The PI slowly withered and died over 2009 and 2010. Little remains of it, save its placeholder website for reposted articles from other Hearst publications.

If you use AdBlock and NoScript on the site, each page appears nearly empty of actual content. Of course, staring at a nearly empty page is preferable to being bombarded with the overwhelming onslaught of ads that invades every pixel of the screen.

If you run the stories through an SEO keyword checker, you'll discover what, not who, is the real "editor" of much of the content and find that several, if not most, of the reposted, syndicated articles are little more than clickbait and advertorials that aren't real news articles by any stretch of the imagination.

The very few original articles by local writer(s?) get lost under the mountain of worthless, syndicated crap. It's akin to listening to a local Clear Channel radio station.

Going to the website just makes me angry, bitter, exhausted and sad.

Fortunately, some of PI's former staff can still be found producing excellent journalism like Tom over at Humanosphere.org. Search for them with Google, Twitter, Flickr, etc. and re-discover the journalists and photo journalists that once made the paper great. Every time you find one a little ray of sunshine breaks through the clouds.

Journalism doesn't exist without real journalists. The PI bears witness.

Is this you crafting that long-form style?