Although the fate of print journalism seems more bleak by the day, I was pleased to read some good news about Seattle’s one and only print newspaper—The Seattle Times.
The Times’ major competitor, the Post-Intelligencer, or P-I, folded its print operation in March and switched to an all-online format with a bare-bones staff.
Even with the competition banished, Times publisher Frank Blethen and the rest of the industry still seemed wary about the newspaper’s future.
But according to an article in today’s New York Times, both the newspaper’s profit and circulation have increased in recent months. And for a publication that has had to sacrifice more than a third of its employees in the last five years, I’m happy to see that things are finally looking up (cautiously so) for the Seattle paper.
A sign of better times to come? Maybe not. Perhaps scrappy Seattle is banding together for print. Either way, congratulations to Seattle for claiming a small victory for print media!
–Cecilia de Cardenas
