Report: Seattle P-I could be up for sale

Is the Seattle Post-Intelligencer on its last legs?

Quoting an unnamed source, KING-TV reported Thursday night that the newspaper's owner, The Hearst Corp., planned to put the P-I up for sale soon, setting the stage for its closure in the next few months.

The P-I's managing editor said he knew of no such plans. A Hearst spokesman in New York did not return calls, pages or e-mails.

Executives at The Seattle Times, which has partnered for 25 years with Hearst and the P-I in a federally sanctioned joint operating agreement, said they did not know if the report on KING was true.

"I'm stunned," Times Publisher Frank Blethen said in a newsroom hallway, declining further comment.

But, with both Seattle dailies and metropolitan newspapers across the nation in serious financial trouble, a P-I shutdown probably would help The Times' bottom line, several industry observers said.

"It would benefit The Times, because anybody who wants a newspaper would have no choice but to buy The Times," said Stephen Lacy, a Michigan State University journalism professor who has studied JOAs.

The Seattle Times Co. has owned the Yakima Herald-Republic since 1991.

A P-I demise wouldn't solve all The Times' problems, he said, but "overall, I would suspect (The Times) would see economic gains."

KING reported that Hearst did not expect to find a buyer for the P-I, and that "Seattle will likely become a one-newspaper town within the next few months." Hearst could make an announcement as soon as today, the television station said.

The U.S. Justice Department's Antitrust Division, which oversees newspaper JOAs, has required in the past that newspapers involved in such arrangements demonstrate before closing that no one will buy them.

Putting the P-I up for sale now could avoid problems with Justice later, Lacy said.

Under the Seattle JOA, The Times handles advertising, circulation and other business functions for both papers, but they maintain separate news and editorial operations. The Times gets 60 percent of the combined proceeds, Hearst 40 percent.

Until 2007 a clause in the JOA would have required The Times to pay Hearst 32 percent of its profit until 2083 if the P-I closed and left the Times with a monopoly. But Hearst agreed to drop that provision as part of the 2007 settlement of a four-year legal battle with The Times over the JOA's future.

In return, The Times paid Hearst $18 million.ation about whether the P-I will be put up for sale but would be "stunned and sick about it" if the P-I did end up closing.

The P-I is the state's oldest daily newspaper. It can trace it roots back 146 years, to 1863. The office is located on the Elliott Bay waterfront and is home to a Seattle landmark: a huge, steel neon-lit globe with the slogan: "It's in the P-I."

More than 100 staffers at the paper work under the leadership of Publisher Roger Oglesby and McCumber. The P-I's press, pre-press, advertising, circulation and marketing functions have been handled since 1983 by The Seattle Times Co. under the terms of the joint operating agreement.

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