The Seattle Post-Intelligencer is leaking like a sieve right now, but not all of the leakers know anything more than what they're hearing around the office—a place that's now a hothouse of rumors and speculation as the paper enters what are almost certainly its last days.
So when I heard this very same rumor yesterday—about one of the P-I's internal publishing systems, CCI, not allowing stories to be scheduled after March 8, with reporter Lewis Kamb credited with the foreboding discovery—I called Kamb. When I couldn't reach him, I checked with someone else at the P-I who was sitting at a computer with CCI up and ready to go. This other P-I reporter quickly shot down the rumor, so I didn't touch it.
Seeing that this rumor has been touched by Publicola today, I just re-checked all this CCI business with my source, who e-mails:
I have CCI open in front of me right now at 11:45 on Thursday. It's not true. The default date on my computer is March 15. The default in our system is always a week or two ahead, and is constantly changing.
To be fair, the rest of this CCI-rumor-citing post cautions against believing all the early closure talk. But on the way to doing that it states as fact something that is not actually true.
Meanwhile, the union that represents P-I employees, also hearing the same rumors and concerns about a sudden early closure, sent out an e-mail on Tuesday stating that it believes the print P-I won't be shut down before March 18.
From: Newspaper Guild-CWASent: Tue 3/3/2009 5:30 PM
To: XXX@XXXX.XXX
Subject: The P-I and the future of other ventures
From Guild Administrative Officer Liz Brown:Today I spoke with Matt Lynch, the P-I's labor relations representative, about a couple of issues people have raised in recent weeks.
The first is, why don't we have a job end date or a 30-day layoff notice?
The answer to the layoff notice is that the Reduction in Force clause of the contract, which requires notice of layoff four weeks in advance, is not in effect, under the terms of the severance agreement we signed with the employer.
As to the job end date, Lynch says everyone should assume that March 18 will be the last date of publication and the last date of work for most people Remember, the WARN Act notice said the P-I would cease publication "no sooner than March 18 and no later than April 1."
The e-mail goes on to discuss other issues, but the point, as far as the current rumors are concerned, is that the union doesn't believe the P-I will (or, legally, can) shut down its print edition before March 18. Personally, I think there are probably ways to shut down the print edition earlier if Hearst so desires. But as things stand currently: the CCI rumor isn't true, and the union isn't buying all this early closure talk.
