RIP PI

[gfish]

I'm a bad citizen. I simply don't care that the Seattle Post-Intelligencer is dead. I'm sorry.

I know it had been around for a long time, and I hate to see old things go away. But the newspaper business model is broken. Deeply, utterly broken. Haven't we learned by now the futility of fighting against a technology-driven change in business model viability? And I know that newspaper-funded journalism is a cornerstone of our society. I'm not sure what will replace it -- I'm not even sure anything will replace it. We could well be heading into a fairly bad period for journalism and democracy. Whatever the solution is, I'm quite sure it doesn't involve printing things on pieces of paper and delivering them as a subscription service.

This has been coming for all of my adult life. The only emotional response I have is surprise that more haven't died already.

Comments

[sistawendy.livejournal.com]

We could well be heading into a fairly bad period for journalism and democracy.

That's the part people should be getting bent out of shape about. Yeah, I'm going to miss dead trees with my cereal in the morning, but the potential for shennanigans by local politicians & businessmen just went way up here.

[neuro42.livejournal.com]

Have you *seen* what passes for "journalism" this past decade? "Fairly bad" doesn't even begin to cover it. Hell, deliberately evil, manipulative, exploitative, destructive-to-these-ends nation-murder doesn't begin to cover it.

[solarbird]

I was telling annathepiper that if I'd won the $300M lotto the other week (and I did buy a ticket) I'd have bought the P-I and turned it into to Stewart v. Cramer or Greenwald v. the Political Class every. damn. day. Or as many days as could be managed.

Sadly, I did not win the lotto. ;_;

[sistawendy.livejournal.com]

I did say "local", and I'm well aware of the suck that's been transpiring nationally. Leaving the job to the bloggers, though, won't solve the problem.

[neuro42.livejournal.com]

Oh, the bloggers are no better, to be sure.

[waysofseeing.livejournal.com]

I think a point that's gotten missed a lot in all the "WHERE THE HELL WERE YOU GUYS ALL DECADE?" shouting is that local journalism is important too.

The Port of Seattle has been run by corrupt incompetents for most of the last three decades. Our infrastructure is crumbling while Frank Chopp sits on his well-funded ass and refuses to let any transportation bills go through. Boeing's machinist strike last year was ruinous in ways that are only now becoming apparent. Eastern Washington's economy was deeply broken long before the credit crisis. We're a state divided in more ways than I can count, and nobody's doing the legwork to talk about it.

Since the P-I folded, the only paper in town is the Seattle Times, run by the Blethen family, deeply conservative, and arguably in the pockets of every power-broker and developer in town. Oh, and they're in financial trouble too. Their capacity and interest in investigative reporting is, shall we say, minimal.

The hope a number of us have is that the online P-I will become a model for the next generation of news reporting. It starts locally, and goes from there. My heart still goes out to the over 100 people at the paper who lost their jobs.

[waysofseeing.livejournal.com]

Or, put more succinctly: sistawendy is right.

[neuro42.livejournal.com]

And exactly which of those bad things did the P-I prevent, pray tell?

Yes, I agree, journalism has an important role to play as a check on corruption and idiocy. Unfortunately it's a role that's gone unfilled for a long time and I see no hope for improvement. Not least because there's almost nobody left who can actually read and/or care, even if we had people to write.

[waysofseeing.livejournal.com]

When you get past your cynicism and decide that you'd like to do something about it besides yell on LiveJournal, let me know and I'll put you in touch with some of the people who are working on the problem.

[neuro42.livejournal.com]

I appreciate the offer, but (a) I've seen nothing that would suggest to me that cynicism is unwarranted and (b) I have little or no desire to try and 'work on the problem' and no hope whatsoever that doing so could achieve anything.

[waysofseeing.livejournal.com]

Congratulations, then: you have achieved what Bujold accurately called a supine moral position. Don't expect me to take you or your complaints seriously in future.

[neuro42.livejournal.com]

Fair enough. Are you also going to criticize me for being cynical about the heat death of the universe and not "working on the problem" of the laws of thermodynamics?

[ilmarinen.livejournal.com]

FWIW, I agree that they have done very little. The Times will do even less, especially w/o competition.

-B.