Printless in Seattle

If you have access to a print edition of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer today, grab a copy because it is last post for the city's oldest business.

The 146-year-old Hearst newspaper is going the online-only route after today, leaving 117,600 weekday P-I readers paperless and about 145 P-I employees jobless.

The P-I is the largest newspaper in the U.S. to go online only. The demise of the print edition turns Seattle into a one-newspaper town - the Seattle Times.

"Tonight we'll be putting the paper to bed for the last time," Roger Oglesby, editor and publisher, told a silent P-I newsroom Monday morning. "But the bloodline will live on."

Attempts in the past two months to find a buyer for the struggling daily failed, leading to the closure. Click here for P-I front pages over the past century or so.

It is a sad day when any newspaper folds, there, here, anywhere. On Feb. 27, it was the Rocky Mountain News signing off completely after 150 years, leaving Denver a one-newspaper town with the Post.


Final Edition from Matthew Roberts on Vimeo.

One-newspaper towns tend to breed media complacency. Newsrooms and journalists lose their edge without that daily passion focused on scooping the competition.

Toronto remains one of the few unique print media havens in North America, with four daily newspapers. Let's keep it that way by buying ads and buying newspapers.

Use 'em, or lose 'em, in Toronto and in communities across the country, because once they are gone, they are gone.

And like they say, you don't know what you've got till it's gone.