Yep, it’s true. Hearst doesn’t want to run the Post-Intelligencer anymore, at least not as a printed daily paper.

If no buyer’s found in the next month or two, and none’s likely to show up, Seattle will become a one-newspaper town.

This is the moment many of us have tried to prevent for the past quarter century or more.

And I don’t know what to say or do about it.

The whole premise of the Committee for a Two-Newspaper Town is predicated on the presumption that big city daily papers are, at least potentially, profitable, at least if they’re protected from predatory monopolistic behavior. This notion has become increasingly doubtful, particularly over the past year.

I still don’t want a pure Seattle Times monopoly. That paper’s made many dumb right-wing moves over the years, in both its editorial pages and its “news” coverage. The P-I is better written, better designed, and much more attuned to this city’s working-class past and progressive present.

But what can be done now to save this voice?

• 
  Find a buyer for the P-I as is? The big media combines are trying to get out of some of the newspapers they do own. The industry’s business model is broken, maybe permanently. Sure, some local buyer(s) could step in; maybe even the same guys who didn’t rescue the Sonics. But in pro sports, you lose money with the prospect of making it back when you resell the team. In today’s newspaper biz that’s quite unlikely.
• 
  Buy the P-I and shrink it, to something whose losses would be small enough for rich owners (or a nonprofit entity) to sustain? A newsstand-only paper (no home delivery)? A compact tabloid format? A free weekly? There’s no limit to how small a paper can be shrunk. Just don’t expect a point of “core profitability.”
• 
  Go online-only? Again, nobody’s yet figured out how to make professionally-created online news pay its keep. But a lot of people are trying to figure that out. I worked last year with one such group.