(edited)
So, for a second, let’s philosophize about what the death of the Seattle PI really means on a variety of levels.
1) In an industry that is losing money, losing readers and has been becoming more and more irrelevant since 1995, someone finally decided to put the P-I out of its misery. Shouldn’t this have been considered an option years ago?
2) We will hear arguments that having only one paper will decrease the quality of the journalism. Really? Many people believe the quality of journalism has already diminished. Especially in print. Examples:
- Not one journalist of the 1000’s getting paychecks, investigated Bernie Madoff, AIG or the mortgage meltdown BEFORE any of it happened. How?
- The day before election day Christine Gregoire said Washington’s budget is in surplus. The day after election day, it’s $9 Billion in the hole. No one asks any questions.
- Baseball reporters chose to ignore all reporting on steroids, protecting the people they are supposed to be reporting on.
- Reporters are so used to regurgitating press releases that there is a web site called HelpAReporterOut.
- Reporters became so clueless as to how to write online, we had to come up with a Social Media Press Release to make it possible for them to pull quotes out and link to online sources.
Anyway, the point is that “professional” journalism already seems a shell of itself. People are smart enough to know that reporters know one thing and are writing something else. There are still ones we really respect, but on average, I think we have less faith in the quality of the investigation. Losing the P-I is an effect, not a cause, of journalistic depreciation.
3) The world is digital. I see the stats that say something like 90% of people have cell phones. Which means 1 out of 10 people DON’T. How? Why? I don’t care how old you get, you need to at least accept that technology advances. For the price of one year of printing the New York Times, they could give every subsciber 2 Amazon Kindles.
4) First go the papers, next the local TV news guys? Does a station really need to pay someone $2 million a year to read a teleprompter? Or do you invest $2 million is creating micro-blogs and ways to provide niche news to a captive audience without the restraint of a 30 min newscast?
5) Closing the chasm between “news” and “blog.” Suppose I go ever Interlake High School football game, and write about them on my blog? Anyone who hass “Interlake High School” in a Alert or Feed reader would get my blog post. Do we need an intern from the Journal American to be there as well? Why shouldn’t the JA just promote my citizen post instead?
6) But there’s something nice about holding a paper on a Sunday morning. Really? Getting your hands smudged? Having it blow around in the wind? Squinting to see the font? The annoying ad folded onto the front page? News that was 12-18 hours old? I know there is a comfort factor in reading a piece of environment damaging, dirty, 12 hour old, static piece of paper. But holding an iPhone at the same Coffee shop on the same sunny day is also a satisfying experience.
Conclusion:
I’m sure there are 10-20 more things to think about on this issue. I’ll miss the P-I the same way I miss Cheers, Seinfeld, $4 Spring Training Tickets, $.99/gallon gas, my 8th grade classmates at St. Paul’s and the real Ken Griffey roaming Center Field in the Kingdome. But the world changes – usually for the better – and we either adapt with it, or get stuck behind. There are some people that will never go digital, and who will have the way they go about their day extremely disrupted. For them I feel bad, I guess. To a point. But it’s also an opportunity to force these people out of yesterday’s static world and into the benefits of today’s digital society.
Comments
2 responses to “Goodbye P-I”
Just one person’s opinion….
1) perhaps, but given the reasons you’ve listed below, it’s tough to go all or nothing with this kind of thing. The information was in a dated form factor…the information (quite honestly) wasn’t competitive w the Washington Post or NYTimes. I confess, when I had money to spend, it was on what I perceived to be better journalism.
2) I’m curious about the examples you list here as well, and was convinced when I moved here that Seattle was really managed by 20 people running in circles. They all went to UW, and went to kindergarten together. These kinds of relationships automatically edit what gets focused on. There is little outside-in thinking. This makes me wonder what will become of this citizen journalism movement we are currently participating in. Given your questions here, perhaps you are one of the few that will rise to the top.
3) This city is very impatient wrt the digital environment. There are people who are just unable to adapt. For instance, my parents will never own cell phones. They just won’t. I could give them am ipod, and they would not want to learn how to use it. “Unadaptables” might be this way for several reasons: choice or casualties of the digital divide. This isn’t just my parents, it is a very large % of the Boomer generation and not the ones that get featured on the AARP magazine cover. I really fault orgs like that for focusing on sex at 60, rather than the “sex appeal” of being current. I could go on for hours on this one –
4) Don’t even get me started on TV. Talk about a medium struggling to be relevant. Is Anderson Coooper really keeping them honest? He is attracting the 30-40 year old female (and male) demographic. He wears his suit well. He has good lighting. Other than that, the program is pretty vapid and annoyingly repetitive. Please. I’m still a loyal 60 Minutes fan.
5) good question.
6) I like the paper, preferably if it’s been read before me and is free. No, I don’t like the ink, but there’s something nice about holding and sharing a paper on a Sunday morning. It promotes interesting discussion if you are fortunate to have others to talk it over with. If not, than we run to our blogs and share our opinions with others, bringing up the need to connect, to be heard, to get a witness for our thoughts. You sound rather curmudgeonly here. 😉 Smudging, wind blowing, squinting – you sound like you also carry large amounts of change in your pockets and wear black socks with sandals.
Conclusion:
You raise some interesting points. The world certainly changes and doesn’t slow down for anyone. I feel bad for those people left behind too. With that there is a lot of lost potential and creates a greater gap to traverse communication. I agree that it represents an opportunity to force people to move forward whether they want to or not—and that is likely a good thing. Birth is painful.
and this topic will come up more I think in the years to come. I’m now more fully over to your side. (but I still like the Sunday paper)
…
This example is why newspapers and TV must reinvent itself, or die.
Obama is Lincoln v2.0
Taking a page out of Lincoln’s Handbook on How To Be A Good President, Obama is everywhere in the community: at dinner, at the soup kitchens, in meetings, on The Hill. I’m sure he will eventually inspire his “Where’s Obama?” own book series. Additionally, he’s also taking the regular temperature of the people and choosing questions from you Tube videos that were voted on by the public is one way he is doing that.
Lesson: Listen to your customers
Listening to and accepting outside in thinking is the hallmark of great leadership. Yesterday, the Washington press corps was upstaged by 3 questions selected by the American Public. What was most interesting was the reaction of the Washington press corps. Oh how banal, a question from the public! Must we? Hearing 3 college girls who probably stayed up all night rehearsing their questions – oh the torture that must have been for them!
For more, here: http://socialventurelabs.wordpress.com/2009/03/27/customer-love-listen/