Sadness: Dark Days at the Seattle Post-Intelligencer.

We all know the newspaper business is collapsing all around us.

In Seattle, it’s finally begun to collapse upon us.

On Friday, The Hearst Company, owners of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, confirmed a story that broke on a local television station Thursday evening. The “P-I”, as it is known, is being put up for sale. If a buyer isn’t found within a 60-day window, the print edition will be shuttered, effectively ending 146 years of publication for the newspaper.

146 years.

And even though my friends and former competitors at the P-I knew this day might be coming, they never saw it coming.

Like most of Seattle, the employees of the P-I learned of their fate from a televised news report. No warning, no meeting, not even an email.

My first reaction was I’m not sure KING-TV knows what they’re talking about.”

    — David Horsey, P-I Editorial Cartoonist

My first inclination that something was up came last Thursday evening, when the Facebook status of a P-I reporter read:

“(Name withheld) wants some kind of confirmation or denial of the for sale/closing rumor. Limbo is brutal.“

My first instinct was, is it my former paper The Seattle Times or P-I? Which is for sale? I immediately emailed my former editor at the Times and by the time she got back to me I’d already learned about the television report breaking news of the impending sale.

Much has been written about the outdated business model of printed newspapers, their inability to find ways to use the internet as a profitable means of mass communication, and so I won’t try to break that down any further.

As a quasi-former journalist, I think I do have a unique perspective on what the death of an industry looks like from the inside. (Note that I say “quasi-former” — I’m not sure if I will return to journalism at this point or not — and I didn’t say “quasi-journalist”, although some of my former editors might disagree slightly).

One of the main reasons (but not the only one) that I took a buyout and left the Times after 19 years was the uncertain future of the newspaper business. One look at the well-read industry blog compiled by Jim Romenesko on the Poynter Institute website will show you that papers all across the country are struggling.

So it’s not like journalists haven’t seen the warning signs. But like most forms of bad news, you never think it will happen to you. Right up until it does.

The famed Seattle P-I globe is dark at night, but could be dark for good in less than 60 days.

We found out about it on TV! How bad is that!?

    – Seattle P-I reporter

I am certainly NOT blaming anyone at the P-I for not seeing this coming at all. If and when it happens at the Seattle Times, it will catch most by surprise as well. But the P-I hasn’t had round-after-round of layoffs. In fact, most of the staffers shared a commonly-held belief that Hearst would act as a benevolent owner and purchase the Times from the Blethen family. Most strongly believed that the their paper would outlast the Times.

They had reasons to believe. The P-I has seen no newsroom buyouts or layoffs. Despite only reaching 117,000 weekday readers (vs. 198,000 for the Times), the P-I website holds a lead with 1,870,000 unique hits per month vs. 1,725,000 for the Times.

Also, back in 2000, Hearst had found a solution to the crippling newspaper strike and brought their journalists back to the newsroom before the Blethen family settled with Times staffers. Those at the PI celebrated that settlement with cake and cheering, and some, by infamously urinating on the lawn in front of the Times.

There is a tighter knit newsroom than that over at the Times. Mostly because they’re smaller and have traditionally had few resources than the bigger paper. They seem themselves as the underdogs every day, and they produced a tough, competitive product day-in, day-out.

“You know what sucks the most? They couldn’t even tell us. We found out just like everyone else — on TV. And then we had to spend that sleepless night wondering whether or not it was true.”

    — Seattle P-I photographer.

So many fine journalists are not only losing their jobs, they are seeing their careers disappear before their very eyes.

We certainly don’t know what the future will bring, but I am confident that news-gathering will certainly survive. It always has. And even though the model of delivery is becoming extinct, there is a great clamor for information now than ever.

It appears to be too late for the traditional newspaper newsroom, which is now for many a place to go to work as they ponder the future.

The newsroom as a family? A team?

Neither.

Like they said in The Godfather, “It’s nothing personal- just business.”

And for my friends at the Seattle Post-Intellegencer, that just sucks.