Nobody is buying newspapers just now—but Hearst, reportedly, is going to go through the motions of attempting to sell the PI. King 5:
…a source close to the deal tells KING 5 that the paper’s owner, Hearst Corporation, will announce as soon as tomorrow that it’s putting the P-I up for sale. Under the joint operating agreement between the P-I and The Seattle Times, the P-I must be offered for sale for at least 30 days before it can cease operation….
We’re told Hearst does not expect another buyer to step forward and that Seattle will likely become a one newspaper town within the next few months.
Rumors have been rife that the incredible shrinking Seattle Times was the likelier of our two dailies to go under—is it possible that both Seattle’s dailies could go under? Or is there a deal in the works?
Says a friend who follows the newspaper industry: “The thing to remember is that in other cities, Hearst put its paper up for sale, closed it or sold it cheap, and then turned around and bought the other paper.” Hearst did this in, he says, “San Francisco and San Antonio and maybe Houston.” So Hearst closing down the PI could be its first move toward acquiring the ailing Seattle Times. It seems highly unlikely that the owners of the financially strapped Seattle Times could come up with the money to purchase and shutter the PI.
The PI is the older of Seattle’s two daily papers.
Here’s a bit more about Hearst from a 2003 PI story about the Seattle Times‘ efforts to end the Joint Operating Agreement (JOA) that kept Seattle a two-daily town:
The company, a media conglomerate owned by descendants of late newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst, owns such magazines as Esquire and Cosmopolitan and has stakes in successful cable-TV operations such as ESPN and The History Channel, in addition to newspapers, broadcast stations and other businesses.
It also has a record as a survivor in two-newspaper markets. In three other cities—San Antonio, Houston and San Francisco—Hearst ultimately outlasted its competitors.
And the Seattle Times in 2006 on Hearst’s MO:
And if Hearst buys The Times, it could shutter the P-I.
There’s precedent—in San Antonio and San Francisco, where Hearst owned the smaller of each town’s two dailies. In each case, it bought the larger paper from its competitor and closed its own publication or made it a nonfactor competitively.
Frank Blethen “stunned,” according to a report that just went up on the Seattle Times’ website—a report which emphasizes the fact that KING 5’s story has a single, unnamed source. No one from the PI or Hearst has confirmed the report. So… uh… maybe the PI isn’t for sale. Maybe the PI has accepted the Commerce Secretary position in the Obama administration.
So far nothing on the PI’s website—home to a million and one community bloggers, and the “Big Blog,” which only asks, never tells.
The Seattle Times story now includes reactions from inside the PI’s newsroom…
At least four sources in the P-I newsroom said the rumor reported by KING-TV was a surprise to them, that they hadn’t received any memo or email or announcement from management indicating the P-I was up for sale. Across the newsroom, small groups huddled to discuss the rumor, not in anger, but with visible surprise and a touch of panic.
“We don’t know anything,” said Daniel Lathrop, a P-I reporter.
…but as of 6:10 PM, there’s still not a word about KING 5’s story on any of the PI’s homepage or on any of the paper’s numerous blogs.
UPDATE: The story is up in the PI’s homepage now (6:15 PM)…
…and the news seems to have stunned the management at the PI.
The P-I’s managing editor said he knows of no plans to sell the paper. At about 5:15 p.m., soon after the report was aired, managing editor David McCumber told the newsroom’s staffers, “If this is going on—and I don’t know that it is—it’s going on at a level that’s far above me, and nobody has seen fit to clue me in. I think it’s a bunch of rumor. You look at the state of this business—it wouldn’t surprise me if something was going on, but I have no knowledge of what that something is.”
…
KING 5 reporter Linda Byron said in an interview that she would not reveal her source but that she is “confident” about the information. She repeated that the source is “close to the deal.”
You do know this is a legal precondition to dissolving the two-newspaper collective, right?
If they don’t “sell” it, they can’t kick the Times to the curb and force it to die, while publishing their own daily paper, probably a tabloid with lots of ads for … the same things the stranger has …
I think it’s sad. The P-I generally does a nice job covering local culture & Northwest things events & outdoor stuff. Plus it has a really well done web site.
Here’s hoping they survive — against the odds.
I suppose Joel Connelly getting hired by The Stranger is totally out of the question.
I would love Joel Connelly as the stranger’s new public editor.
I primarily get the PI for the editorial section. Now it’s down to just one page and that only gets you: 1 staff editorial, 3-4 letters to the editor, and 2 syndicated columnists. Hardly any room for balance. A Maureen Dowd will always get priority over a Charles Krauthammer. I might as well stop subscribing.
Savage,
Quick get over there and lick some door knobs.
But now where will Joel Connelly complain?
@1: Is that it? You’d think the price of the surviving paper would go up after its competition closes.
I second @4.
But, of course, this means we’ll have all the right-wing America-hating loonies on here that currently post drivel on the PI and Times boards ….
NOT a good thing.
Sucks. The P-I seemed to me to be the better paper – except on the weekends when they couldn’t really publish anything anyway.
Given the fact that the Stranger’s print issue has been noticeably decreasing in size, I wouldn’t be so gleeful about the demise of hard copy newspapers if I were Mr. Savage….
I am not being gleeful — you are reading glee into this. I like dailies, I sometimes write for dailies, and I just so happen as to subscribe to the PI.
No glee. I am, like Frank, stunned.
Can we get the PI Globe Landmarked that fast?
HAAA HAAAA death of newspapers!!!
Oh wait, this is terrifying for Democracy.
It’s really happening…oh my god
The Post-Intelligencer is a much cooler name. If they were still in their old building, it would be much more tragic though.
And yes – the globe must be saved.
Well, Stranger, maybe your masthead will soon be a reality…
Do you think you could have the P-I Globe put on the roof of the One Stranger Plaza?
“It’s in The Stranger!”
@17 No. Too gay. Forget it.
If the P-I put the F-word in a headline on the front page, it would be saved.
Agreed, 19.
From left field…but that commerce position bit gave a good solid laugh out loud moment.
The rest, well not so much.
will @9:
wait, what we don’t already get the same crazies posting on slog.
yur, saying it’s a whole different batch of crazies that will migrate here to our little OZ, this can’t happen, think about the draperies….
lets get up in arms, against these usurpers of bandwitdh.
though, in a sense, you are right the sound off and the new times comments are pretty fucking 2nd grade
though thats kinda like the mote in the eye, yadda…
but besides….
think about what the gays are doing to our soil….
I work for the times and am very worried about bieng layed off. Is this good or bad. I dont know. there has been talk of us delivering the usa today and other products. Pi folding will cut the production costs in half and help the times. But the ad rates will decrease since both papers count for this in circulation. So who knows we may be fucked or come out better for this. in the long run hearst has alot more money. The times already got rid of the transportation department. (big trucks) farming it out to penske. more layofffs are predicted for feb. But now who knows.
So will Horsey go independent?
Prediction: The three papers will combine as the Strange Times Intelligencer. The new paper will include Joel Connelly writing about Art Thiel, who will be writing about David Horsey. Their editorial policy will be Lasseiz-faire Obamanomics.
@23 Oh please don’t be in the newsroom. You’re circ, right?
Stroke your beat patches on this, Strangerites: What if the New Times bought the Stranger? All cloak ‘n’ dagger style. You find out Monday morning. The air in your cramped offices? Fouled (more so than usual). The what-next panic sets in. The imposter syndrome takes over. You look at your co-workers with new eyes – not as FRIENDS but COMPETITION.
Have fun.
Joel Connelly would do wonders for Crosscut.
Man, this is awful. Especially if Hearst ends up buying the Times. Seems to me we’re edging closer and closer to the day when a single corporation owns all the newspapers in the country — that seems pretty dangerous to me.
In any case, we’re going to lose a lot of great reporters in this town soon, which sucks.
I’m sure Joel Connelly would be welcome at Crosscut. I think they’re short a windbag over there. He can alternate columns with Brewster.
One can never get enough of Connelly’s stories of hiking on Washington’s majestic trails. Although truth be told, I think its been more trail mix than trails.
He’d better hurry too. I suspect there’s not alot of air left in Crosscut’s tanks either!
They should resurrect that online-only newspaper they had for the strike, but add ads and a donation button. Might not get a ton of money, but it could act as a stop-gap until everyone finds work.
@28, oh yes, it’s time to wring your hands at that Hearst spectre. That would be sooooo much worse than the fucking Blethens.
If Frankie got out of great grandpa’s biz, who would Kemper Freeman have to share mutual rimjobs with? What would Frankie’s idiot children do? I suppose there’s some sort of trust for them…, but Kemper would be royally screwed. Who else would want to rim that smelly old hole?
And what about all the cheesy photojournalists? Who would publish their signature photos of sad looking people with other sad looking people in soft focus in the background?
It’s a sad night at the bar at the Rainier Club for sure….
@26, that’s how the OC Weekly died (Orange County, CA–Costa Mesa, Newport Beach, etc.). Village Voice / New Times fucked them right up the ass, and all their fall-down-funny writers raced for the exits.
If Hearst does put the P-I up for sale nobody will buy it, since it has no assets (no real estate, no press, etc.). So it closes, and the Times becomes the only game in town and doesn’t have to send any money to Hearst. A large number (not all) of P-I subscribers will switch the Times. (Keep in mind that hundreds of thousands of people still pay to get one of the two papers each day — which is hundreds of thousands more than the weeklies.)
So then the Times would have the same amount of advertising, lower production costs, circulation costs remain fairly constant (since drivers already deliver both papers) — and all the revenue. Of course, that shrinking revenue is still problematic, but it’s a rosier picture than the current one.
Monica Guzman asks “How do you make your resume shine?”
Say it isn’t so. The P-I is one of the few local sources of real city-beat reporting other than the Stranger.
Very strange they would bail on the P-I without having gotten their hands on the Times first.
Then again they very likely know more about the Times’ financial condition than anyone other than the Blethen family.
Hey, anyone else notice that the Seattle Times has removed their eagle symbol, arguably the Blethen family crest, from the masthead of their website.
As I recall and a google archived page proved, the logo used to live in the blank space at the top, between the fancy font name and the little weather icon.
Anyone else find this strange?
The Stranger should buy it! America NEEDS a daily Stranger.
@22 – look, i can handle the crazies here, but you should read the incredibily out-of-it ultra-right nutso posters on the P-I and the Times … if they move here, we better go to registered user names …
I second #37! How much are they asking for the PI, anyway?