If you’re following the saga of the Seattle Post-Intellgencer, the paper’s publishing its last print edition, becoming the largest daily to shift to web-only news. The NY Times had an eye-opening take on what's in store for Seattle's largest daily:
But The P-I, as it is called, will resemble a local Huffington Post more than a traditional newspaper, with a news staff of about 20 people rather than the 165 it had, and a site with mostly commentary, advice and links to other news sites, along with some original reporting.
While I find this shift from reporting to commentary discomfiting (we still need professional journalists to cover stories "out there" in Nicaragua, Nigeria, and the Negev) it reinforces my view that something akin to the Huffington Post model may well be the future of journalism.
Clay Shirky puts the media's financial crisis into a larger context, while distinguishing between what's at stake for newspapers and what's at stake for journalism. A sober reminder for San Francisco and everyone else.
Related reading: Foreign Bureaus, Diversity of Views Shrinking
