I was lucky enough to get my hands on a copy of the final edition of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. Reading it weeks after the fact gave me some perspective, and like many readers I’m sure – made me a bit wistful for the paper and the history it helped cultivate.
It is bittersweet to see anything end – the last day of kindergarten, the last baseball game of the season, your last day at a job. I sat back and read the Seattle P-I from cover to cover – every sidebar and cutline. It was incredible. The staff did a great job – and it was an experience best served in a broadsheet newspaper. While I devoured lots of tidbits on SeattlePI.com, it wasn’t the same. Sadly though, I don’t often feel this way. Usually I don’t have the time — or the motivation — to sit down and fold and crumple and get my fingers ink stained. The Internet is often a better user experience.
I saw a smattering of empty Seattle P-I boxes in Seattle during my April visit, and it made me think of all the folks that used to get the paper on their doorstep that don’t any more. Here’s a dirty little secret: I used to deliver the newspaper. Only for a few months — but yes, I was an employee of the Idaho Statesman – the local Boise paper that I now spend much time plotting against.
When I was growing up, I had a neighbor who had a funny little trap door near the side of her driveway. It led into the house – and wasn’t very large. Being a curious kid, I asked what on earth this strange door was for. Milk, I was told. Milk? You kept your milk in that thing? Why not in the fridge? She told me that once upon a time, milk was delivered – straight to your door – since keeping it fresh was often a challenge.
But times changed, and so did the distribution process for your daily dairy. With refrigeration and pasteurization, you could now purchase a gallon of 1% at your local Albertsons, cart it home and throw it in the fridge. It would likely stay good for a few weeks – lessening the need for the time and expense of a delivery service.
Newspapers are much the same way – but sadly, they haven’t been able to find a way to transition as smoothly as the dairy industry did. Newspapers made a great deal of sense for a very long time — all the news you needed, plus a raft of other features like classifieds and crosswords and TV listings — right on your front porch each morning.
Now? Classifieds are better (and free) on Craigslist, crosswords are plentiful online, and the TV listings are built into my TV. So that leaves us with news. But unfortunately, news is plentiful online – and has become a commodity itself. News is everywhere. Little bits of information on Twitter, longer bites on blogs, and plenty of good journalism from operations like New West, local TV stations and more. The newspaper used to be the de facto news source in a community, but in so many cases now is just one of dozens. And in many more cases – it isn’t even the best. But don’t tell a newspaper worker that. In lots of cases, think they’re smarter or better than their counterparts on the Internet or at TV stations. Even the PI seemed a bit bitter that the story of it’s fate was broken first by a TV station — then the final staff meeting was a story broken by a radio outlet. The PI broke hundreds of important stories, but in the end – some of those enterprising non-newspaper outlets beat it to the punch.
News is evolving – blogs are evolving. Everything’s changing. Newspapers in many cases seem destined to a dusty future of niche publications and small-town circulars. The end is inevitable I feel — the only way forward is to now decide how to capitalize on the future.