Seattle PI and Me

Maybe I'm just a "digital native," but for me, nothing seems extraordinary about the state of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer.

To me, the most interesting part of the PI is the fact that they are one of the first newspapers in the country to go strictly online. I believe that this is a dramatic step for any newspaper, but I do not feel that this changes anything about the PI for me.

I've never lived in the Seattle area, so I've never actually held a copy of the PI. For people used to receiving the paper form of the PI, I can understand that this would be a dramatic change. But I've only ever read it online. It is not a paper that I regularly checked online, but occasionally I would be drawn to some of it's headlines while it still had a paper version.

It seems the PI offers a pretty solid blend of local reporting and wire stories. Some of its exclusive online features, like photo galleries and interactive calendars are unremarkable. It seems like a solid paper, but its website seems to be no more remarkable than the Anchorage Daily News.

Watching the PI move completely online makes me wonder how I would react if the paper I have grown up with, the ADN, went completely online. At this point, I would not be upset or worried. I've been reading the paper strictly online for the last three years. I rarely run into a physical paper copy of the newspaper, but when I do I do not feel like I am getting more. In fact, I feel like I am getting less. With the Internet, I can read a story and then have links to all kinds of other information that I wouldn't get in a print addition. The news also comes faster, something that I've grown to not only enjoy, but expect.

I do hold some nostalgia for the printed copy of the Daily News. My mother refuses to read her paper online, and religiously subscribes to whatever the local paper in her area is. Whenever I go home, to Wasilla, I read the printed paper -- but only realize that I've already read those stories, online.