If you haven’t heard by now one of Seattle’s two main newspapers, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer is publishing its last paper today:

"The mood has been lousy in the newsroom," said the 20-year P-I employee. "It’s one thing to lose your job; it’s another thing to lose a group of friends who you have worked with very closely for a long period of time and it’s still another to lose an institution that’s mattered in Seattle since the Civil War."

The P-I has been publishing for roughly the last 146 years. I feel for the folks who are losing their jobs naturally, but I’m glad the business isn’t getting any kind of bailout.

I was tired of bailouts before the first one and now congress is wasting time arguing over how to tax the bailed out AIG bonuses. We need to let companies fail like the PI. Yes, it’s painful, yes it is sad, but this is the way things go. Eventually everything dies. A business should never be so big that it can’t fail and I never would have thought I’d live in a time when the government would insist on not letting a business fail.

Back to the newspaper business. The P-I is going web-only. I was listening to a radio talk show yesterday talking about how difficult it would be for them to make it as an advertiser-supported operation. That they should sell something. I don’t think selling generic online newspaper subscriptions will work either.

So what will work for newspapers?

How can newspapers make money online? Custom, personalized news service might be one way. Let each subscriber get a service with news direct to them that they are specifically interested in. I know that one can already go out and do this with services like Y! Pipes, but newspapers who take all the geek out of online services and put it in online subscribers hands quickly and easily may find a market where people will pay. But that’s only going to last until everybody gets internet savvy. Then where to make money?

Perhaps offering the ability to hire a reporter. Imagine being able to pay for a reporter to follow a story you are interested in and report back the findings. Bloggers might buy if the prices were right.

I’m sure there are plenty of other, perhaps better creative ideas for newspapers. If you have some, feel free to plant them in the comments are above and maybe we can help some other newspapers going web only.

In the past I’ve written here about why the newspaper business has many challenges ahead and I believe many, many more newspapers will fold in the coming years. Also how this has become a cliched, cyclical spring story. I’m not sure what spring and newspaper business death have in common, but they do. Next spring bet on hearing about even more papers folding. Must be quarterly timing or something.

Whatever the case, I’m nostalgic but not surprised the Hearst company didn’t find a buyer in the last 60 days for the P-I. Think I’ll go out today and try and buy the final edition. Probably the collectors will have gobbled them already. There you go, another idea:

Reprint old editions and sell them on eBay at a premium.

Did this post make you go hmm?

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