This is a great idea, but it conveniently omits suggesting how the Seattle Times is supposed to afford all that when cutting their print ad inventory by at least of 80%

They could just publish on the Eastside daily and publish a broadsheet in Seattle every week, allowing the Seattle PI to come back as a print daily.

People forget the Times used to be the more liberal Seattle centric paper when they both had daily print runs

What you talk about may have been the Stranger's model 8 years ago, but in the last year, it hasn't been reality. Most of the good Stranger's writers have left for various reasons, and you're now 3/4 music and food. Why did that happen?

Because people pay for music and food, @3?

And name it "Newsweek"!

I would buy the bejabbers out of such a local-content-rich weekly Times. I subscribe now, glad to do my bit for reporter employment, but online only.

Just correcting @2, the Times was never the more liberal paper when they were dailies. The PI had Horsey, just as a data point.

Of course the fate of the drivers, press operators and so on should be of no concern.

@7 is correct.
Traditionally the P-I was more working class.

@8
"...pressmen, trucks, drivers"
will all be re-educated to be
"reporters, photographers, videographers, data journalists, software developers, mobile designers, and (barf - ed.) social-media experts, workflow architects, marketing strategists and digital advertising pros."

@8 there is no reason to sustain obsolete jobs. Our phone systems aren't run by women plugging wires around any more.

David Boardman, Frank Blethen, Alex Macleod and Cyndi Nash --- the Seattle Times news "leadership" --- were given this same advice in the late 90s from future thinkers in the business. It was roundly rejected as heretical to the public's alleged adoration, and cultural necessity of pulp-bound journo-babble.

Well well... Unemployment has certainly made him more brave. Insolvency doesn't yet seem to have stirred Frank.

So far, the three newspapers I've watched attempt to do this ended up with terrible on-line editions alongside print editions that were starving for actual reporters, because in their race to save money on the print side the newspapers made six reporters do the work thirty-six had been doing and spent the rest of their "reportage" money on newsfeed from AP, UPI, Reuters, etc., which they ran uncritically in whatever space seemed like the stuff would fit, sometimes chopping off at arbitrary parts of a story. Never underestimate the capability of a newspaper's governing board to shoot itself in the collective foot.

All news is now a Facebook Feeds.

Dom, your legacy is secure. You don't need to write "See... I'm not terrible" posts. No amount of "I did it first" will negate the damage you did to a Seattle institution nor the distrust you've seeded throughout the city.

A generation of well-read, intelligent people will likely never take the Stranger seriously again. You're stuck with an audience of naive college grads who will ditch you once anything better comes along.

The only positive thing I can think to say regarding the path of your destruction; at least when you fuck up, you fuck up big.

The Stranger's circulation has been plummeting in recent years. So if the Stranger is exemplary of that publishing model, maybe it's not such a great idea.