PI staff dutifully reports:
The Hearst Corp., owner of the Seattle P-I, officially notified the newspaper’s employees late last week that if no one buys the paper, it expects all P-I jobs — both union and nonunion — to be eliminated. […]
On Jan. 9, Hearst said it would stop printing the P-I if no buyer is found within 60 days. Hearst also repeated in its letter to employees that it might continue with a seattlepi.com Web site, produced by far fewer than the paper’s current 170 workers.
By “far fewer” workers for the website (considering they “expect” that “all PI jobs” will be eliminated), do they mean… zero employees for the website? Or do they mean, we’ll fire every one of you and hire some of you back, but revamp your salary and benefits? Bummer.
i think because of the union the job classifications are different for the paper and online. people who work for the website work for pi.com and not for the PI…
Hearst recently did the same thing to Electronic Gaming Monthly, shitcanning the magazine one issue shy of a 20th Anniversary. Maybe they just have a slash and burn attitude towards print media.
The new “real world” salary scale at the online P-I will reflect the economic realities of these challenging times. In other words, twenty-somethings drawing mini-paychecks.
in some ways @1 is probably spot on.
if they can “kill” the paper, they can come back with a “separate” online version, buy the naming rights from themselves, and do it without a union.
And the new world sensibility says it will mostly be outsourced to writers in India.
If you know anything about Hearst and its history you know exactly what they’ll do. And it won’t be pretty.
It’s 100% about the union. It’s 100% union busting. OTOH, unions and tech companies mix like oil and water.