Seattle is often a hot topic here on Lost Remote — and surely it’s partly because our founder lives there (and I used to) — but the city is becoming the ultimate case study on the future of the news industry.
Three reasons why:
- The neighborhood blog trend. While cities across the country have these sites for small geographic areas – nearly every neighborhood in Seattle has at least one. The blogs are in some ways working together – with Cory’s Next Door Media network, to the folks at West Seattle Blog. While the journalism firepower won’t collectively match that of a major market daily newspaper for a while – they are all more tightly focused and generally do a better job of leveraging their community to generate content. The sites are gaining fierce audiences – and if they can find a way to monetize those eyeballs you may have a hit.
- The Seattle P-I going online only. The venerable 146-year-old newspaper will likely stop printing soon — but still generate news, albeit with a much smaller staff. Ken Doctor at Content Bridges looks at the advantages SeattlePI.com will start with – including its status as the market leader in Seattle online news. It will also have intense interest and the legacy of the P-I. What it won’t have is the majority of its staff or relationships with advertisers, so those folks are going to have to work incredibly hard. While Hearst is clearly trying to hire some existing P-I folks — it’s my hope that they are looking outside for some smart hard-working folks who have a passion for the future.
- Seattle has a history of reinvention. In the late 1980s, Boeing underwent massive cuts that decimated much of the Emerald City. Houses sat empty, rents plunged and people worried about the future of the area. Lots of people were without works – and many others had to move to find work. As a result, the city went through a period of reinvention – with creativity and entrepreneurship springing up in some ways due to necessity. Now he area hosts big tech firms, startups and a unique cultural community (remember the grunge craze of the early 1990s?). A similar environment seems to be setting up now – though on the more-micro level of newsgathering. Some of those laid-off PI staffers will probably do what the former Denver Rocky staffers are doing and keep following their beats — and perhaps there’s even some way they can or will work together with the neighborhood sites.
Maybe I’m alone – but I don’t look at the demise of the P-I as a completely gloomy situation. Don’t get me wrong – the layoffs and hardships on those employees will be hard, and the loss of reporting isn’t a positive – but the phrase “it’s always darkest before the dawn” often holds true, and in this case I think that could be especially true.
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