Bad analogy. Google Maps also does a ton of things your atlas could never dream of. And I say that as the proud owner of dozens of atlases and thousands of paper maps.

Enough of this foolishness.

I'm sorry we've lost all the farriers as horses are non-polluting, eco friendly low maintenance means of transportation. I love eco friendly things.

I'm sorry we've lost almost 95% of our old growth forest to loggers who sold the wood to CA to support gold mine shafts among other uses. I love old growth forests.

I'm sorry we've lost people that know how to make things by hand from raw local materials. I love hand made things.

Newspapers are on the list of things that die when they are no longer needed, used, wanted, able to survive due to changes beyond their control.

America shall survive and do well, don't hit the panic button.

This two-month funeral needs to be over. Bury the body. It's starting to stink. Regina Hackett

Please whatever you do... don't panic. please .stop. no, really wait....stop.Listen to the professionals, stop.

New remains on the internet. stop. the last detail, stop. More exciting relevent time savers coming soon, stop.

News at eleven, stop. I mean on no other channel except yours, stop.

The news remains most important to the readership, stop. I mean the viewership. stop.

They have been threatening the staff for years with closing the paper.... I think it goes to the price of oil and commuter smiles.

Of course Google maps does things an atlas can't. We all know this and it wasn't the point. The point is that one of the things always said by people who like the physical copy of a paper, is that they read more things inadvertently, stories that catch their eyes while paging through, than they do in the very specific, click-based world of directed journalism. This is the same reason that an altas is, in some ways, more about place while google maps is about specific directions. This isn't to say that a print newspaper (or an atlas) is superior but that the old forms still offer something valuable.

But the analogy stinks. Google maps isn't about directions; haven't you ever followed Google Street View all the way across Pittsburgh or New York City just to see what the places really look like? It expands the atlas in ways that the atlas couldn't even have dreamed of.

People are saying the same thing about how blogs do for the news, but they're full of shit. Blogs give live instant analysis, endless amounts of it, but they have no history and no context and ultimately no culture. No one's ever going to find out what was happening in Seattle by paging through years and years of blogs; they're not there anymore. The ads change in real time. Seriously, if you don't understand what you're giving up when you give up printed newspapers for the gaseous winds of blogs, you're already lost.

Look at the bright side, we may have lost the paper but we've gained another content aggregator site!

Wait, never mind.

My husband and I have both lost work due to the changing format of publishing ("why pay for it when there are plenty of bloggers giving it away for free?"), so I'm far from insensitive to the plight of a changing media. Over the past few weeks I've found the loving encomiums to the P.I. and the coverage of Hearst's abandonment both touching and thoughtful.

That said...

The paper sucks. Sucked, rather. And the Times is equally bad.

We've lived in Seattle for 2 years. From what I've read, historically the P.I. was a bastion of investigative reporting and news. When we moved here we got a rock-bottom deal on a 6 month subscription of our choice of either the P.I. or Seattle Times. We went with the Times. After a month of disappointment, we switched to the P.I. And after another month, we asked to cancel the papers entirely, without a refund.

"You still have 4 months left on your subscription, is there any reason why you're cancelling?"

"Yes. Because we don't want to waste the paper anymore. It's nothing but AP rips, borrowed NY Times editorials, and soft-ball local human interest stories."

I know there's history; I know there are jobs lost. I know a lot of people went to work at the P.I. who truly cared about their profession. And I truly do feel for them - But we're having a funeral tomorrow for something that died many years ago. And no one in Seattle seemed to notice until now.

There hasn't been enough emphasis on the debt as a case of so much of the problem. Without the insane buying spree some of these chains went on years ago, these newspapers might be still be in trouble, but at least they'd be marginally profitable and still alive.