It sounds like the P-I's decision to shift to outside link aggregation wasn't shared with the P-I staff. Received this morning from one P-I reporter:

You know what's really beautiful about this sudden change of the P-I's website? They didn't fucking tell the staff.

I was pretty surprised to click on to headlines and find myself directed to an entirely different site, rather than a story written by a staff reporter, or an AP story.

Sheesh. What's next? Linking to the Times?

It's aggravating, but in a sense, I guess it's hard to care that much about what happens here anymore.

And from another P-I reporter:

This is a HUGE change, but there was no internal announcement about it. It was done on a Friday afternoon. Was this to minimize possible complaints among staff members?

I'm also hearing that it's unclear—at least to reporters—who in the newspaper's hierarchy is now making the calls about which outside sites get linked and when. One bit of informed speculation, however, has it that Michelle Nicolosi, the P-I assistant managing editor and web guru (and likely candidate to lead the online-only P-I when the print edition folds), has essentially supplanted all the other top editors when it comes to such decisions.

While I work on a longer print story about plans for a new, online-only P-I, a few more thoughts about what I've heard and what I'm now seeing.

Yesterday I pointed to an unusual, high-profile example of outside link aggregation on the P-I's homepage: a headline that, if one clicked on it, went straight to the West Seattle Blog (with "West Seattle Blog reports..." in the P-I's sub-head). This was followed by still more outside link aggregation. Go to the P-I's homepage right now and you'll find links to Lifehacker.com, King5.com, and even Slog.

What's currently happening on the P-I homepage fits with what I'm hearing: the online-only P-I, as it is currently being conceived over on Elliott Avenue, will be, in part, an aggregator.

As Josh in the comments says, this is "a big deal." Another commenter offered a one-word summation of the transformation: "PI HuffPo."

They're right. It's hard to overstate how big a change this represents. For a daily newspaper to abandon its belief that important local news should be conveyed first through its own trusted reporters, and its own trusted reporters only, is a tremendous shift. It fits with something else that's been becoming more clear lately: Hearst wants to hold on to the P-I brand, and the online traffic that comes with it, but it is ready to jettison a lot of old notions about what makes a journalistic enterprise.

More on this in next week's Stranger, but I think we are beginning to see that, despite statements to the contrary, there is indeed a pretty interesting and considered plan for the online-only P-I. Look at the top half of the P-I homepage right now. It's a mix of reported news, photo galleries, celebrity and fashion items, a curated set of links to other blogs, and some prominent links to some of the P-I's own popular blogs. This is, indeed, the HuffingtonPost model. It wasn't as clear until the P-I flipped the switch on its outside link aggregation. But it is now.

What's the aim? My guess is it can be answered in one word: traffic. The online P-I already draws a considerable number of eyeballs, but if it can become a sticky portal through which people enter the online universe of Northwest news and opinion (in the way that Huffington Post is a sticky portal into the online world of liberal news and opinion) then it has a chance to draw even more eyeballs.

In other words, by un-mooring itself from the idea that its own content is king, the new online P-I is going to try to float to the top of Northwest link heap. Sure, readers may begin at the new P-I web site and quickly end up at Lifehacker or West Seattle Blog or Slog. But if enough readers choose to always begin there, the P-I could return, in an online way, to the nice role that traditional newspapers used to enjoy: powerful gatekeeper.