Report: Seattle Daily Up for Sale, May Fold

A Seattle TV station, KING 5, reports today it has learned "that Seattle may soon become a one-newspaper town," with the Post-Intelligencer gone and the Seattle Times surviving. That's because, it says, the Hearst Corp. "will announce as soon as Friday that it's putting the P-I up for sale. Under the joint operating agreement between the P-I and The Seattle Times, the P-I must be offered for sale for at least 30 days before it can cease operation."The source is someone allegedly "close to the deal."Hearst, in this view, does not expect a buyer to come forward. The Seattle Times site quoted the publisher, Frank Blethen, exclaiming, "I'm stunned!"The TV report is at:Check out the entire TV report here.Here is an excerpt:The joint operating agreement was formed in 1983 in an effort to keep both papers healthy. The P-I was granted a monopoly on morning publication. At that time The Seattle Times was one of the only profitable afternoon papers in the country.But in 1999 the joint operating agreement was modified to allow the Times to begin publishing in the morning. Critics predicted that would eventually lead to the demise of the P-I.A call to the Seattle P-I publisher's office for comment has not yet been returned.Thursday night, there was a certain level of shock and even greater disbelief spreading through the newsroom at the Seattle Post-Intelligencer."What I'm trying to figure out is: What does this all mean? Is there a bigger deal here that we don't know about?" wondered David Horsey, syndicated cartoonist."I haven't spoken to anybody. It's after close of business in New York. I'm sure I'll know more tomorrow. But I don't know very much tonight, I'm afraid," said David McCumber, Managing Editor.Even McCumber says it was news to him. He told his newsroom, which has a staff of 200, he has his doubts about the story. But the Hearst Corporation is notoriously private in its business dealings."I am due to have a lengthy phone conversation tomorrow with a bishop. This will be the first interview with a subject that I will ask to pray for me in the end," said political columnist Joel Connelly who has been with the paper for 33 years.It would be the end of an era - the P-I put out its first edition in 1863 and was the city's first newspaper.It's unclear how this will affect The Seattle Times or the Blethen family, which owns 51 percent of that paper.

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Report: Seattle Daily Up for Sale, May Fold

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