P-I likely to shut down in a matter of months

[Lake Hills Renter]

I realized a few days ago that I can predict Mack's attitude in posts over there with startling accuracy. If he's responding to a fellow RE "professional", it's back-patting attaboy posts. If it's anyone else, and particularly someone that is posting under a pseudonym like SocraticMethod or per_se, it's complete snotitude, no matter the content.

[Charles Dean]

Last night on Fresh Aire, Terri Grose interviewed the former editor in chief of the Washington Post.

They of course talked about the decline of newspapers and what not, and he said something interesting and I've heard the same about the New York Times. He said that even though print purchasing and actual subscriptions are down, readership via the web is up. I believe he said there were over 20 million unique visitors to the Washington post website last year.

Now the Christian Science Monitor has also declined greatly over the years and is the first major daily to stop doing a daily print and go web-only for their daily news and switch to a weekly format.

I'm thinking that most major newspapers will not very likely collapse completely, but I think some will. I do think that very soon we may see the elimination of actual physical daily print of newspaper. I can't imagine that for most news organizations that the daily printing of newspaper is even a break even proposition for news organizations.

So if you eliminate the actual printing of the news, then you eliminate the costs of printing. Granted, you're putting alot of people out of work by doing that, but would a newspaper be able to function normally without an actual physical print? Would they have to still lay off alot of writers, or would they get enough ad revenue to keep up with the same kind of reporting?

[WestSideBilly]

I think it's only a matter of time before print goes to Sunday only for almost all the newspapers. The exception(s) might by the WSJ, NYT, USA today, and maybe one paper in LA, Chicago, and Washington.

It amazes me that some of the small town papers are able to stay afloat.

[Charles Dean]

I totally agree Billy. Sunday edition will be an even bigger deal, but I think most of the dailies are going to be gone within the next 2 years.

[Lake Hills Renter]

I saw part of a show last night on just this subject. In an interview, the editor of the Houston Chronicle said they want to do away with the cost of printing and switch completely to online content, but in their current estimation that would eliminated 1/3 of their readership -- people that didn't have ready Internet access and thus needed the paper, mainly the poor. It's coming, but not yet, he said.

[Lake Hills Renter]

As far as small town papers go, there's always a need for local football scores, etc. The big city papers don't cover all the small town news the locals want, at least from my experience living in small towns. As faras the print/online argment for these papers go, I don't know. Printing costs have to be high, but from my experience many small town papers don't have the Internet expertise to run a news website.

But then, my small town newspaper experiences were many years ago.

[WestSideBilly]

[rose-colored-coolaid]

[Lake Hills Renter]

[Notorious A.R.T.]

[Lake Hills Renter]

Yep, looks like my hometown newspaper does have a website, and it is indeed outsourced: