Black and White and bleeding Red all over: Newspapers

Everybody around the Seattle area (and a few others), has been bemoaning the loss of the Seattle Post Intelligencer newspaper, for a week at least, which published its last hard copy paper edition today, although they will continue online.

The Times crying for the PI is the funniest, since they have been at each other’s throats litigiously for a long time now. Clearly, if a major paper is to survive at all they will have to stand alone and also make major changes in the way they try and do business, and quickly.
Ian Furness is another funny one. Being a DJ on sports talk 950AM radio in Seattle, he lamented the loss of the PI, saying he needed a hard copy of the sports page for his morning constitutional. Hey guess what Ian, you sloppy jackass? KJR talk radio is one of the reasons I don’t need the sports page! THINK!

Using the sports page as an example of the larger issue, many forms of information were not available before. ESPN and FOX NW sports and so on, were not there to compete in the newspaper heyday. Neither were sports radio shows. And of course the internet was not there either.
I find it funny that some people think bloggers have nothing to add as they don’t have enough inside poop to be valuable. I have heard it said that bloggers simply rehash what has been written about in the newspapers, apparently to some they are idea-less. I don’t agree with this of course and find it silly.

Websites like Craigslist are hurting the papers more than bloggers I think. People really can’t see paying for classified ads when a better service is free for the taking. How could the brains behind the PI not see that one coming? I think the Times will have to come up with special promotions to sell papers. They need a craigslist free posting board but better and more locally integrated. They could start charging a nominal fee for subscription to the online site. I would personally be willing to pay $10 a year to keep them open.