The decision on the fate of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer has still not been made, but this week saw a series of meetings between P-I employees and vice president for digital media at parent company Hearst, Ken Riddick. The meetings were all in order to explore reporter's ideas for the P-I moving forward as an online entity - although no definite decisions on whether or not this will happen have been taken.

Staffers reluctant to give their ideas away for free initially greeted the meetings with some hesitancy, but by the day the encounters were to take place all the available slots were filled by journalists seeking stability in an uncertain environment. In his article for The Stranger, Eli Sanders spoke to P-I reporters after their meetings with Riddick. One explained that the 20-minute session had felt somewhat like an audition, although at the moment no one knows exactly what they're trying out for.

Sanders reports that the general consensus to come out of the meeting is that the P-I will remain in existence online but not in print, although this hasn't been officially confirmed. Reporter Angela James said that "[Riddick] told me that they're operating as if we're going to go forward... so I didn't get the feeling that Hearst has a big question mark over its head and doesn't know what it's doing." Although Riddick didn't discuss future strategy, and claimed that the decision wasn't his to make, he did reveal insights into possible formats for the site; such as a Huffington Post style combination of aggregation and original reporting.

There are also early indications of such changes; last week the site linked prominently to an outside article in a style which it usually reserves for its own work. With regard to profit-making, Sanders points out that the P-I brand commands a fairly high number of online readers already, and that whatever losses the site initially makes, they will be far lower than the money currently being haemorrhaged by the paper edition. Amongst staff, there is an air of apprehension, and some discussion over possible future collaboration amongst those who will inevitably find themselves out of a job. The P-I currently employees 170 people, but Sanders explains, "it's easy to imagine an online-only P-I staffed with as few as 20 people. Or even fewer."

Source: The Stranger