Seattle Post-Intelligencer RIP - Shelly Palmer Report - Shelly Palmer - Shelly Palmer Report

Published: March 20, 2009 at 03:23 AM GMT
Last Updated: March 20, 2009 at 03:23 AM GMT

This past week the first of America's major metropolitan newspapers has made the decision to cease print operations and transform itself into an online only news organization. The Seattle Post-Intelligencer RIP, long live www.seattlepi.com -- if only it could be true.

If you're interested in the details, you can read a very through article in the WSJ by Shria Ovide. Essentially, advertising revenue is down, the paper is losing over $14 million annually and Hearst is pulling the plug.

Except they're not pulling the plug -- they're firing most of the staff and making it a web-only enterprise. This apparently is in the name of science. They are going to experiment a little bit and see if there's some stripped-down business model that they can cookie-cut and apply to all of their ailing newspaper properties.

Wow! What a bad idea. It would be much smarter to close up shop and send everyone home. Why?

Let's review: first and foremost, newspaper companies are not in the content business, they are in the advertising business. And, as I have often said in this column, they are really in the business of killing trees, mashing them up, putting ink on them and delivering them to your door in gas-guzzling trucks.

That being said, there is a small amount of content that is original and there is certainly a gigantic amount of value added by the editing and filtering of information that each major newspaper is famous for.

So why would the very smart people at Hearst do something as dumb as setting up the seattlepi.com to fail? The mind verily boggles. Here you have editors and editorial staff that can add value to information and turn it into knowledge. You have an electronic news-gathering organization that is designed and built to fill up a newspaper that can keep the daily attention of 118,000 people. You have a real opportunity to create a "real" model for the future of branded, filtered, news distributed not WiwWiwWiw (What I want, When I want, Where I want) but "right person, right place, right time." And, instead, you decide to cut the staff to nothing and sunset the organization by letting it die a slow, agonizing death.

This is horrible on a number of levels. As other newspapers watch seattlepi.com gasp its last breaths, they will assume that Hearst has done everything it can to make it work. They will indict the model and draw the bold (and in this case not completely wrong) conclusion that it is not possible to make money with online content. If you are in the business of distributing digital media, this should make your blood boil.

I hate everything about this. Here we have a major media company that is privately held and does not have to answer to fickle Wall Street investors, the SEC, public shareholders or even public opinion as to the value of its assets. Here we have an opportunity to completely rebuild the Seattle Post-Intelligencer into a modern, dual-revenue stream digital distribution engine. But no, Hearst has decided to sunset it in the most unceremonious way possible -- they will kill it, just to watch it die.

It is easy to understand why Hearst has decided to do this. It's the easy way out. So many things have gone extinct in the name of cost-cutting. But here's the thing. What if you make a serious investment in the tools and technology required to be a super-efficient purveyor of electronic information? What if you built the underlying technology to deal with self-serve advertising, measurable syndicated content, leveraged social media and added enough value to maintain certain aspects of the dual-revenue model. What if you created a new, emotionally satisfying user interface (iTunes for information) that people actually enjoyed using? What if you created an alternative to web-surfing that was so easy and so organized that it getting your news from seattlepi.com was a new preferred behavior? What if? What if? What if?

Sadly, we will never know. Seattle Post-Intelligencer, RIP. www.seattlepi.com, so sorry to hear of your untimely demise.

Shelly Palmer is the host of MediaBytes with Shelly Palmer, a daily show featuring news you can use about technology, media & entertainment. He is the author of Television Disrupted: The Transition from Network to Networked TV (2008, New York House Press) and the upcoming, Get Digital: Reinventing Yourself and Your Career for the 21^st Century Economy. (2009, Lake House Press). Shelly is also President of the National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences, NY (the organization that bestows the coveted Emmy Awards). For information about Get Digital Classes, visit http://www.shellypalmer.com/seminars

To communicate with or to be contacted by the executives and/or companies mentioned in this column, link to JackMyers Connection Hotline.

The hard cold reality of the media industry is that there are simply too many media outlets to be sustained by advertiser spending. Can a market the size of Seattle ad market really sustain two daily papers? Over the course of the next year, the same question is going to be asked about the number of cable TV stations, life style magazines or websites.

I have no idea if the Seattle P-I web only news model will come off. But bold decisions and different ideas are exactly what the newspaper industry needs to find answers to a model in decline. Hearst could have easily just have cut the cord completely, but they have a brand that means something to a number of Seattle residents and if there is a chance that this stripped down cost model might work, why not take it.

Posted at 12:09 PM on Mar 22, 2009 by Antony Young