From the rival daily, the Seattle Times …
The future of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer appeared uncertain tonight after a local television station reported the newspaper is setting the stage for closure — but then the managing editor of the paper said he knew of no such plans.
KING-TV reported at 5 p.m. that the P-I will be put up for sale. The information was attributed to an unnamed “source close to the deal.” The television station said that neither Hearst Corporation, which owns the P-I, nor the paper’s publisher was available to immediately confirm the report. However, the source said the news could be officially announced as early as tomorrow.
The P-I then reported that the paper’s managing editor said he knows of no plans to sell the paper. At about 5:15 p.m., soon after the KING-TV report was aired, managing editor David McCumber told the newsroom’s staffers, “If this is going on — and I don’t know that it is — it’s going on at a level that’s far above me, and nobody has seen fit to clue me in. I think it’s a bunch of rumor. You look at the state of this business — it wouldn’t surprise me if something was going on, but I have no knowledge of what that something is.”
From the PI’s own website (musta been fun to write) …
The future of one of Seattle’s two daily newspapers was called into question Thursday by a TV station report, though top leaders at both papers appeared surprised by the report.
KING 5 reported at about 5 p.m. that “a source close to the deal” said Hearst Corp., owner of the Seattle P-I, would announce as soon as Friday that it’s putting the P-I up for sale.
The report, which also appeared on the station’s Web site, added that “Hearst does not expect another buyer to step forward and that Seattle will likely become a one-newspaper town within the next few months.”
The P-I’s managing editor said he knows of no plans to sell the paper. At about 5:15 p.m., soon after the report was aired, managing editor David McCumber told the newsroom’s staffers, “If this is going on — and I don’t know that it is — it’s going on at a level that’s far above me, and nobody has seen fit to clue me in. I think it’s a bunch of rumor. You look at the state of this business — it wouldn’t surprise me if something was going on, but I have no knowledge of what that something is.”
