After retiring, my husband and I moved to WA last July from So.Cal. and have been receiving the PI daily. We were surprised and dismayed to hear that they were most likely not going to be printing their newspaper much longer. We always read the daily Orange County Register newspaper in CA for 50+ years and we've been enjoying the PI here. We don't always agree with the opinions of the editorials but find it interesting to read other peoples' viewpoints. We're not sure what we will do if the PI ends and possibly The Times; whether we will look for another newspaper to be delivered. We also watch the news daily on TV and my husband listens daily for a little while to the radio news in the evening. We will definitely miss our daily PI paper. We wish they could stay in business. Good luck to all their employees.

We must do all that can be done to save the printed newspapers. This is a threat to our very democracy. Without the research of the excellent newpaper journalists, bloggers wouldn't even have anything to blog about. I am retired, and as do many others, look forward daily to my newspaper. I do not like to read it on-line. People should not be able able to read whole newspapers on-line for free. Newspapers are only hurting themselves more by limiting columnists, letters-to-the-editor and other features. What has happened to Jim McDermott's plan to look into making newspapers non-profits. Or, as in The Stranger, advertiser's fees would cover both the printed and on-line versions. As a paid subscriber, I feel continually devalued. Laurel

It is terribly amusing watching you do the exact same thing that is killing the newspapers.
You bring in folks so that you can cry together, "whoa is me".
Never asking tough questions of yourself. The introspection leaves a lot to be desired.
Journalism school is teaching students(whatever are left) that journalists should be an "agent of change", but never asking "who's change?"
What I want from a newspaper is the NEWS!!!!!!!!
I do not want anybody's damn opinion. That is what MY brain is for.
Tell me the FACTS and let me formulate an opinion.
No one does this, and therefore good riddence to the PI, The LA Times, the NY times and all the other rags that think I need some snot nosed reporter out of school to tell me what my opinion should be.

My husband and I are retired and have subscribed to the PI since 1970. Although we have access to the internet, neither one of us want to sit in front of a computer for hours to read the news! Whenever I have looked at a news story on the internet, it was a story from a NEWSPAPER!!! Where would the internet get the information if there were no newspaper articles to draw from? I don't think I care to read articles, not knowing if the "writers" are credible or not. With newspapers, we are in a better position to judge whether a story has merit or not, depending on the newspapers' reputation. We will both miss the PI and believe that the death of the newspapers is a very sad statement of the times.

It has been well over 10 years since I last subscribed to a newspaper. I got tired of the way piles of old paper grew into problems of disposal. Miss newspapers? No. I get my news every morning from the New York Times, The Jerusalam Post, Pravda(a silly source), China Daily, Times Online-London and AlJazerra. I might consider a newspaper if I could just delete it when it became useless. Hummmm...come to think of it that is what is happening. How are we will we ever know that Big Five is having a shoe sale. Get over it.

I am the Publisher of Coffee News Seattle and find the recent demise of newspapers across the country a tragedy. Good journalism costs money to produce and I hope newspapers can find a revenue model that works to pay trained journalists to produce this content. I look forward to seeing what this model may be.

There is an incredible trend in micro blogging and niche blogging, podcasting, etc. that serves up incredibly useful and immediate information. Many of these sites are red-hot, and those that are not are still very viable due to the "Long Tail" model of the Internet that brings this very obscure content through Google searches, etc.
I myself have produced a weekly podcast about tornado survivors of all things called Tornado Witness Radio. Yes, this is the future of the media, however very, very few people have found a revenue model that supports such media. studies have found that Internet viewers have become quite savvy in tuning out internet advertising. This model also looks at "clicks" or hits and studies have found that over half of these hits are counterfeit while many other hits did not result in more business for the advertiser. In the end, however, one of the best quotes I've seen so far came from the publisher of the PI, or the Times when he mentioned that how can you get someone to pay for on-line content when you can't even get them to sign-up for content for free? This was the case at NY times which now give most of its content for free without signing up.

Good luck to newspapers across the country and especially their passionate journalists who have sacrificed to bring truth, understanding, and compassion to their communities. Good luck on finding an economic model that works and rest assured that the Internet news models need your well written, researched, and paid for journalism.

Darrell Kirk
Publisher
Coffee News Seattle

Host,
Tornado Witness Radio

The loss of regular, accountable print journalism, the "4th Estate," is a danger to our society. The loss coupled with conglomeration of media in the US -- See Belo Corp., y'all at KING5 -- means more and more people will get less information from fewer and fewer sources. Who will challenge the Powers That Be? Will TV/radio, "free" weeklies, et al keep the Mayor, City and County Councils, School Board, Chamber of Commerce, etc. as honest (as they are)? I doubt it. How much more corruption will there be? Time will tell, but I fear it won't be good.

Hey, even Seattle liberals need something to complain about. The PI seems to have left their readers with no reason for whining and the paper went directly to the bottom of the bird cage. Just speculating here, if they would have had a consistent neutral or right wing lean from a reporter or two, I am sure the readers would have been chomping at the bit to get their hands on the next paper to find that story to tick them off. They then would have an outlet and generate numerous letters of complaints to the editor. The PI is supposed to be a NEWSpaper. All it turned out were one sided arguments and democratic party propaganda.

The loss of regular, accountable and varied-viewpoint regular hardcopy press (Ed. and Op-Ed) in the U.S. is not just a sign of the economy, it's part of the dumbing down of the American people -- the power brokers (who get richer and richer even in tough times) love it! Who's knows who they are? Who's gonna' watch them? More and more people will be making decisions based on fewer and fewer outlets such as Belo Corp, the NewsCorp, etc. See http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/cool/giants/)

Can't you see all the suffering papers around the country have one big thing in common they sympathize with left of center democrat ideals. I agree the internet has some part in this but the internet did not come online last year its been around for awhile now and may have slowly eroded the papers but the final nail in there coffin is their liberal slant. WSJ and Fox news are doing mighty fine. Get a clue people

Your program overlooked one obvious point, and that is the pervasive looney left bias (Connelly, Horsey, et al) of this rag. I will not pay to have that in my house.

So, it will be marginally more difficult to paper a bird cage in Seattle, but other than that, it will not be missed.

No doubt, great newspaper journalism will continue to be written and read online by newsworthy sources. Do you really trust everything you read on a blog? How hard would you work for free, or how much spare time would or could you devote to a passion that needed fulfillment? We're taught that nothing ever remains the same. Everything changes, grows and with growth evolves. And in our search for truth, I'm convinced that newspapers will follow accordingly. It just so happens that sometimes the process can be painful, and given the current economic climate it only proves to be heightened.
When it's all said and done, not only will there be newsworthy news sources that inevitably survive, but thrive.

get a clue people, the times and p-i are finanical trouble
if these papers can see a light at the end of the dark tunnel
my theory is, maybe they can merge papers
but the way they would is, that they would first have to get a buyer for both the seattle times and the seattle p-i in order for that idea to work
like maybe they could get the new york times to buy them
and this is because, it would make the reputation of the local papers better for everyone

Ahem... the advance of technology is the cause here, not the wishful thinking of those with an ideological slant. Other papers, left and right, will be facing the same challenge in the shift of the delivery (from print to electronic), including WSJ - and since when has Fox News been in print?

The deterioration of the delivery of unbiased news will initially suffer, since opinions from every corner will surface in the content. But I predict that eventually, costs will be recovered in the form of subscriptions online for reputable news sources, albeit at a smaller scale.

The unfortunate side effect of this will be increased government control of the media, which is already mostly slanted to the left. Hard, unbiased independent news that questions all authority is rapidly becoming extinct. TV news simply parrots what they find on the wire or internet, whether it's accurate or not. If we lose hard copy and go exclusively to the internet, we end up with political, agenda driven bias or state run propaganda.

get a clue people, the times and p-i
are in trouble right now

my theory is, maybe they can merge papers
but the way they would is, that they would first have to get a buyer for both the seattle times and the seattle p-i in order for that idea to work
like maybe they could get the new york times to buy them
and this is because, it would make the reputation of the local papers better for everyone

There are umpteen many new stations, the internet with most likely Hundreds of thousands if not Millions or more news sites.

I can read the news here, local and global.

Why would you pay a monthly subscription to a paper when they post it all online anyway.

Trees are cheaper now so the paper obviously isnt a huge expense.

Could it be the internet and TV is cheap or free and more accesable?

Keep printing on paper, show us how green you arent.

With our Econemy in Ttouble,
i think that it would be unfair to every single reader who trusts these papers if the print version of seattle p-i went away

i think that having newspapers merge together
would help the current situation people are in
and keep the print editions afloat , as well as get online versions of the papers going as well

and i believe that the times and the p-i
could find a buyer if they just put their mind to it

I have one thing to say to the PI...Good Riddance! What a pile of garbage that paper has turned into. As a lifelong resident (41 years) of the Seattle area (Woodinville), I grew up with the times and PI, and have seen it go farther and farther left so they only appeal to half the population (if that). I have read some posts on here mentioning "great journalism" and the PI in the same sentence, which is an oxymoron from where I see it. They have virtually no "journalist" with a opinion other than the wacky far-left.

I actually predicted the demise of all newspapers over 10 years ago when eBay was launched. Between eBay and Craigslist, their classified revenues completely dried up, and ad revenue all moved to the Internet. It is NOT just the PI, they will be one of many. The pi was only good for lighting fires in the fireplace anyhow.

Our democracy is dependent on a free press. If that dies, we're done. Consolidation of news source promotes singular control of the news. Control isn't freedom. We need freedom of the press. For that we need as many news sources as is practical.

Let's hope that public radio and television stays strong.

I agree with you, Barbara and Al, our democracy IS dependent on a free press. Unfortunately, outfits like the PI had such an agenda to propagate that it was no longer "free press" anyhow. Ultimately, they would have folded anyhow in my opinion, but if they would have actually tried to report the news with some semblance of balance they probably could have stuck around a bit longer.

When you subscribe to a newspaper (as most of us have at one time or another) you really realize what a waste of natural resources printed newspapers are anyhow. One weeks worth of a newspaper makes quite a large pile of waste, whether it is recycled or not. Personally, .50 is waaaay to much to pay for the garbage PI anyway, especially with the free bin at Starbucks and Tulley's :)

The left leaning P.I. is no loss to the country. Their bias reporting killed them. Good riddance piece of trash!