Seattle P-I farewell shirt

The past two months have generated lots of good discussion in Seattle about the future of news in the Internet age. The big question: Can mainstream publications figure out how to generate enough money online to properly fund high-quality journalism?

Hearst now has a chance to move beyond the talk, and to prove something. The Seattle P-I's owner today confirmed that it's shutting down the newspaper after Tuesday's edition and shifting to an online-only business model after 146 years in print. Most of the existing staff is being let go, but the company is keeping aboard some well-known columnists, bloggers and other staffers to work online.

In the news release announcing the decision, Hearst Newspapers President Steve Swartz made it clear that the company knows big changes are needed to make the new venture viable. Seattlepi.com isn't an online newspaper, he said, it's "an effort to craft a new type of digital business." Swartz outlined some elements of the new online business:

“On the business side, we are assembling a staff to form a local digital agency that will sell local businesses advertising on seattlepi.com as well as the digital advertising products of our partners: Yahoo! for display advertising, Kaango for general marketplaces and Google, Yahoo!, MSN and Ask.com for search engine marketing. The site will also feature a digital yellow pages directory powered by Hearst's yellow pages unit, White Directory Publishers.”

As former Seattle P-I reporters, we're sorry to see the print edition go, but also encouraged that Hearst is willing to give the online venture a try. The job cuts will hit hard in the short run. But handled properly, the new Seattle P-I could serve as a model for the rest of the industry. That would be a good thing for professional journalists and for everyone who relies on their reporting.

The new site is expected to rely more heavily on links to other online news sources, supplementing staff-generated content.

For the remaining P-I staffers, the job will be much different. There have long been clear lines between the roles of reporters, photographers and other staffers working on the paper. Those lines will go away, SeattlePI.com executive producer Michelle Nicolosi explained in a post on the P-I's site this morning.

"Everyone will write, edit, take photos and shoot video, produce multimedia and curate the home page," Nicolosi wrote. "That'll be a training challenge for everyone, but we're all up for the challenge and totally ready to pick up all these skills."

She also made it clear that the new operation will need to be more nimble: "If a story, beat or blog isn't resonating with the readers, we ask, is there something wrong with our approach, display or placement? We look for ways to improve results, and if that particular feature doesn't work after six months of trying out improvements, we will likely decide to kill it. Experiment a lot, fail fast."

Appropriately, the news is generating lots of chatter on Twitter, with some P-I staffers sharing details from inside the newsroom. "A few tears here at the P-I," writes Curt Milton. "Sad day but relief to know what's going on here. Good luck seattlepi.com!" P-I publisher Roger Oglesby addresses P-I workers saying tonight will be the newspaper's "final run."

Image: P-I farewell shirt by Andrew Saeger.