Wednesday, March 18, 2009

Sad days for newspapers: a little insight

Yesterday the Seattle Post-Intelligencer converted to an Internet-only news source -- but with a 20-person newsroom rather than 156. Who knows, that just might be the future of news gathering. Newspaper newsrooms are probably still somewhat padded even after all the layoffs, but 156 people can cover more news than 20 people can. Here's a Register editorial memorializing the sad event, with comments on the SF Chronicle and what I hope is a little bit of insight into why newspapers find themselves in trouble just now -- though it doesn't mention just how arrogant we were when our business model was working and providing profit margins of 20% and more. We're a lot less arrogant now.

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