A year ago, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer dropped its print edition and went web only — the first major metro newspaper in the country to do so. It’s a critical experiment for its parent, the Hearst Corporation, which is faced with a decision on how to transition its stable of newspapers into the digital future. SeattlePI.com — or the PI, as it’s called here in Seattle — kept a much smaller editorial staff of 20 or so people.
Today, SeattlePI.com Executive Producer Michelle Nicolosi says traffic is holding mostly steady at 40 million page views with 4 million uniques a month — quite an accomplishment for such a dramatic staff reduction and a strong competitor across town, SeattleTimes.com. “From a business standpoint we feel very positive,” says Pat Balles, GM of SeattlePI.com, adding that they’re on track to make a profit (but no details on when it will happen.)
Visiting the SeattlePI.com, you may be surprised at the volume of content, which can be valuable lesson for cash-strapped news operations everywhere. First off, the PI is careful not to duplicate coverage that’s already available — on the wires or from its stable of partners, which includes KOMO News, the ABC affiliate. Instead, the PI’s reporters focus on unique enterprise stories that can be showcased across the site, like this story on abandoned construction projects in Seattle.
Other content sources include stories from Hearst-owned newspapers as well as magazines, which range from Oprah to Smart Money. TV Guide and Film.com are key partners in the entertainment category.
Most editorial staffers also contribute to a variety of niche blogs, which contain original reporting as well as summaries and links to other stories around Seattle’s vibrant online news scene. The short-form style is tailor-made for quick publishing, short attention spans, search engine juice and social media distribution. For example, Monica Guzman, who is the main contributor to the Big Blog, is a Twitter pro, amassing 8,000 followers and driving a substantial amount of social visibility for the PI.
SeattlePI.com also hosts a large network of reader blogs. These blogs are volunteer operations spanning a wide range of niches and neighborhoods, enjoying an traffic injection from the home page as well as the SEO benefits of living on the SeattlePI.com domain. Some neighborhood blogs are standalone experiences and a couple others are partnerships with existing blogs — and the PI has plans to launch several more.
The PI has also borrowed a page from the Huffington Post (without the political lean) with its “City Brights” columns. Prominent Seattleites write about issues important to them — yet another source of free content, and a great way to drive publicity about the site.
Of course, some journalists may raise an eyebrow over the amount of volunteer writing on SeattlePI.com, but you have to admit, the site has done a great job retaining its audience with a dramatically reduced editorial staff. And techniques like these will likely become standard fare at many newspaper sites in the years to come.
(Full disclosure: I co-founded Next Door Media, a network of neighborhood news blogs in Seattle. Next Door Media and the PI have blogs that overlap in a few neighborhoods, and Next Door Media is an editorial partner of the Seattle Times.)
