If I were responsible for keeping the books, I would’ve shut it down too. It has taken me a year to realize that and admit it.
With its spinning neon globe overlooking Elliott Bay, the printed Seattle Post-Intelligencer was a West Coast institution. It was the state’s oldest business. A home for elegant scribes and scrappy diggers. Quirky. Artistic. Majestic. Beloved. Hated. Respected. Feared.
Working there as a reporter was a personal dream-come-true. I loved that place and proudly showed off my business card to whoever asked, “What do you do?”
After years of moving around the country and seeking a home, I’d found one in the P-I. I belonged at a newspaper. That newspaper. In a major city. In Seattle.
So when the Seattle P-I stopped printing one year ago, I felt shattered. “How could they do this to this city? To us?” I wondered about Hearst Corp., the New York-based company that owned the P-I.
I felt angry and blindsided and helpless. I was one of 10 percent of the staff chosen to work for seattlepi.com — which was a blessing in that I had something to focus on and I got to keep doing what I love.
But now, one year later, I am working in finance — almost by surprise. And I realized this week: Of course. I needed to understand what happened, and to do that, I had to understand more about how business works.
Sometimes it’s hard to be objective about the things we love — even for reporters.
My new job as a junior stock analyst has helped me to see my treasured-shuttered newspaper with fresh eyes. Objective eyes.
Early into the new millennium, the P-I had become a crappy company with a business model creaking louder than the globe atop the building:
–It was losing up to $14 million a year with no future profits in sight.
–It outsourced its basic money-making functions to its biggest competitor, which also, oh by the way, was run by men who wanted to squash it dead. (The P-I’s printing, delivery and advertising sales were handled by the rival Seattle Times. This would be like if Coca-Cola outsourced its distribution to Pepsi Co.)
–It was staffed by members of a feisty union that wasn’t afraid to tussle with management.
–It was overseen by new executives in New York who didn’t put the paper into the mess it was in, and had little inclination or time to get it out of it.
–It was operating without any legal freedom to market itself.
“Shit show” is a new phrase I’ve picked up from the finance industry to describe operations like the P-I. I love the term. It’s brutally honest, doesn’t mince words and isn’t afraid of the truth: Kinda like the P-I.
The whole devastating debacle taught me two crucial life lessons:
Money matters.
Whatever can’t go on forever . . . won’t.
And that shit show reality is why you’ll never find a P-I flapping in the wind at the Pike Place Market newsstand again.
My, you are going to make many former coworkers happy with this. I will say the P-I was destined to close. The recession, the bottom dropping out of the newspaper market and the conditions at The Seattle Times probably did make what happened inevitable.
Would leaving the finance industry help you see you the Shit Show that the mortgage, housing and banking industries gave to this country? “Whatever can’t go on forever…won’t.” Unless Congress can give you billions of bailout money. And you can hide financial data. Oops. Brutually honest. Press analysis is fine. Looking outside your office would help.
Ouch!
Maybe we were a shit show, but we were an enterprising enough one to see the value in a moxie young reporter from Nowhere, Alabama, and give her a chance to shine on a larger, if scat-tainted, stage.
All of the management wasn’t in New York, and those of us on the premises loved the place and fought for it and remember it a year later for the journalistic leader it was.
As you accurately pointed out, the JOA was not anybody’s fault in New York. It simply was. And it sucked. And it lost money for years.
It is INaccurate to say nobody in New York cared much about getting us out of the, ah, manure. The New Yorkers did fight a pretty expensive and valiant legal war against the real shit show that was trying to kill us directly after trying unsuccessfully to do so indirectly for a lot of years.
And it even worked. For awhile. Until time and recession caught up.
Lots of good folks worked their guts out there, including you. Don’t smear excrement on the whole joint because we had a bad business model within a challenged sector inside a recession. –dcm
David, thank you for your comment and the bit about New York.
I remember it as the journalistic leader it was, too. I’m going to send you a private e-mail.
In regard to this part:
“It is INaccurate to say nobody in New York cared much about getting us out of the, ah, manure. The New Yorkers did fight a pretty expensive and valiant legal war against the real shit show that was trying to kill us directly after trying unsuccessfully to do so indirectly for a lot of years.”
– My point is that, we’d gotten to the point where their hands were tied. The New York folks didn’t abandon Seattle — clearly Hearst still has a huge presence there with seattlepi.com — but they had to abandon the print operation.
Maybe I should have been more clear that, as far as the business went, “print edition” = “JOA.”
And thus, present leadership at Hearst Newspaper group didn’t get the P-I into the JOA, and there was no real way to get it out of it…without taking on a ton of debt to buy the Times and yadda yadda.
And in regard to: “Don’t smear excrement on the whole joint because we had a bad business model within a challenged sector.”
…David, I’d never do such a thing, or intend to.
The whole point was — you can have ALL that synergy, all that history, all that wonderful work, all that earnestness, all that MEANING, and if it all sits on top of a bad business model: It will end.
The P-I was a great newspaper sitting on top of a non-great business. That was all I was trying to say.
The JOA did what JOA’s have done around the country: postpone the inevitable.
The market evolution that accelerated with digital had already begun. “There can be only one” takes on new meaning as ad sources disappear (national consolidation, direct mail, cable) coupled with very high fixed costs and shrinking readership (which raises unit cost of each paper printed).
Andrea – I remember when it was all ending and some moved to the seattlepi.com and many didn’t, you wrote something that stuck with me. I don’t remember the exact word for word, but it was along the lines that you were moving on with a new business model in the hopes that you could be apart of something that would figure out how to hire back journalists.
It was the best reason I heard for continuing on with the seattlepi.com, it wasn’t about needing the money, the fact that it was just a job, or that bills needed to be paid, it was for the love of journalism and continuing it.
It seems with this post you’re now more concerned with bashing the old business model than trying to build up a new one. We all knew it was about money, I think that’s why it stings so much. It stings that seattlepi.com is all that’s left of it, but it’s nice to know it completely didn’t die, it’s just working under a new model that will hopefully do what you intended to do.
If journalism were about the money, no one would do it.
Maybe I’m still a romantic.
Sara,
My opinion hasn’t changed on hoping seattlepi.com hires back more journalists. That is the reason why I want seattlepi.com to succeed!
And I wish the same for all the other new journalism ventures in Seattle: Monica Guzman wrote a great story on those ventures. This stuff is very exciting!
I feel like I’ve stumbled onto a conversation among old friends… I truly miss the people who made the P-I.
I had read that there *was* a serious offer to Hearst to buy the P-I and run it as a print publication, but Hearst balked. Does any know more about that? I suppose it’s water under the bridge…
As for “pi.com”, it currently is a pale imitation that trades on the former P-I’s good name. Gone is the in-depth, fact-checked investigative reporting, replaced by opinionated, unsubstatiated blogs and pointless celebrity news. Very sad…
Andrea,
I found your financial take on the demise of the Post-Intelligencer actually spot on. We always knew it could close. We also hoped that Hearst would suffer a little more to take over the market. It wasn’t an unreasonable idea, given the resources it had and lack of on the other side. What was hard was feeling cut adrift and disrespected after working so hard and sacrificing a lot for the good of the cause. The only quibble I have now, and admittedly it makes me angry, is seattlepi.com seems bent on hiring only outsiders for the occasional vacancy and blackballing anyone from the former P-I staff who walked away with a severance check. … That said, I always appreciated your passion and hyperkenetic energy and thought you were/are a good journalist. … Dan Raley, former P-I, now Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
Have any former P-I staff applied for jobs at Seattlepi.com? Just curious …
It’s always entertaining to read the many reasons why journalists feel as though the papers are dying off left and right. it’s always an extrinsic factor, it’s ‘the recession’ or it’s that the people ‘don’t read print’ anymore, or any number of lame excuses.
It’s never introspective, and never contemplative as to what the real deficits within the profession are that are driving people away in droves.
Perhaps the content itself, the delivery of packaged articles is flawed. Perhaps the scope of coverage was wrong, it’s not as though people are less interested in local topics, it’s just that they’re unlikely to get it, and get it well-done, from their local paper.
If you want hard truth, stop looking to blame others and find the mistakes made that contributed to the decline. The overly generous union packages are a good start.
“Money matters.”
Gee, ya think?
And it only took you a year to figure that out. Given such shrewd insight, no wonder journalism is dying.
At a talk to Engineers Without Borders a couple of days ago, I asked for a show of hands: “Where do you get most of your news and information?” Not one person indicated, “Newspapers.” The audience was primarily students. Andrea, I think you’re spot-on about the business model, especially given the choices people have with mobile and online communications. The other factors – including a resistance to adapt – continue to weigh down the industry. I’m a former journalist, and I always knew that “news” needed advertising support. In short, I was part of a business and knew it.
I’m not a journalist nor was I involved in your paper, but I have had my identity completely absorbed by my career. It can be soul-crushing when something you love and identify with on a cellular level is ripped out from under you, regardless of the reason. I’m just happy to see you’ve found a new path and a perspective that keeps you from taking it all personally.
In reply to ben w: It’s the advertising dollars that fled print that is the problem, not the lack of an audience. On the day the P-I staff found out the paper was for sale, more people viewed our content than had ever done so in a single day. Ever. Advertisers have left print and gone to the Web because they can track results there. And because advertising is cheaper online. That’s the main source of woe for journalism in print.
It is really hard to watch something you loved shoot itself in the foot and be in denial about who fired the gun.
I like that you’re now able to see it with new eyes… That’s what learning and growing is all about. Thanks for being so honest with us here!
Hey Andrea
its melissa I just wanted to see how you are tried to contact you on fb hope all is well with you