Dick Clever writes in this week's Seattle Weekly that Seattle would be a lesser place if the Times/P-I JOA collapses and the Seattle Post-Intelligencer disappears:
Some would argue that there are enough competing voices around to pick up the slack—alternative weeklies, radio, television, bloggers, neighborhood weeklies, telephone poles. But the truth is that metropolitan daily newspapers like the P-I and the Times are the lead agenda-setters for a community. They are the news factories that produce most of the original content the public gets in its daily diet of information from all sources. Yes, more people get their news from television, but TV is more of a processor of material that has already been printed. Take down one of the news factories, and the input to the public information system is diminished.I agree wholeheartedly with the theory that two newspapers are better than one, provided however, that one of the newspapers is a credible source of news and not a fact-challenged collection of fairy-tales.
It's hard to find anybody who will say that the loss of the P-I would be good riddance.Clever Dick Clever is not clever enough to look at the Shark Blog, for example, where I get plenty of comments like these. Clever Dick goes on to list a few examples of the P-I's contributions to journalism, most of them dating back to the sixties and seventies.
What would we really lose if today's P-I were to go away? Other than the psychedelic fabrications of Constitutional law and the pro-Jihad editorials, the biggest loss would be that there wouldn't be any more of this.
Posted by Stefan Sharkansky at July 16, 2003 04:46 PMI am far from a fan of the P-I. If there is a worse editorial page at any major daily in the U.S., . . . well, maybe there are worse, but not many. I feel compelled to say one thing, however, in response to the question you pose, "Where would we be without the P-I?," and that is that we would be poorer for the absence of its State Capitol coverage. Angela Galloway has consistently written some of the best, boldest, and most thoughtful stories to appear anywhere on state government. Her state budget coverage has been superb. Ditto Rob Gavin, who preceded her at the P-I and then went on to write for the Wall Street Journal. Both fine reporters. I wish everyone in the Capitol Press Corps were as good as them. So in the midst of all the richly deserved criticism of the P-I, let me offer that one commendation. Angela deserves to work for a better newspaper.
Posted by: Jack Archer on July 16, 2003 09:35 PMI am far from a fan of the P-I. If there is a worse editorial page at any major daily in the U.S., . . . well, maybe there are worse, but not many. I feel compelled to say one thing, however, in response to the question you pose, "Where would we be without the P-I?," and that is that we would be poorer for the absence of its State Capitol coverage. Angela Galloway has consistently written some of the best, boldest, and most thoughtful stories to appear anywhere on state government. Her state budget coverage has been superb. Ditto Rob Gavin, who preceded her at the P-I and then went on to write for the Wall Street Journal. Both fine reporters. I wish everyone in the Capitol Press Corps were as good as them. So in the midst of all the richly deserved criticism of the P-I, let me offer that one commendation. Angela deserves to work for a better newspaper.
Posted by: Jack Archer on July 16, 2003 09:35 PMIt's important to differentiate between the P-I's editorials, which are repugnant, and its news coverage, which is fairly solid. I've always liked the P-I business pages over the Times', and Art Thiel is simply one of the most entertaining columnists in any paper. Okay, he's sports, but he's just a great read. Sure both papers suffer from errors, biases and shoddy reporting, but every news outlet does, and taken as a whole the P-I is a decent news operation.
Posted by: Scott Hillis on July 17, 2003 12:13 AMI agree with Scott that the business section is pretty good. Bill Virgin writes a good column. See, for instance, his refreshing defense of Wal-Mart in Tuesday's edition.
(Sorry for inadvertently posting twice above.)
Posted by: Jack Archer on July 17, 2003 02:23 PM"If there is a worse editorial page at any major daily in the U.S ..."
Key word being "major," because the Olympian (WA) is worse. At least the P-I allows others voices on their op-ed page, as opposed to hand-picked lefties the Olympian offers up as commentary. Not to mention their flat-out refusal to accept any outside opinion-editorials.
Wouldn't miss either one of 'em if they went away.
Posted by: jimg on July 17, 2003 04:16 PM