The Emerging eP-I: Ideas, Anyone?
Former Seattle Weekly and Crosscut editor Chuck Taylor, (left) has launched a new website that invites visitors to help re-imagine the P-I's web paper and how it might best serve readers. "This could land with a thud, of course, but what the hell," he says of his "Seattle Post-Post-Intelligencer" wiki, created in anticipation of the looming mid-March ending of the P-I print edition and likely reinvention of a 24-hour eP-I. "I stole this idea from a similar effort in San Francisco, which John Cook wrote about [yesterday] at TechFlash," says Taylor. "The Seattle Post-Post-Intelligencer could be the beginning of a business plan for such a site, or it could merely be a good place to mull the challenges and solutions to promoting good professional and amateur journalism in metropolitan Seattle." 
Can efforts such as this go far towards saving newspapers, at least online? TechFlash's Cook, a former P-I columnist, wondered about that in his piece. He said he was recently chatting with Newsgarden founder and former Tacoma News Tribune new media guru Mark Briggs about efforts to preserve online-j. "We agreed that the key doesn't reside so much in the brains of newspaper editors and reporters, though they certainly need to be a part of the process. It really comes down to developers and business people. Like San Francisco, Seattle is crawling with talent in those areas. Will a group emerge to tackle the opportunity?"
5 comment(s)
Hal says:
Priority No. 1: How do you make money? Whatever your content, it's got to generate revenue or you're just another slacker blogsite.
Posted On: Saturday, Feb. 28 2009 @ 11:08AM
George Hanshaw says:
The PI DESERVES to fold. Once it allowed its editorial page to overflow onto its news pages, it ceased to have value for Seattle and the nation.
Good riddance.
Posted On: Saturday, Feb. 28 2009 @ 7:42PM
Stinky Cheese says:
George: I couldn't agree more. Once their P-I's political agenda started spilling into the food, entertainment, sports, and lifestyle pages, I just couldn't take it anymore. I mean, to think that Art Thiel would push a progressive agenda in his sports coverage is just as low as it gets. I never thoughts poached eggs could get political.
Posted On: Sunday, Mar. 1 2009 @ 12:15PM
Liz Brown says:
If I read one more comment from clueless readers who think newspapers are tanking because of their liberal politics, I'll barf newsprint.
As if any of the newspapers owned by CORPORATIONS truly lean left, for one thing, but for another, readership at newspapers is actually UP when you factor in online readers, clueless ones included. What is DOWN, and what is the core reason behind the industry's demise, is the loss of classified advertising revenue. Of course, a better way to put it is that the industry is tanking because it has no history of R & D, is hopeless mired in a 19th-century management model and those in control of the corporations are bereft, for the most part, of ideas that could have prevented their demise or moved them to a new model long before the death rattle tickled their throats.
But the content? You're reading this, right?
Posted On: Sunday, Mar. 1 2009 @ 5:53PM
P-I Reader 30 years says:
I still want to save the print edition. Reading about how all those people who don't read print papers ran out and bought the last edition of the Rocky in Denver, I suggest the P-I tell readers tomorrow is the last day, and then tomorrow tell them the last day is the next day...and so on. Each day, sales shoot out of the globe! Who knows, maybe readers will also discover what they've been missing.
Posted On: Monday, Mar. 2 2009 @ 8:12AM