Seattle Post-Intelligencer, the Net’s newest blog
p2pnet news view P2P:- The Seattle Post-Intelligencer, one of America’s oldest newspapers, closed its doors for the last time today.
Founded as the Seattle Gazette in 1863, it had no choice.
The P-I lost $14 million last year and on January 9 its owner, New York-based Hearst Corp, put it up for sale, saying it’d stop printing if a buyer couldn’t be found within 60 days.
No buyer was forthcoming.
But it isn’t disappearing altogether. In fact, it’s become the Net’s latest news blog.
The PI site hasHearst CEO Frank Bennack Jr saying, “Our goal now is to turn seattlepi.com into the leading news and information portal in the region.”
And, “The new operation will be more than a newspaper online, Steven Swartz, president of Hearst Newspapers, said. The so-called ‘community platform’ will feature breaking news, columns from prominent Seattle residents, community databases, photo galleries, 150 citizen bloggers and links to other journalistic outlets.”
In other words, it’ll be a lot like other blogs.
Closing the gate after the horse has bolted
The PI may have been among the first to truly enter the 21st digital century, but it certainly won’t be the last, the writing having been on the wall at some time.
“It was a bit like closing the gate after the horse has bolted, the Media Center’s We Media forum,” p2pnet posted three years ago, going on:
“Hosted by the BBC and Reuters, and staged (word used advisedly) in London, England, by the Media Center, the idea was for the mainstream and new media, aka Citizen Journalists, to find common ground.”
P2p is short for peer-to-peer, “but it also means people-to-people, person-to-person, ‘puter-to-’puter and if a blog isn’t one person talking to another person, with anyone who wants to looking in, what is it?” – we wondered.
And yet P2P wasn’t mentioned once.
We Media was, “ostensibly a way for bloggers – citizen reporters – to interact with the so-called professionals, the mainstream journalists, presumably to the ultimate benefit of the ‘consumer,’ as we’re still called by the traditional print and electronic media outlets,” said the post, continuing »»»
Excellent idea. Except for the fact there was no way on earth 99.999999% of citizen journalists could hope to be part of the ‘We,’ not with a registration fee of $800. Eight. Hundred. Dollars.
P2Pnet only managed it because of a benefactor who thought we should be there
Beyond that, who really knew the event was even happening? – p2pnet wondered, because it wasn’t widely splashed and had it not been a post from Guillaume Champeau, we wouldn’t have been aware of it either. But the heavies at Reuters, the BBC and other mainstream news organizations, plus other vested interest associates, knew.
The story continued »»»
Day One was in a vast studio at the BBC’s television headquarters in White City and one of the ushers told p2pnet the studio was usually reserved for such extravaganzas as Come Dancing, re-launched in 2004 as Strictly Come Dancing.
The setting couldn’t have been more appropriate. Cut away the glitz and high-flown verbiage, and the event was two days of fancy footwork with mainstream media reps and their supporters trying to convince themselves and each other that they’re still relevant and still in charge of deciding what’s news, and getting it to the masses.
And that’s the way it’s going to stay, by God!
“No ordinary conference, We Media is about how we create a better-informed society by collaborating with one another,” said the promo site. “Arrange meetings in advance or during scheduled meet-ups at the conference.”
Meetings with whom, and with what objective in mind?
Reuters ceo Tom Glocer explained how Reuters had, in effect, founded journalism as we know it back in the 1800s, using carrier pigeons to get stories from A to Z.
According to Glocer, the “burden” of getting the news to readers is still carried by highly trained, professional journalists (Reuters pro journalists, of course), although these days, untrained citizen journalists are adding to the news milieu. But Reuters isn’t worried. It’s always been in top of the technology of the time, as exemplified by pigeons, and the 21st century isn’t going to be any different. This challenge will be met and overcome and absorbed, where appropriate, as have similar challenges throughout its history.
Other mainstream luminaries said much the same, all of them completely ignoring the fact the two-day event was made necessary because they’re seeing their formerly exclusive preserves and domains being overtaken by the new media, run by all those untrained, unwashed citizen journalists whose only brief is to tell it like it is.
As we suggested to several professionals, people writing for the new media – ie, blogs – are often better informed than their counterparts in the mainstream media, and are frequently better writers as well. But not to worry, we were told. Many, if not most, of the quality bloggers will in one way or another end up working for the ‘new’ old mainstream outlets, once the likes of Reuters get themselves organized.
If nothing else, the conference served to emphasize just how important blogging has become, p2pnet said »»»
And this is the only beginning. Before very much longer, the traditional press is going to have to do more than offer a token acknowledgement of the new kids on blocks all around the world because bottom line, NINLOW is where it’s at: News Is No Longer One Way. And for the first time in history, John Doe in American can talk to Jane Doe anywhere else in the world, exchanging unspun news and information while the old-style providers look on.
We Media was more Them Media than anything else. But that’s changing fast, thanks to Citizen Journalists and bloggers.
“So the mainstream media need to stay tuned and start recognizing the new media competition in a less cursory, less patronizing manner,”" we said, adding, “Or they’ll be left choking in the dust.
“The real We Media – that’s you and I – are more than content to work with, and alongside, the old mainstream media. It’ll now be interesting to see if the same applies to Reuters, the BBC and the others.”
Jon Newton, p2pnet
PI site – Seattle P-I to publish last edition Tuesday, March 17, 2009
p2pnet – Old Media and the New, May 8, 2006
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