Speaking of The Big Clock, this arrived earlier today from a reader apparently wrapped up in the stimulus bill debates:

Hey Eli,

Thanks for all the coverage about Hearst and the future of the P-I. Just wondering: How many days are left in Hearst’s 60-day decision deadline?

I’d look it up myself but I’m glued to C-SPAN right now.

Thanks

This turns out to be a difficult question to answer. In fact, it’s almost comical how many different answers are out there right now.

If you ask my calendar, there are 26 days left for the P-I. I got that in a very low-tech way: by placing my finger on January 9th, the day Hearst announced it would be closing down the P-I‘s print edition if no one bought the paper within 60 days, and then counting forward… 60 days! By doing that, one ends up at March 11th as the last day for a printed P-I to come rumbling off the presses. (Assuming Hearst doesn’t find a buyer. Which everyone assumes it won’t.)

If you ask the countdown whiteboard in the P-I newsroom how many days are left, today, I am told by a very highly-placed source, it informs you that there are 37 days left. (Even though 32 days ago it said there were 58 days left, and 58 minus 32 does not equal 37. Go figure.)

If you ask Liz Brown, administrator for the Pacific Northwest Newspaper Guild, it’s complicated, relating to the federal WARN Act and when Hearst filed notice under said act (hint: notice wasn’t filed on the day Hearst announced it was putting the P-I up for sale). But Brown tells me there are no fewer than 33 days left and perhaps as many as (but no more than) 47 days left.

And if you ask Lisa K. Bagley, corporate communications manager for Hearst, she will say only this: “I can confirm mid-March.“

Hope that clears it all up!

From what I’m hearing from people inside the P-I, there may be a formal announcement next week stating the true, compliant, and perhaps even non-moving last day.

Eli Sanders was The Stranger's associate editor. His book, "While the City Slept," was a finalist for the Washington State Book Award and the Dayton Literary Peace Prize. He once did this and once won...

11 replies on “The P-I Countdown”

  4. If they were smart the last front page would be totally blank, except for the masthead. But that’s probably been done a million times elsewhere.

  5. W. R. Hearst’s ‘The Song of the River’

    The Hearst Newspapers are commemorating the anniversary of the death of William Randolph Hearst. Along with numerous other writings, he penned this poem, and reprinting it is our traditional way of remembering our founder, who died Aug. 14, 1951. The Seattle Post-Intelligencer has been a Hearst newspaper since 1921.

    The snow melts on the mountain.

    And the water runs down to the spring,

    And the spring in a turbulent fountain,

    With a song of youth to sing,

    Runs down to the riotous river,

    And the river flows to the sea,

    And the water again

    Goes back in rain

    To the hills where it used to be.

    And I wonder if life’s deep mystery

    Isn’t much like the rain and the snow

    Returning through all eternity

    To the places it used to know.

    For life was born on the lofty heights

    And flows in a laughing stream,

    To the river below

    Whose onward flow

    Ends in a peaceful dream.

    And so at last,

    When our life has passed

    And the river has run its course,

    It again goes back,

    O’er the selfsame track,

    To the mountain which was its source.

    So why prize life

    Or why fear death,

    Or dread what is to be?

    The river ran

    Its allotted span

    Till it reached the silent sea.

    Then the water harked back

    To the mountain-top

    To begin its course once more.

    So we shall run

    The course begun

    Till we reach the silent shore.

    Then revisit earth

    In a pure rebirth

    From the heart of the virgin snow.

    So don’t ask why

    We live or die,

    Or whither, or when we go,

    Or wonder about the mysteries

    That only God may know.

    — W.R. Hearst

  6. Know what I hope they save online? Karen Sykes’ hiking archive. Those articles are so useful, definitely the best hiking resource for Seattle on the web. I love it.

    Who can I call about that?

  7. I can see the PI globe from my desk at work. I’ve asked a few people about starting a pool regarding when the globe stops spinning. I haven’t gotten a lot of interest.

  8. I too was trying to figure this out so I could cancel my subscription upon of the PI’s last day in newsprint. When I telephoned the Seattle Times subscription customer service office the other day, nobody there seemd to know, and at that point I decided to end my PI subscription then and there. Why pay in advance of something you are not going to receive? The thought of having to chase down a reimbursment from the Seattle Times for an overpayment on a defunct PI subscription seemed like one less thing I wanted to deal with. Honestly, I would rather walk barefoot on newly laid goose crap at Greenlake.

  9. Fuck – don’t go away PI. But at the same time, don’t go away youth, don’t go away vigor, don’t go away 401K. Time to say good bye to everything as we know it. Except outsourcing.

    A blind person could design the PI’s front page for all we care anymore. That’s what the Times does.

  11. Way I see it, maybe the only good thing about the times we are living in is that they can spawn a person who is also a Stranger reader to say “I’m glued to C-SPAN right now.”

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