Seattle PI are reporting the news of their own demisemove from print + on-line to an on-line only newspaper. There are a lot of important insights in the article -
- The Seattle PI had more than 117,600 weekday subscribers. That’s a ridiculously big subscriber base for Seattle.
- Hearst could have gotten each subscriber a Kindle 2 at an Amazon negotiated price of $300 (perhaps with a 2 year subscription deal) and it would have cost 35 million. Considering that the Seattle PI lost 14 million last year, it might not be as outlandish a solution as you might imagine.
- Its a really good decision to keep SeattlePI.com going – There is a ton of value in the brand and the readership base. According to Quantcast, it gets over 3.5 million global visitors a month.
- Hearst plans to turn SeattlePI.com into a community platform -
… will feature breaking news, columns from prominent Seattle residents, community databases, photo galleries, 150 citizen bloggers and links to other journalistic outlets.
It’s totally the right idea. They should use Ning.com or build out their own full fledged community and let users share Seattle knowledge and insights with each other.
- The new composition of the newspaper is rather interesting (as compared to the earlier 181 people) - “About 20 news gatherers and Web producers will stay on with seattlepi.com, plus another 20 newly hired advertising sales staff.”
- Actually, after looking at the Seattle PI’s cluttered main page, which features >25% of the screen devoted to a banner ad for Mariners Tickets, I think that rather than a 50% sales force, they’d be better served by -
1) Getting a few good html/css designers; and
2) Someone like Martin Lewis who actually knows how to make money on-line. - A copy editor had this to say – “the Web lowers the standard of literacy all around. Who needs copy editors on the Web?
Its understandable that there’d be mistrust of the new medium. However, this attitude certainly isn’t going to help them succeed online. - Its interesting to me how there is absolutely no mention of what happens to Seattle PI advertisers. If the Seattle PI lets go of their current advertisers and turns to online ads they’re making a colossal mistake.
- Seattle Times publishers Frank Blethen had this to say -
“Though The Seattle Times and the Seattle P-I have been fiercely competitive, we find no joy in the loss of any journalistic voice. Today’s announcement is an acknowledgement that in the current economy it is a struggle for even a single newspaper to be profitable and impossible for multiple papers in a single market.”
Blethen said that being freed from the joint operating agreement, or JOA, that has bound the two papers since 1983 “gives The Seattle Times the best opportunity to be viable long term.”
- All Seattle PI subscribers will be switch to Seattle Times subscriptions. Wonder how many Kindle and Kindle 2 owners are currently subscribed to The Seattle Times Kindle Edition, and whether any Kindle for iPhone users are.
Another really interesting news snippet (and totally the right idea in my opinion) -
Former staffers at the Rocky Mountain News in Denver, which closed last month, said Monday they plan to start an online newspaper if they can get 50,000 paying subscribers at $4.99 a month by April 23.
Filed under: publishing Tagged: | evolution of newspapers
