Anger and Aggregation
The P-I's Online Plan and Its Discontents
Mark Kaufman
Tools
T he view from the executive conference room at the Seattle Post-Intelligencer looks westward, out over the train tracks that run behind the newspaper's headquarters on Elliott Avenue, over Puget Sound and the ferries and freighters and sailboats that traverse it, over islands and foothills and, finally, at the wall of white-and-blue peaks that make up the Olympic Mountains.
If you turn away from this quintessential Seattle view, you will see, on the wall opposite, a giant map of the world. It's the kind of newspaper office space, filled with a sense of dominion far beyond its confines, that harks back to an earlier time, when big-city dailies were, indeed, masters of all they surveyed. Powerful, barely challenged conduits of information and commerce, they were regarded much like those railway tracks once were: essential pieces of American life, impossible to do without.
Stranger Personals
On February 18, beginning at 9:00 a.m., Ken Riddick, the vice president for digital media at the Hearst Corporation, took up residence in this seductive space and held a series of 25 meetings with P-I journalists, each lasting about 20 minutes. The topic: What to do with the P-I's website now that Seattle's oldest daily newspaper—founded in 1863 and currently the longest-operating business in Washington State—is all but certain to meet its end in mid-March.
Riddick is a former photojournalist with a well-trimmed beard, balding head, and slight accent that struck some as Southern, or maybe Texan; he came to these conversations wearing a suit and black cowboy boots. His shirt and tie—well, they are remembered in different ways by the P-I reporters who met with him, and this may be because these reporters, accustomed to asking questions and taking note of everything, found themselves on this day in the opposite position. They were there to pitch Riddick their ideas for an online-only P-I, even though it was far from guaranteed that they would be part of such a venture.
Assuming Hearst continues with the process of closing down the print edition by mid-March, it's easy to imagine an online-only P-I staffed with as few as 20 people. Or even fewer. As a result, at this point nearly all of the paper's roughly 170 employees expect to be out of a job. No surprise, then, that there had been considerable ambivalence among the reporters when an e-mail went out on February 12 offering them the opportunity to sign up to meet "Ken Riddick from corporate."
"There are people with plenty of ideas here," said Athima Chansanchai, who has been at the paper four years and writes for the Arts & Entertainment section. But, she added, "What makes [Riddick] think people are going to give them away for free?"
This sentiment may have accounted for the fact that the afternoon before Riddick's arrival, the sign-up sheet to meet with him was far from full. However, fear of unemployment is a powerful thing. By the next morning, there wasn't an open slot to be had—and even Chansanchai, who, in the end, would prefer to keep working in Seattle as a journalist, had put herself on the list. "I was like, 'What the hell could it hurt?'" she explained.
"You feel a bit like it's an audition," said Mike Lewis, who has been at the paper eight years and writes the Under the Needle column. He signed up to meet with Riddick in the hopes of staying in journalism at a time when there are few jobs to be had in the industry. "You know that if they do keep an online publication—and my suspicion is that they will—that they're going to keep many fewer people."
Regina Hackett, the P-I's art critic for 27 years, described the tension this way: "He was sitting at the big table. The big Mussolini table. There's the view of the water. I'm taking in the waves. And then I turn around and see this warm open face... But he's a reporter. We all have that warm and open face, when we're working... And so I know I gotta be on my game. It's match, set, point."
O fficially, both inside and outside the P-I headquarters, all plans for the online-only P-I are discussed in purely hypothetical terms—if at all. But it's increasingly hard to imagine that an online-only launch isn't going to happen. "[Riddick] told me that they're operating as if we're going to go forward," said Andrea James, a business reporter who has been at the P-I since 2006. "So I didn't get the feeling that Hearst has a big question mark over its head and doesn't know what it's doing."
Hearst did not respond to a request to make Riddick available for an interview. But according to more than a half-dozen P-I reporters who participated in meetings with him that day, he was resolutely cagey.
"He was mainly receiving my ideas and input," said political columnist Joel Connelly, who has worked at the P-I since the summer of 1973 and is one of the paper's more loquacious storehouses of Northwest knowledge. True to form, Connelly used some of his 20 minutes with Riddick to take the man from corporate over to the window and tick off the names of every single one of the Olympic peaks in the distance. Later, Connelly regaled Riddick with tales of flush times when, at the P-I's expense, he traveled the entire length of the United States-Canada border with a photographer and reported back from the journey.
Connelly did not ask Riddick what the future holds. "Since you can't forecast the future, I wouldn't ask him to," he explained. James, the business reporter, recounted: "Ken was really clear that he wasn't going to tell me what the strategy was."
But even if Riddick didn't explicitly talk strategy, he did share some interesting information during the meetings. In addition, some important, highly visible changes to the website are happening already, without fanfare or broad internal discussion. Based on those changes, as well as on the accounts of Riddick's meetings and accounts of the planning currently under way at the P-I, it's possible to get a sense of what an online-only P-I will probably look like.
In a significant departure from longstanding P-I practice, the new website, as currently conceived, will become, in part, an aggregator of links to interesting stories and blog posts elsewhere. If that sounds familiar, it should. The model has been pioneered by sites like HuffingtonPost.com, which takes an eclectic, opinionated, and often celebrity-focused approach to information gathering, mixing reports from its tiny staff with blog posts by notable actors and politicos, photo albums of fabulous people, and a constant stream of links to the hot news stories of the day (almost all originally reported by other publications).
"I do think that they are trying to implement some things that Huffington Post and other online sites are implementing," said one P-I reporter who had a meeting with Riddick.
When told that it seems the P-I website will become some sort of aggregator-blog hybrid, much like the small, Seattle-focused website Crosscut.com—which itself is partly modeled on Huffington Post—Connelly made an affirmative sound, a sort of high-pitched, throaty "Mmmmhmmm." It was unclear whether he was confirming the new direction or merely endorsing the concept. "I don't want to jinx what I hope happens by making a prediction of what will happen," he explained.
In any case, some of it is happening far sooner than most people thought it would. On February 20, just two days after the Riddick meetings, the P-I home page prominently linked, in a style usually reserved for its own top stories, a post by the West Seattle Blog about the costs of this winter's big snowstorm. When readers clicked this link, they ended up on a separate blog whose content the P-I does not control, rather than a story by the P-I's own staff. Within a few hours, the P-I's home page also featured links to Lifehacker.com, King5.com, and Slog, The Stranger's news and arts blog.
Some P-I reporters were furious; they hadn't been warned in advance that this was coming—yet another sign that a small core of online decision makers is parting ways with the rest of the paper. "This is a HUGE change," wrote one P-I reporter via e-mail. Another P-I reporter, also via e-mail, wrote: "Sheesh. What's next? Linking to the [Seattle] Times?" And from a third: "This is the first time the P-I has given away its position of authority in such a clear way." It is, in fact, hard to overstate how big a transition this aggregation of outside links represents for a daily newspaper that, until now, has operated on the belief that local news should be conveyed only through its own trusted reporters.
But the change fits with something else that's been becoming more and more clear lately: Hearst wants to hold on to the P-I brand, and the online traffic that comes with it, but it's ready to jettison a lot of old notions about what makes a newspaper work. It will likely retain some of the P-I's more popular blogs (like the Microsoft blog, the crime-focused Seattle 911 blog, and the catchall Big Blog), and perhaps some of its expensive but popular talent (like Pulitzer Prize–winning cartoonist David Horsey and sports columnist Art Thiel). And it will probably keep a small group of reporters who will focus on core local beats and breaking news, as well as hold on to its user-generated content (like the frequently less-than-insightful—but free!—reader blogs and story "Sound Offs").
When all is redesigned and reoriented, the online-only P-I probably won't feel like the website of a traditional, midsize-city newspaper. One P-I reporter said that Riddick talked favorably about how Yahoo!, the massive search engine and portal, links only a few news stories on its home page. The lesson: It doesn't take much staff to run a high-traffic online publication. (On February 23, Hearst named a former Yahoo! vice president as its new special assistant to the CEO for digital media.)
W hat would be the point of moving the P-I's website in this direction? Increased traffic, for one. The online P-I already draws a considerable number of readers—more than 2.8 million page views for its blogs alone in January, and half a billion hits overall last year—but if it can transform itself into a "sticky" entry point into the online universe of Northwest news and opinion (in the sense that people tend to come there and stay a while before moving on, which advertisers like), then it has a chance to draw even more readers and, presumably, revenue.
In other words, by unmooring itself from the idea that its own content is king, drastically lightening its staff load, and mixing up its presentation, the new online P-I is going to try to float to the top of the Northwest link heap. Many of the small, local news blogs linked by the P-I home page will love the traffic and will therefore solicit links from the P-I, creating a nice positive feedback loop for the online-only staff. Larger blogs (such as Slog, which had 1.58 million page views in January) will also benefit, though to a lesser degree.
One big unanswered question is whether the new, aggregating P-I will ever link its former print rival, the Seattle Times. (According to one P-I reporter who met with Riddick, he said it probably would.) But if enough Northwest readers choose to always begin their online information-gathering journeys at the P-I—even though the links there may quickly take them to Lifehacker or West Seattle Blog or Slog or even the Times—the publication could return, in an online way, to the role that traditional newspapers used to enjoy: powerful gatekeeper.
Could Hearst actually make money this way? Probably not—at least initially. The Huffington Post, launched in May of 2005, still relies on venture capital to operate. On top of that, the P-I currently lacks something that the Huffington Post has had from the beginning: a clear identity as a tech-savvy and left-leaning virtual commons. The P-I's identity is more muddled: oldest newspaper in town, more left-leaning of the two dailies, scrappy but still somewhat stodgy, ward of the giant Hearst corporation since 1921, relative online neophyte. Hearst would essentially be playing the role of venture capitalist behind this work-in-progress, losing money for now on a product that might provide significant returns in the future.
In a way, this would make sense; whatever Hearst stands to lose by running a slimmed-down, online-only P-I, it is likely to be far less than the $14 million Hearst lost on the print and online P-I last year alone.
But the inevitable try-it-and-see dynamic of the effort also has its drawbacks, particularly for journalists looking for stability in an unsettled economy. "I'm not saying I would even take the job, frankly," said Chansanchai. "They would have to give me much more security than, 'Oh, we'll just try this out for a couple of months.'" Hackett, noting that she stands to get a full year's severance pay if she's laid off from the P-I in March, said: "I'm going to forego that and work for free for a year? No... I'm not sure I need them. I mean, I'm sure I don't need them. Do I want to be part of this? It depends on what form it takes." After all, with a year's severance, she could make a run at launching her own blog.
In fact, the low cost of starting up online ventures has inspired a number of conversations among P-I employees about websites they might launch together. "It's a contingency plan," said Kery Murakami, who has been at the P-I nine years and is helping lead one of the efforts. "The reality is we can't wait until they formally decide not to do anything, because then it's too late." However, in the event that Hearst launches an online-only P-I but doesn't hire some or all of the contingency planners like Murakami—well, they can easily turn their "contingency" plans into blueprints for a rival site.
The problem is funding, even for a "nonprofit" online business model (such as the model Crosscut just implemented after operating as a for-profit didn't work). The world is not exactly bursting with people wanting to donate to online journalism, and severance checks only go so far when there are still bills and mortgages to pay. Kathy George, of the Committee for a Two-Newspaper Town, guesses that some of the city's high-paid investigative reporters might end up working out of the University of Washington, operating on money from the Knight Foundation. But other than that, discussions of independent staff start-ups don't seem to be going anywhere yet. "They're very circular conversations at a certain point," Lewis said. "The way you break that circle is you have money." Right now, few have it—except, apparently, Hearst.
W hich gets right back to the anxiety that P-I reporters are feeling. "I'm scared and I'm eager and I desperately want to keep a job in journalism," Lewis said. He brought an audio recorder to his meeting with Riddick, hoping to use the tape for a public-radio series he's doing on the end of his newspaper. He wasn't allowed to record the conversation, but he stayed anyway, trying to make his case. "Of course I'm going to play this game," Lewis said. "I don't know that I have any choice."
All the eye-blurring tension can make it hard to concentrate. Lewis thinks the color of Riddick's tie might have been bright red, though he can't remember for sure now. Murakami doesn't remember, either. Neither does James, though she did remember the black cowboy boots. ("He's based in Houston," she explained.) Another P-I reporter said: "Something was red." Still another P-I reporter recalled a loud, patterned tie and a "maroonish" shirt. Hackett, whose summation of her pitch—"I think I made a good case: I told him he doesn't need me"—underlined the general oddness and uneasiness of the whole affair, reported this about sartorial aesthetics: "I got a red-tie feeling. I have a ruddy feeling on the guy. I mean, he's in the warm tones. He's not in the cadaverous tones. I didn't get the sense of uptight suit."
Riddick told several of the nervous reporters that ultimately he's not the one making the decision about whether the online-only P-I goes forward. Who is making the call if not the vice president for digital media? Connelly, naturally, offered a mountain metaphor to explain the Hearst hierarchy: "Strange things occur when you get near the summit."
So, like everyone else, Lewis awaits the official answer (even as it
becomes more and more apparent what it will be). Meanwhile, having made
his best case to Riddick, he's now working on a nostalgic story slated
to run in the P-I's final print edition. Recently, he asked his
bosses what day the story would run. They said they didn't know. 
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(As a result, at this point nearly all of the paper's roughly 170 emplyees expect to be out of a job.)
"Hearst said on Tuesday that it may sell or close The San Francisco Chronicle if it cannot wring enough savings from the money-losing newspaper.
The announcement is the latest in a string of bad news for the newspaper industry, as several large papers and their publishers contemplate filing for bankruptcy amid plummeting advertising and circulation numbers.
Hearst said in its statement that The Chronicle, which it bought in 2000, lost $50 million last year and has lost money every year since 2001. Among the changes the company said it wants to see is “a significant reduction” in its union and nonunion employees.
“Survival is the outcome we all want to achieve,” Frank A. Bennack Jr., Hearst’s chief executive officer, and Steven R. Swartz, the president of its newspaper division, said in a statement. “But without the specific changes we are seeking across the entire Chronicle organization, we will have no choice but to quickly seek a buyer for the Chronicle or, should a buyer not be found, to shut the newspaper down.”
Frank J. Vega, The Chronicle’s chairman and publisher, told the newspaper: “It’s just a fact of life that we need to live within our means as a newspaper - and we have not for years.”
Just a thought and, given the news from San Fran, maybe pie in the sky. I just can't understand why the P-I would continue to string people along if there wasn't a plan to include them in a post-print strategy.
Hey Nichols, .....Simms,.....Kerli,....Locke....they all got a job with Obam, why can't you? ? ? Probably pay better, & you could be, say, uh, commisioner of gamming? You & yer kid. Like father, Like son. We need a new mayor anyway, so, go for it! You know what they say, still water gets stagnant after a while. See ya, at Jazz night on the beach, Mr. Mayor!
When I worked at the PI I found it to be place full of so much potential that was blocked by arrogance, group think and petty politics.
There was the notion that since we are the newspaper our way was the right way. True innovation has given way to 'standards.' These are not real substitutes for excellence.
We seemed to get wrapped up in the details and formal qualities of journalism, while losing sight of the whole.
I will be sad for an original source of local and regional news to go dark. I won't miss the arrogance.
They running out the 60 days as called for under the contract and in the meanwhile trying to suck every single worthwhile idea from them -- to be used for an online P-I or another online Hearst publication.
Pretty much everyone will be told to hit the bricks in the end. You are surprised by that? That's how business works.
Another incredulous reaction for the "P-I staffers who were angered thta the online P-I started linking to other publications." Really? Are you that naive? Do you think, as this situation edges toward its bitter, ugly end, that Hearst will be taking your feelings or professional opinions into consideration? Really? Such naivete blows me away. Can't put my finger on it but there's something about the naivete that blurs into arrogance and self-importance, which links to one of the reasons the P-I and other papers like it are going bye-bye.
It's a business. Businesses don't survive if they don't make money. Decisions are made revolving around what makes a profit. Nothing else, in the end, matters.
the seattle papers are preaching to people about how to think instead of reporting worthwhile news.
the papers are obsessed with race.
the seattle papers won't report ctime instead focusing on select weird stories like mary kay latouneau forever, so i knew a decade ago i would not subscribe to any seattle paper.
the seattle papers are for wealthy women who don't work living on the eastside with its "feely good" stories. glad to hear it is dying since it had no connection to the living world.
See:
http://tinyurl.com/bve84u
They did for the Sonics, and tax payers don't have to continually dishout millions of dollars for better facilities to keep the newspaper in town. It can certainly be argued that being a two newspaper town is a community asset and definately critical to a healthy democracy.
It is hysterical that you are blogging about someone elses ability to do their job when your whole "empire" is tanking. You suck at real estate!
All you have left are your various scams. Right now you are renting your houses (actually hovels) to unsuspecting low income families knowing full well that the properties are in foreclosure and scheduled for auction. You collect first and last months rent plus a hefty deposit (more if the family has pets). In a couple of weeks familys get evicted when the house is auctioned butyou, your skanky wife and your sham business, Bula Reality, pocket the last months rent and all the deposit money. Your kids must be so very proud of both of you!
The easy money has dried up, you can't keep borrowing new loans to keep up on the mortgages and previous loans. How will you keep your big house in Corvallis, your place on Vashion and your limo. You might even have to get a job!
You have lost 20 properties already, with 40 more foreclosures coming. You will not even be able to steal form the poor for much longer. You can't blame it on the economy, your defaults and over extended credit are part of the reason for the banking crisis. You have been slowly sinking for a couple of years now. It is years and years of greed, stupidity and copious amounts of drugs and drink that got you where you are today. Karma can be such a bitch.
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