For many years...

[heinousbitca]

Seattle has been a two-newspaper town.

The Seattle Times was, until the late 80s, the paper of Seattle's working class, what Emmett Watson once dubbed "Lesser Seattle", people who cared more about food on their plate than what people in other cities thought of us. (Ironically, Watson wrote for the Times from 1983 to his death in 2001, often

Comments

[saxifrage]

I looked and the PI is not available on the Kindle store--sad because then theoretically people could get it on their kindle, carry it around with them, and mark it up. Then again, the kindle is too expensive/too much of an eyestrain/too weird for many people. *sigh*

[saxifrage]

and... it looks like they're going to be firing 145 people, most of their reporting workforce. So, umm, this is sad, very sad.

[heinousbitca]

i explained this to a relative with "Imagine Boston with just the Herald..." and the look of horror on her face was palpable. the Seattle Times isn't that bad, but it's often worse on certain things; the Herald at least has grown up a little since they got called out, and fortunately Seattle has a few decent weekly papers to keep it from becoming a complete news hellhole.

They've laid off much of the staff already; the saving grace is that at least they're not shuttering a printing plant, as they've long since been printed by the Seattle Times in Bothell, too. That said it's at least good to know the lowest people on the proverbial newspaper totem pole won't be affected. Unfortunately, reporters ain't paid that well, and they generally have journalism degrees that people paid for...so it's just a world of ugh.

Hearst supposedly doesn't have anything on the Kindle, to reference your comment supra, though this might change it. I know they really think they can pull this off...i sure hope they're right.

[rosemarymint]

The times is likely next. I'm trying not to read much about this because I have a couple good friends out of jobs. It fucking sucks.

[heinousbitca]

Part of my problem is that the Times should have gone first and then i bet Hearst's deep pockets would have kept the P-I going. The Times...i feel for the employees, but it's an organ of the Washington Republican Party and the BIAW. It's not even a newspaper anymore. I'll be sad for the lost jobs, but the underclass doesn't read the Times.

I'm sad that your industry, a very necessary part of a literate society, has gone to shit. My inside people at the P-I are both safe, but that's because they work for shit pay on crappy city beats and...well, let's just say that though they can't officially have other jobs per Hearst policy, if they theoretically could they both would.

I'm actually worried, in terms of BIG papers, about The Boston Globe. Gah.

[rosemarymint]

Big papers are the ones in trouble.

Papers like mine, well we're paying their bills if they're part of a big corporation. We get paid much less and treated with much more disdain.

We'll still be around, the format may not necessarily be the same, but we'll be here. As my ed told us a few weeks ago, we just need to hold tight and bear through the next couple of years and pray we haven't completely alienated our subscribers by the time we emerge. Our revenue actually has grown as has our subscriber base, yet we're cutting pages and getting furloughed just like everyone else. blah blah blah.

[corivax]

Thank you for the nice writeup. For those of us who haven't been around since the 80s, and have never really read paper newspapers, it was interesting to read the history.