Sad day for Seattle and journalism

March 17, 2009 at 2:17 am Leave a comment

Today (March 17, 2009) is the last issue of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer and then it’s put to bed for good.

I am so saddened by this news. It just keeps happening. I feel so sad for those journalists, as well as the community of readers who religiously got their news from that paper. The economy is not helping this situation, only quickening the closing of those papers that are barely surviving.

I’m still waiting for this to happen in a city without a competitor newspaper. I simply can’t imagine a city (say Austin) without a print alternative to the news, and I don’t mean an entertainment tab. It’s just not fathomable.

Newspapers are at their final push. Why not experiment and be bold? What do they have to lose? Screw the “we got to make deadline” attitude. There’s no other time for change than now. It really is do (something different), or die.