Why Didn't the P-I Fold Sooner?

Today, The Seattle Post-Intelligencer published its last print edition after 146 years. And as sad as I am to see some smart, hard-working journalists losing their jobs, I can't help but wonder: why did it take so long?

I am in no way advocating the collapse of the P-I -- in fact, just the opposite. Why an organization priding itself on the timely, accurate distribution of information wouldn't want to embrace the most robust and fastest medium of all time baffles me.

This isn't a sad time; it's a joyous one. Everything good journalists have ever wanted has finally come to fruition but they're looking at it with fear and trepidation.

The Internet, for all its terrifying newness, is still just words laid out on a page, sometimes next to some photos. There is no reason a paper's home page couldn't look exactly like their front page. There's even a "fold!"

And it's so much better than physical paper. Start with photography. How many photographers' hearts have been broken when a beautiful picture gets washed out by crappy ink and paper? Photographs are clearer, larger, more detailed and more easily saved and shared on computer screens. Plus, slideshows mean you can fit as many good photographs as you have on the page, rather than just one.

It's a better medium for writers, too. There's something to be said for keeping a story lean and concise but there are undoubtedly times when a story had to be cropped for space. There is a physical limit to the number of words you can put on a page -- but not on the web. A story can be exactly as long as can hold a reader's interest.

Furthermore, writers can now clean up their stories by avoiding cumbersome backstory, titles, and legalese. Hover over a highlighted word on a page and the reader can get definitions for complicated jargon, meaning they're going to be better informed about the subject. A writer can instantly link a reader to all the research he did for the story, giving it more weight and believability.

Which brings us to standards. People talk about the Internet like some big lolcat black hole looking to devour reasoned thought.

Glenn Ericksen, Copy Editor for the P-I, said the Web "lowers the standard of literacy all around. Who needs copy editors on the Web?"

Well, who needed copy editors in print? Anal though the AP might be, they don't show up in the newsroom with guns when someone writes "hung." There isn't and never has been a governing body or penalties for grammar and punctuation. Glenn Ericksen enforced them for 25 years because it made the content better.

The Web is desperate for that good content and publications like the P-I are poised to deliver it if they get their feet out of the mud and start worrying about the information more than the medium.

And it's clear when you look at their site, they're not there yet -- tiny, hard to read text, small pictures and way too much copy. But they will get there. Same as they created a fantastic paper they can create a fantastic site ultimately delivering more information faster with more citations to readers. Because that's all that counts.

Is it new? Yes. Is it scary? If you're over 30. Is it better? For the love of God, yes.

So I'm not mourning the "loss" of the P-I. I'm raising my glass to their new opportunity to make an even better publication. May they have many, many happy years.

Comments

[mattyoungmark]

The difficulties of running a local news site online have nothing to do with differences between print and web in terms of presentation (in fact, the whole reason that newspapers are dying is because so many people agree with you that the web is a great way to read the news). The PI doesn't view moving to the web as a great opportunity because nobody is making any money doing it. There are plenty of other folks who have been trying to provide local news on the internet (here in Seattle, for example, we have crosscut.com, founded by ex-Seattle Weekly staffers), and they've spent years trying to make it work.

I personally prefer to get my news online, but the sites I browse exist in a greater media ecosystem that includes print. I don't have much pity for daily newspapers overall -- years before the net started gutting their readership, they were gutting their own product in search of higher profit margins. But in the best case scenario, those profits allowed them to act as watchdogs of their communities.

Until someone figures out how to make a living watchdogging online, I think the newspaper death march is going to impact the news media ecosystem more than people realize.

[outcaltl]

I'm all for online media, but I think it's terribly sad when it comes at the expense of a paper in your hand. A hard copy, because of its inflexibility, its limits, gives its readers a focus, and allows for a shared experience. We used to all see the same cover of the newspaper, now it changes every 7 minutes and is personalized by IP. I think that shared experience helped build a certain type of community one based in a, at least seemingly, more palpable reality.

[Ben Stoddard - Huffpost Blogger]

This is absolutely the most interesting criticism of digital media I've heard in a long wile and totally brand new to me. I've read several articles of a similar vein talking about how we're no longer exposed to things we don't like because we can so neatly filter our content. I, too, am a little afraid of this. Bad, unfamiliar and foreign news is like broccoli.

Two things: One, publications aren't required to do things like IP targeting and yada yada. It's a choice they make. The front page of a website could be a static image, for the sake of argument.

Two, we did it with print, a little bit, didn't we? I know I read the Portland Mercury because it says the things I want to hear and shows me pictures of people who look like me.

The advantage to digital media is, as a reader, you no longer have to pick from two, maybe three papers. You have a million sources of information from around the world. A more robust picture is available to anyone willing to put in the time and the fuller and more accurate the picture, the closer we get to a truly shared experience.

[zorroplat]

this piece misses the point, which is not that the p-i went digital, but rather that it dropped from 350 reporters to something like 20. no matter how you lay it out, that spells less coverage. the p-i has not "gone digital." it has simply gone.

[Ben Stoddard - Huffpost Blogger]

I think this is a very valid point and one that I didn't really touch on. If I may, I wrote this really as a defense of the medium and heralding as a new opportunity for the P-I and—maybe even more so—everyone else. It's true that the P-I's staff is going to be reduced and that's bad news but I also think they got in that position by digging their heels in when they were hemorrhaging money. As I mentioned, their site isn't winning any awards. Had they seen this coming (and who didn't, honestly?) they could have put themselves in a position to earn enough revenue to keep a more robust staff. I'm not saying the economic crisis didn't pour gas on the fire, but I think reluctance to adapt was the matchbook.

[Januarycarol]

Old? Yes. Luddite? No. I love my computer and the Internet.
But I don't understand those who don't get the difference between the Newspaper and the on-line version. Paper is foldable, portable, clip-able, and, what's the word for "write-on-able?"
It's spreadable, yes, with fuzzier photos, but easier to browse. I find stories in the newspaper that I would have never chosen to read, that become important, or just interesting. Will I read obituaries on-line? Doubt it.
Can I sit in bed in the early morning, waiting for the house to heat up, coffee in hand with a flexible paper about me, with a machine?
Must I depend on the vagaries of my computer, electric power, and weird downloading issues to get my morning fix of news, importanat and trivial?
It ain't the same Signed, sad P-I loser

[Aquarellist]

The older you get, the more fear becomes your default reaction to anything new. Why is that? Why can't we just accept that the future is a beautiful thing.
I have been an art director for more than 25 years. My skills predate computers and I know how I insisted that I would never let go of my drafting board--computer driven design, quite simply I thought, could never match what I constructed by hand. I was wrong, I donated my board to a local charity more than a decade ago. Like the generation of designers before me who insisted that graphic design would never be the same with the passing of Linotype, I was simply too comfortable and probably afraid.
So I'm with Ben now, here's to the new P-I, and here's to the future being served (without cutting down more trees, by the way). And to those of us who can't adapt, let's get out of the way and let youth be served too.