Is this the end of the newspaper as we know it?

A lot of you may know this already, but a major Seattle newspaper, The Seattle Post-Intelligencer (aka the P-I), closed its print doors and exists only in a virtual sense now. A lot of newspapers are feeling the burn when it comes to maintaining a revenue stream from their print media, but it is really sad to see one of the major Seattle newspapers go down in this manner. Not only does it indicate a shift in the way that news is being accessed by the general public, and taking away the glory that is actually holding a newspaper in your hands, but it also marks the potential decline in the quality of news reporting. While it would be nice to think that the online versions of newspapers that are no longer in print will be able to keep up the kind of reporting quality of their previous print selves, this seems like a pipe dream. Besides for the fact that they are saving money by not having to actually print the paper, the P-I is also planning on drastically cutting down the amount of staff on the paper to around 20 and they are going to make their website more Huffington Post like, with mostly commentary, advice and links to other news sites, along with some original reporting. With such a drastic cut down and a reworking of their news model I can't help but think that this means a potential downfall in the prevalence of fact checking and creative reporting, and thus a large issue in terms of getting good quality news from the P-I.

So dear, wonderful blog readers, what do you think about major newspapers going virtual and leaving their print past behind. Are they going to be able to survive in this way on advertising revenue alone? Is reporting really going to become much more like blogging? Are we losing an essential part of our history? I just can't help but feel a little sad seeing it go down like this.

NYT Article on the change

P-I Website