And that’s it for the PI as a paper
DMZ · March 16, 2009 at 1:19 pm · Filed Under Mariners
See Hickey’s latest (and last, it seems) entry over there.
It’s an unjust world where Jim Street’s employed writing puff pieces for MLB.com while Hickey looks for a job. Art Thiel’s one of the few remaining on to try and make it as a pure online-only play.
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29 Responses to “And that’s it for the PI as a paper”
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This is a huge loss, not so much for Mariners fandom as for all the other things a newspaper brings.
Exclusivity breeds laziness. This can only bring about bad things.
The same thing happened last month here in Denver. The Rocky Mountain News folded, and the Denver Post is the only game in town, now. They didn’t even try to save some online content, but since the Denver Newspaper Agency owned them both, they cherry-picked some writers and let the Rocky go. News coverage needs competition to stay relevant. These similar developments aren’t good for Seattle or Denver, in my view.
What’s worse, Jim Moore will still be employed in the interweb version of the PI. Yet Hickey will not.
The demise of any newspaper doesnt surprise me at all, given that it is competing against online news that is much superior (imo). Its faster (I don’t have to wait for the next day to see the story), cheaper, doesn’t consume paper, and most importantly, gives me a wider variety of writers to choose to read from. To follow the Mariners I can go to this great website and others who focus on sabermetric analysis, and greatly increase my understanding of baseball and the reasons behind the teams successes and failures. I dont have to pay for a paper to read from reporters who don’t really understand whats going on.
This applies to other areas as well, not just sports. I was able to get far better and more accurate election coverage visitng sites like fivethirtyeight.com than from reading the paper.
I feel badly for the P-I staffers and employees, but the paper itself did a brilliant job of running itself into the ground over the last few years. I thought Bill Virgin’s column in today’s P-I was a neat summation of how the P-I didn’t do itself any favors.
There is a chance Seattle could become the first major city without a major newspaper. A friend at the P-I told me the Seattle Times is in trouble and might not last. Two days later, a friend at the TNT told me the same thing.
Offer to host Hickey’s work until he finds a paying gig somewhere.
You’ve probably already done this.
This is a sad day for Seattle news coverage. At least Thiel is still around.
A sad day indeed.
The Times’ troubles have been widely documented in the local press. It looks like San Francisco will beat us to the punch, though.
This is really too bad. When I first heard of the kindle and its ability to do subscription service, I imagined a day where you woke up and the newspaper (or papers) you wanted would just be there for you. With it being common enough and enough subscribers to make it worthwhile for most papers to offer that service. Reduce costs, and continue to offer convenience of a newspaper.
I hope that will be common some day, and writers like Hickey will be employed in that capacity, but the rate these papers are going out of business I just don’t know.
RIP Seattle PI…
At times like these the only thing you can do is make a rap about it…
For those of us who can remember (even vaguely) peeking over your mom or dad’s shoulder while they were reading the evening’s newspaper, you suddenly start to feel a lot older…sigh.
With all respect Alex, I think you’re mixing terms here, which is probably the most common fault whenever this topic erupts in any kind of online forum.
What fivethirtyeight did (and brilliantly) was to deliver analysis–not coverage. They didn’t have a stable of reporters following candidates, conducting post-debate interviews, or just talking to voters. And 538, like everyone else, used the coverage of the mainstream media to help inform their analysis. There is no plausible remedy that I’ve seen emerging to replace this coverage in major metropolitan areas. And believe me, those publishers tried.
Even assuming a way for everyone to automatically afford a Kindle, why would we expect those owners to pay for their downloads when they already receive newspaper content free online?
This isn’t about being imaginative and cutting costs, it’s about a broken business model and a huge step backwards for democracy.
I think the business model broke when they all went into a collective suicide pact and decided that their content wasn’t worth anything. Somehow our generation (myself included) has come to the conclusion that people should not be paid for their work. Did the owners of the papers somehow think that the internet fairy would pay for their content?
Realistically, what I see is a day where we have a few very strong newspapers (The New York Times, the Guardian, Le Monde etc.) giving us extremely good international and national coverage, and then a complete void at the local and state/provincial level.
Andrew Potter, editor of the Ottawa Citizen, argues that there should be a levy on internet service imposed by the government… A royalty system for content providers. His argument is that no single paper can switch to a user-pay method. A true tragedy of the commons.
Well said. The common hope that somehow newspapers will morph into online entities without all their reporters and editors being paid seems somehow to have a lot of adherents.
And the void of local coverage may get deeper as local television stations face the same challenges. The business model is different, but the fear is already there, even in Seattle.
Thiel has a column up
“This applies to other areas as well, not just sports. I was able to get far better and more accurate election coverage visitng sites like fivethirtyeight.com than from reading the paper.”
Speaking as a career newspaper reporter now worried as much about my industry as my individual job, I think this view is part of the problem.
One of the authors here wrote a great post about how even great sites like these are no substitutes for newspapers.
Newsgathering is expensive. It takes talented, dedicated people. Just in our own little world, imagine getting all our Mariners news from the Mariners team site (aka “Pravda”).
(Actually a lot of stuff here simply points us to the newspaper coverage, which ties into the second graf.)
Why not? It’s faster, cheaper, easier, right from the source, right?
Um, no.
The Associated Press recently sued one of those Web sites that rip off the headlines from all the hard work of AP and others of and distributes it online with no attribution or payment. I hope AP ends up owning those folks.
Sure, if you want the six headlines about celebrities and the latest reality TV show then keep reading Yahoo and MSN. If you want REAL news, go read a newspaper while they still are around.
Regarding the dig on Street – MLBAM does not permit much more than fluff on their sites. Some of the criticism of Street might not be fair.
No. Compare what Brock wrote when he had the helm, or what he writes for the Padres now, working under the same constraints.
Don’t underestimate the power of the Mariner’s marketing team when it comes to nixing content.
Further confirmation of Joero’s Law:
The perversity of the universe tends towards a maximum.
Whatever blackmail material Jim Moore possesses, it’s both pervasive enough to survive the demise of the medium and potent enough to still retain him an outlet for his “writing.”
The concept of the AP is past its time. Most papers started figuring this out and have been opting out of AP contracts. Unfortunately it takes about 2 years to extricate yourself from the AP.
I do think a model where you have a few great national journalism pools (NY Times for example), supplemented by drastically smaller regional pools, is a viable model. The days where you need content duplicated via multiple distribution channels is over, thanks to the worldwide distribution mechanism called the internet.
I think an online edition of the PI can thrive, if the powers at be are realistic in the amount of fat they need to cut. It wounds like they are on the right track with everyone being a reporter, responsible for producing their own content. However, they need a better presentation vehicle than a web browser.
What’s worse, Jim Moore will still be employed in the interweb version of the PI. Yet Hickey will not.
Actually Jim’s final column is in todays paper.
Where’s the bailout money?
I see no reaason why you have to specifically call out one guy because you think he has poor writing skills, due to the fact you’re upset that someone who you think has more talent, isn’t employed.
The post would be fine if you just said you were upset Hickey no longer has a job, but adding in the negativity on Street just adds a lot of unprofessional writing to the post.
When you’re paying me to be professional, I’ll be happy to heed your guidelines.
Jim Street sucks regardless of whether DMZ calls him out on it or not.
Or are we fine with just letting incompetence go ignored?
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