Hearst announced that Seattle Post Intelligencer is up for sale and that if no buyer is found, it may shut down.
The paper’s rival, the Seattle Times, has a story saying that the number of daily newspaper’s in the U.S. fell by 174 between 1990 and 2006.
Nearly 200 dailies have expired since 1990. And, in almost every instance, their deaths have touched off civic mourning that suggests a shuttered newspaper is more than just another failed business.
— P-I’s closure in Seattle would reflect U.S. trend Seattle Times 11 Jan 2009
The declining and uncertain economy is bringing a day of reckoning for many newspapers. Cutting paper costs or trimming payroll may help some survive, but clearly the print news business will reorganize dramatically in this downturn. What comes out the other end will be much different. There will surely be less pulp and more web.
What we are working on is finding a business structure for papers that do survive or even one that will allow papers to survive.