Seattle P-I Ends Tomorrow, San Fran Chronicle Next

The days of the two newspaper town are numbered. The Rocky Mountain News just died in Colorado (although a collective of reporters from the Rocky are operating an online news venture at "I Want My Rocky" and are about to announce a more formal venture). Now this expected turn in Seattle:

The Seattle Post-Intelligencer, the city's oldest newspaper, will roll off the presses for the last time Tuesday, its owner said today.

The Hearst Corp. also said it will keep the the P-I alive online "as a new type of digital business with a robust, community news and information Web site at its core." . . .

Last month Hearst said it would sell or close its money-losing San Francisco Chronicle if costs can't be cut quickly.

When the Rocky died, they said that left six two newspaper towns in the United States. With the P-I dead, the San Francisco Chronicle dying, and trouble brewing in Los Angeles, the number of cities with two daily newspaper may fall further. New York City seems in no danger of falling to fewer than two daily papers, but I'm not certain that any other city is sure to be spared.

If the online experiments at the P-I and in Denver succeed, of course, as one in San Diego apparently has according to Colorado Matters (at Colorado Public Radio), however, the need to have two dead tree daily newspapers in one town may start to seem as quaint as the notion of an afternoon newspaper does in most American cities now.