Buh-Bye to the P. I.: Couldn't happen to a more liberal paper. Check that. It can and it will.

American Digest ^ | March 16, 2009 | GERARD VAN DER LEUN

[Birch T. Barlow]

Ah, the ironies of web-only news. My email alert for local news informs me of the death of the dead-tree Post-Intelligencer with this headline: The 146-year-old Seattle Post-Ingelligencer [sic] will print its last edition Tuesday and will go Web only.

This reduces the number of frothingly liberal daily and weekly newspapers in Seattle to... three -- Seattle Times, Seattle Weekly, The [Odious] Stranger. So there won't exactly be a shortage of liberal spew anytime soon in this town.

Addressing the death of the P. I, the editor promised the vampire editon: "Tonight we'll be putting the paper to bed for the last time," Editor and Publisher Roger Oglesby reportedly told his staff Monday morning. "But the bloodline will live on." I can hear the murmur in the background saying, "The Blood is the Life!"

Still, the P-I died as it lived, offering up the bile of columnists such as zombie journalist Helen Thomas bleating What are U.S. goals in Afghanistan? It also boasted editorials whining that the state of Washington is. just. not. green. enough.

[rockrr]

horse-face stays on at the online edition...;’{

[ashtanga]

My paper is considered “conservative.” It is nothing but a Orwellian collection of idiotic phrases. They wonder, perhaps, why I canceled my subscription. What a grand business model these newspapers have! Insult rational people on a daily basis, that's the ticket!

[Tzimisce]

Nope. Sorry.

Your government will bailout the newspaper industry. :D

Have a nice day and keep voting Democrat....

[Mac from Cleveland]

Somewhere, Kristopher Kime is smiling right now..... (look him up)

And James Paroline, too.

[NoControllingLegalAuthority]

This is what happens when more and more of the loyal customers of these left-wing rags are increasingly functionally illiterate.

You preach government schooling in left-wing newspapers to the point the resulting graduate can't read them. It's cosmic justice.

[newfreep]

How are conservative newspapers (NY Post, etc) doing?

[Birch T. Barlow]

How are conservative newspapers (NY Post, etc) doing?

Good question. abb probably has a better sense for this than I do. The Wall Street Journal is considered a national newspaper with over 2 million subscribers. Their circ numbers were flat as of October. The NY Post is the 6th largest in circulation but I think it loses money. Both the WSJ and the NY Post are part of Murdoch's company so they are pretty insulated. I think the Washington Times, the Boston Herald, and the Dallas Morning News are all struggling like the rest of the industry. A good source of information on this might be the Audit Bureau of Circulations. Like I said, abb probably has a better feel than I do.

[abb]

Unfortunately, conservative newspapers (Wash Times, NY Post, etc) are not doing well either. I don’t think the Washington Times has ever made money and has been subsidized from the start. Before the WSJ was bought by Rupert, its revenues were declining. Like the NY Post, the WSJ numbers are not broken out.

This leads me to to say that the newspaper death phenomenon is more a technological issue than ideology. Distributing day-old information via an expensive-to-produce paper format just isn’t efficient.

However, it is completely stupid of newspapers that are still afloat to antagonize at least half their customers - conservatives.