SEATTLE PI.COM: The Seattle Post-Intelligencer will roll off the presses for the last time Tuesday.
The Hearst Corp. announced Monday that it would stop publishing the 146-year old newspaper, Seattle's oldest business, and cease delivery to more than 117,600 weekday readers.
The company, however, said it would maintain seattlepi.com, making it the nation's largest daily newspaper to shift to an entirely digital news product.
"Tonight we'll be putting the paper to bed for the last time," Editor and Publisher Roger Oglesby told a silent newsroom Monday morning. "But the bloodline will live on."
In a news release, Hearst CEO Frank Bennack Jr. said, "Our goal now is to turn seattlepi.com into the leading news and information portal in the region."
The new operation will be more than a newspaper online, Steven Swartz, president of Hearst Newspapers, said. The so-called "community platform" will feature breaking news, columns from prominent Seattle residents, community databases, photo galleries, 150 citizen bloggers and links to other journalistic outlets.
On Jan. 9, New York-based Hearst put the Seattle P-I up for sale and said that the paper would stop printing if a buyer were not found within 60 days.
Despite community concern, no buyer emerged. The P-I lost $14 million last year.
"The thing that should not be missed here is that the P-I is not going away. The P-I is going online," Oglesby said in an interview. "Nobody is happy about the newspaper going away. That's a sad thing. The editorial voice is still going to be here." >>> Monday, March 16, 2009
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