Monday Evening Links

The Seattle Post-Intelligencer newspaper will produce its last printed edition on Tuesday and become an Internet-only news source, the Hearst Corporation said on Monday, making it by far the largest American newspaper to take that leap.{but they won't be the last}

But the P-I, as it is called, will resemble a local Huffington Post more than a traditional newspaper, with a news staff of about 20 people rather than the 165 it has had, and a site consisting mostly of commentary, advice and links to other news sites, along with some original reporting.

Hearst hopes to capitalize on the healthy Web traffic The P-I already has, about 1.8 million unique visitors a month, according to Nielsen Online. It usually outranks the online readership of its traditional rival, The Seattle Times, despite having much smaller print circulation, 118,000 on weekdays last year, compared with 199,000 for The Times.

said by ThrowDemsOut:

»www.nytimes.com/2009/03/17/busin···&emc=rss
The print newspaper industry is rapidly failing. There will be many more papers to come that will switch purely to internet access. And the unemployment rate for journalists will skyrocket.
»recoveringjournalist.typepad.com···sts.html
»graphicdesignr.net/papercuts/

said by BF69:

Don't you still need jounalists to write an online paper? it seems the ones losing a job would be those invloved in printing and delivery

said by ThrowDemsOut:

You need some. But all the papers folding so far have laid off 50 to 90% of their news-gathering staffs and not just printing & delivery. For example the Seattle Post-Intelligencer had already outsourced their printing & delivery last year to the only other surviving Seattle daily paper. They are only keeping about 20 to 25 of 167 news gathering employees. They are going to use the newswires to feed their news gathering outside of local coverage & blogging.

said by rcdailey:

The problem with having papers printed is that you have to recycle or throw them away. We used to throw away papers before recycling came into fashion. Not printing the paper in the first place can save a whole lot of energy at both ends of the process. I switched to online for a local paper this year. I'm glad not to have to collect and recycle. I can read the entire paper online (including classified and public notices). I can also go back to earlier editions, which isn't so easy with printed papers unless you like keeping stacks around in your house.

said by RR Conductor:

I think that's sad too. While I love the always up to date, always on news of the net, there is just something nice about being able to hold a physical thing in your hands and read from it, and I think for that reason papers will always be around.

said by probboy:

Doesn't a Kindle cost upwards of $300+? That's a lot of newspapers before even coming close to recouping the cost.

Plus it's impossible to share the paper amongst family members while lounging around drinking coffee on a Sunday morning.