Seattlest: Seahawks Insider Blog Unplugged Due to Staff Shortage

MvB

Fri, 27 Jun 2008 10:45:58 -0800

seatown22: I read about Ivey closing, too. They were still profitable, even! I used to be in there a lot, back when they were Ivey-Seright. I see Panda is still hanging in there.

seatown22

Thu, 26 Jun 2008 23:04:53 -0800

Well, today I found out that my film lab is closing (Ivey), and now the blog I visit most every day- Seattle is sucking more every day, here I come Portland......

ruffhauser

Thu, 26 Jun 2008 19:00:53 -0800

I for one will not shed a tear when the P-I goes under.

MvB

Thu, 26 Jun 2008 16:26:45 -0800

That's exactly what I find fascinating, bigyaz. Every other content provider on the internet would kill for the daily, regular readership that newspapers have, and yet they haven't been able to monetize it. Display advertising dollars haven't followed the online traffic. Online subscriptions haven't worked (so far). And of course newspapers have never replaced the classifieds revenue they ceded to Craigslist and eBay. But I wouldn't call reducing production and delivery costs simplistic--it's an enormously complex area. Yes, there have been cuts, and the search for efficiencies continues. (I believe the P-I is looking at shrinking its page size.) My point is that newspapers are facing a sales problem, not an over-staffing problem. If corporate can't figure out how to sell a product as popular as news, maybe they ought to lay themselves off first.

bigyaz

Thu, 26 Jun 2008 15:43:18 -0800

Michael: The problem for newspapers isn't so much readers (while print circulation has fallen some, online readership is quite high) as it is advertisers. You can be putting out a great, news-packed product these days, but there just isn't advertising to support it. No matter how many readers the Seahawks blog has, online advertising can't come close to paying the salaries of Frank Hughes and other contributors. Now, if you can come up with a solution for that one there are plenty of publishers who would love to hear from you. But I can assure you simplistic "solutions" like reducing production and delivery costs were tried a long time ago.