Seattle Post-Intelligencer

The Seattle Post- Intelligencer (short form: PI ) is a daily newspaper published on the Internet from Seattle in Washington state. The newspaper was first published in 1863 and is the oldest newspaper of Seattle. Since 1921, the company is owned by the Hearst Corporation. After continuing financial losses and futile attempts to find a buyer for the newspaper, the print edition has been discontinued. The last issue was published on 17 March 2009. Thus only remains in Seattle, the Seattle Times published daily newspaper.

History

Founding and mergers

The origins of the Post-Intelligencer are the first time on December 10, 1863 Seattle Gazette published. The four-page weekly newspaper published by James R. Watson, of the same year along with his printing press, a Ramage Model No. 913, had moved from Olympia to Seattle. The said press had been built about 40 years ago in Philadelphia, and was first shipped to New York. Later she came to Mexico, where it was used to print government decrees. After the Mexican-American War, it came into private hands, and stood before her time in Seattle in Monterey ( newspaper Californian, 1846), San Francisco (Star, 1847), Portland ( The Weekly Oregonian, 1850) and Olympia ( Columbian, 1852 ) the pressure of the first newspaper in each of these cities.

After initial difficulties and several name - changes of ownership and the sheet came in 1867 in the possession of Samuel L. Maxwell, who paid $ 300 for the printing press, list of subscribers and other assets. The now expanded to eight pages of newspaper he renamed in Weekly Intelligencer. Seven years later he sold it for $ 3,000 to his editor ( and brother ) David Higgins.

Higgins bought a new printing press and donated the old printing press later, the University of Washington. He began in 1876 to publish the Intelligencer as newspaper and as a morning edition. In 1878 he sold the Daily Intelligencer for $ 8,000 to his editor Thaddeus Hanford on. Meanwhile, Seattle had three newspapers. Hanford initially acquired the other daily newspaper, the Puget Sound Dispatch, and shortly thereafter the weekly Pacific Tribune. However, he ran into financial difficulties in 1879 and sold half of its stake in the Intelligencer to the former owner of the Pacific Tribune, Thomas W. Prosch. Due to continued difficulties eventually sold his share of Hanford 50 % to the editor Samuel Crawford.

In the meantime, in October 1878 a new newspaper called The Post had come to market, founded by Kirk C. and Mark Ward and financed by the future mayor John Leary. The newspaper had been taken with the construction of its $ 30,000 expensive, three-story brick building. Therefore decided Leary and the other investors of the post, to go together with the also -torn Intelligencer. The first Post-Intelligencer was published on 3 October 1881. However, Kirk C. Ward went his own way and founded the The Seattle Daily Chronicle, the forerunner of the great rival Seattle Times.

20th century

Until the turn of the century the newspaper had already published 15 different owners and almost as often was changed her name. In 1911, the circulation was 31,000. William Randolph Hearst took over the newspaper in 1921, at first only surreptitiously through a middleman, thus ending the period of frequent changes of ownership. To date, it is owned by the Hearst Corporation. At this time, the Post-Intelligencer had a circulation of 62,000 ( Sunday edition of 138,600 ), the Times came to 56,600 ( 84,000 Sunday edition ). Hearst informed the newspaper of conservative and supported in the presidential elections of 1924 and 1928 respectively, the Republican candidate. In the Great Depression, however, he waved 1932 on the Democratic candidate, Franklin D. Roosevelt to. When Roosevelt won the second presidential election in 1936, the newspaper was just strike by the newly formed American Newspaper Guild and could not appear for almost four months. This marked the first major failure of the blade - even in the great fire in 1889, the newspaper had been published without interruption, although the building of the Post-Intelligencer was going completely burned out.

After setting the Seattle Star in 1947 there were in Seattle only two daily newspapers.

Since 1983, the Post-Intelligencer and the Seattle Times had to settle into a joint operating agreement under the Newspaper Preservation Act of 1970, which allows newspapers in favor of pluralism in conflict with anti-trust laws in certain business areas together. So were advertising, production, marketing and sales of both newspapers in the Seattle Times Company, the costs were shared. The editors of the leaves, however, were strictly separated. There was also a joint Sunday edition.

The cartoonist David Horsey won the 1999 and the 2003 Pulitzer Prize.

In 2003, the Times tried to cancel the Joint Operating Agreement. The newspapers accused each other of trying to drive each other out of business. After several processes, the matter was settled in 2007.

Sales plans and setting the print edition

In early January 2009, the Hearst Corporation, the newspaper for sale. Steven Swartz, head of the newspaper division of Hearst, according to the newspaper writes every year since 2000 in the red. So they lost in 2008 $ 14 million, the edition went from 196,000 in 1998 to 118,000 in 2008. Given the U.S. newspaper crisis and the financial crisis in general the expectations of analysts were low that a buyer would be found. A sale to the Seattle Times had categorically excluded Hearst.

Since within the specified 60 days, no buyer could be found, Hearst turned the printed output in mid-March 2009. The last issue was published on 17 March 2009, together with Denver, where the end of February, the newspaper The Rocky Mountain News has been discontinued, Seattle was one of the smallest cities in the U.S. with two remaining major daily newspapers. The newspaper should be with a greatly reduced number of employees continued ( from 165 to 20) as an online edition. The joint operating agreement with the Times falls off by the task of the print business, so 20 employees are to be re-set for display advertising.

P -I Globe

One of the landmarks of Seattle is the 18.5 -ton and more than 9 m high neon globe on the roof of the main building of the Post-Intelligencer. This is what the words It's in the PI find ( German: "It's in the PI " ), which rotate around the globe. On the globe, an eagle sits with outstretched wings above.

The characteristic globe serves the newspaper since 1948 as a logo. In a reader competition to search for a new logo sat under 350 participants Jakk Corsaw, an art student at the University of Washington, with its design by. Built for $ 26,000, he adorns since November 9, 1948, the roof of the main building and was placed on the roof of the new building with the move in 1986. The logo was used in the headline of the newspaper and can also be found on the website.