Newspapers Are Dying (Part I)

The Seattle Post-Intelligencer will publish its final issue tomorrow (or today, or March 17, 2009, depending on when you read this.

The Hearst Corporation, a multimedia conglomerate which owns it, has decided this, and will lay off 145 of the P-I's 165 employees.

The Post-Intelligencer will not die, exactly. It will only exist in cyberspace, where it will merge with something called Crosscut.com, which I take it is one of a news breed of news-hybrids, in which "the journalism of regular citizens appears alongside that of professionals." But you'll no longer be able to buy a copy at your newsstand, or unfold it at your local coffee shop. To me, that's a cryin' shame.

Here's part of Crosscut's description of what they're all about.

Based in Seattle, Crosscut is a guide to local and Northwest news, a place to report and discuss local news, and a platform for new tools to convey local news. The journalism of regular citizens appears alongside that of professionals. News coverage with detachment, traditionally practiced by mainstream media outlets, coexists with advocacy journalism and opinion.

• Crosscut finds and highlights the best local journalism and the best local commentary, whether it's the work of the biggest metropolitan daily newspaper or a part-time blogger. There is a multitude of worthy sources of information on the Internet, but few people have time to navigate them all.
• Crosscut publishes its own journalism and commentary. These are stories and angles others have missed or ignored. Our news coverage aims to complement that of other providers, to extend exploration of events and issues, to possibly encourage resolution.
• Crosscut embraces new tools and tries new things as technology evolves, mindful of the relative strengths of textual, photo, audio, and video journalism.
• Crosscut publishes news, commentary, news about commentary, commentary about news—just about anything that is non-fiction. Our broad definition of news is anything people want or ought to know. Commentary is opinionated or rhetorical expression.
• Crosscut also welcomes content that suggests new ideas or ways of looking at problems. We welcome contributions of words, photographs, audio, video, illustrations, charts, PowerPoint presentations, and anything else that is true to life. You don’t have to be a professional, but whatever you provide should be a rendering of reality supported by facts.
• Crosscut is a local Web site. We publish material that is endemic or has a significant connection to the Pacific Northwest states of Washington, Oregon, Idaho, or Montana, or the province of British Columbia.

We have local media outlets of this sort starting up in Connecticut, and it certainly wouldn't surprise me to see the Hartford Courant (which is a mere shell of the once proud paper it used to be) go this same route in the near future.