called home for 14 years.
Hearst has pulled the plug on the paper, which had a circulation of about 200,000 and was the biggest morning paper in Washington when I started there in August 1985. It had clunked along as the junior parter in a JOA, surrendering its printing, advertising sales. marketing and circulation to the larger Seattle Times. But having agreed, for a bigger split of the profits, to let the Times move into its morning monopoly, Hearst saw the paper’s circulation plummet to about 117,000 and its finances go down the toilet between the recession, a strike in 2000 (shortly after I’d left) and the bleeding of newspapers in general.
The Seattle Times was richer, more elite, centrist-to-conservative, and smugly superior, selling far better in the well-to-do suburbs. The P-I was looser, more liberal, more blue collar, less-esteemed but generally a match for the Times in quality, and had the feel of being the more historic “voice of the Northwest.” It gave itself a wonderful symbol of a giant rooftop globe straight out of Superman and the Daily Planet, with the words “It’s in the P-I” cranking around its equator.
Read the entire article on his blog. Below is the front page from today’s Seattle P-I printed newspaper. It is the last one you will ever see as the operation moves to online only. The move is being closely watched as it is the first time a large daily newspaper has switched with no transition to online only. I can guarantee that if the operation turns profitable (even marginally so), there will be a stampede of newspapers following suit. Continue reading