Whenever someone says "laser focus" all I hear is "giant douche bag."

Oh well...crappy newspaper anyway. Sucks it's going to happen but whatcha gonna do?

Start with the editorial page staff.

That was just a whole bunch of corporatespeak for "We still have our heads in the sand about this whole 'obsolete business model' thing, but we still gotta pay the bills. So yeah, your ass is canned."

It sucks and I feel bad for the staff involved.

On the plus, it moves it closer hopefully to the Blethens selling off their stake and control. Good riddance to them.

We get both the Times and the News-Tribune. I much prefer the News Tribune; it's somehow more news-papery. Hard to put into words. Better Sounders coverage, for one thing. Better local coverage. It's tough for the local Times staff, though. I don't hold them responsible for the editorial posturing of the owners.

Seattle will soon be town without a newspaper. Not that anyone'd notice.

I read "Regrettably, there will be a very modest number of reductions in staff" as "We regret that only a modest reduction in staff will be made."

Interesting choice of phrasing.

Maybe if it wasn't such a shitty paper with a warped editorial board, their subscriptions wouldn't be tanking.

@10: I don't believe readership is down at all. It's ad revenue that's down. After all, you must be reading if you have that opinion.

@10 and 11, it's both. Their Ad department is selling display space at cost to the big boys.

What if the Times replaced its editorials with ads? Quality and revenue improvement in one decision.

Keister: HA. AWESOME. Some discounted ads for local nonprofits would produce more revenue than right-wing talking points disguised as editorials, not to mention actually making the world a little better. Brilliant idea.

I grew up on the Seattle Times and respect them as a pretty important part of the community. But I'm not going to subscribe to them when:
a) they hide their solicitation mailings in anonymous envelopes. Have some pride: you're the Seattle Times.
b) their editorial page is written by amateur hacks. I'm fine with disagreeing with you, but at least make sense. The (lack of) reasoning beyond the McKenna endorsement, for example.

You shame the rest of the paper when junior high school students could do a better job on the editorial page.

"laser focused," check.

"find efficiencies," check.

"ongoing basis"... hmmm, sorry, you only get full credit for "going forward."

(Jesus fuck. Everything is always ongoing, and we can't go backward. Can we STOP SAYING THAT STUPID SHIT ALREADY? ALL OF IT? PLEASE?!)

/rant

A month or so ago I made the comment in Crosscut that the PI had done a superior transition to the web with a rapid update bloggy style that makes the ST look more like a photography of an old newspaper put on the web. (I also called the PI a "SLOG for people who live in Arlington" and recently there has been some overlap in coverage and topics.)

From what I know the PI operates with a very small staff...not thousands...yet, again, what it does is very webby. I also note that it's community of Commenters (powered by Facebook) is diverse and growing each week. ST has a confusing mix of their own comment system (that I was banned from years ago) and a few articles that use Facebook.

Overall, because of the PIs growing web presence, the ST could disappear entirely and not be noticed.

Circling the drain.

I miss having a real paper to read in the morning (and we actually had one to read in the evening also, in the last century). I'm amazed ST has so many newsroom employees, because most of their articles are reprints from other publications. I recently counted the ads in the whole paper and they totalled 1/3 of the pages. I still read the paper but I do it for free at Starbucks.

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