Seattle P-I unlikely to find a buyer

Seattle is one of those two-newspaper towns where the second paper survived for another generation on the strength of a Joint Operating Agreement that let the weaker paper (the P-I) move all its business ops over to the Seattle Times while retaining a separate newsroom.

These JOAs have always been controversial, but they managed to work well enough where they were tried to keep two newspaper voices in some cities where there would have only been one otherwise.

However, that was then, and this is now and with the survival of newspapers at stake even in one-paper cities, there's little justification for keeping the JOAs going and I would expect that all the current JOAs will come to an end fairly soon.

For the Seattle Post-Intelligencer the chances of finding a buyer seem grim. Owner Hearst is giving just 60 days to close the deal, which isn't a lot of time under the best of circumstances.

Buying a daily newspaper in the current market is "like buying an anchor that's already been thrown overboard," Wayne State University journalism director Ben Burns told The Denver Post last month. Quoted from a story in the Seattle Times.

A buyer did step up for the two Connecticut papers that went on the block this month (The Bristol Press and New Britain Herald) but those were smaller papers that did not have competition. The P-I is a bigger paper so more money would be needed and any buyer would be faced with trying to turn a profit in the face of competing with the Seattle Times AND in a market that's tough for newspapers in general.

I just don't see it.