Seattle Post-Intelligencer, one of the two major newspapers in Seattle, is going web-only today, ceasing to publish its print version. As far as I know, this is the first case of a major newspaper going web-only.
Last year, we spent quite a bit of time looking at the economics of news on the web. It's a very important area for the Turkish Internet. Our conclusions were in line with Clay Shirky's:
Society doesn’t need newspapers. What we need is journalism. For a
century, the imperatives to strengthen journalism and to strengthen
newspapers have been so tightly wound as to be indistinguishable.
That’s been a fine accident to have, but when that accident stops, as
it is stopping before our eyes, we’re going to need lots of other ways
to strengthen journalism instead.
century, the imperatives to strengthen journalism and to strengthen
newspapers have been so tightly wound as to be indistinguishable.
That’s been a fine accident to have, but when that accident stops, as
it is stopping before our eyes, we’re going to need lots of other ways
to strengthen journalism instead.
The P-I will require a staff of about 20, according to the NYTimes, so the economics benefits are significant. Plus, the P-I is already an established web property – with over 1.8m monthly AUVs. It will be interesting to observe whether the editorial quality will suffer.
Cem Sertoglu 