Last Friday came the horrible news that Hearst doesn’t want to run a printed daily paper in Seattle anymore, but would consider selling the Post-Intelligencer or turning it Web-only. Since then, several people besides myself have spoken out in favor of keeping the P-I newsroom going. Some have even offered more-or-less-vague ideas for making this possible.

Here are a few:

• First, the paper’s own Art Thiel explains why the P-I, as an ongoing info-resource, should stick around:”…The P-I always has been poor in staff numbers and rich in cantankerousness, light on editors and heavy on writers, mean when needed (and unneeded) and benevolent when least expected. Somehow this added up to a newspaper as exhilarating as it was exasperating.…

  “If ever there were a place where private wealth, invention, technology, emergency, opportunity and desire are in abundance for a new idea, it is here, now.

  “Even in a profound recession, some things cannot be surrendered..”

  In the Web comments to Thiel’s piece, “llachglin” nails the real reason newspapers around the country are in panic mode. It’s the advertising. It’s dropped, faster and fuller than most anyone expected.

• As we’ve mentioned briefly before, Brian Reich at WeMedia offers his own “Plan for the Seattle P-I“ based, so far, on re-organizational generalities: “A renewed focus on issues that impact the local community;” “explaining why, how, and what impact an event will have;” “look at all the ways to make money in the news space—my list includes selling content and advertising, providing research and insights, aggregating and syndicating everything;” “an increased role for local media in the community.”These prescriptions largely match those on a list by Edward Roussel, who runs the Web site of London’s Daily Telegraph: “Narrow the focus,” “plug into a network,” “engage with your readers,” “nimble, low-cost structure, “invest in the Web,” “shake up leadership,” and so on.
• At TechFlash.com (owned by the Puget Sound Business Journal’s parent), ex-P-I scribe Todd Bishop offers “Ten steps to save the Seattle P-I, and maybe the rest of the industry.” Bishop envisions a lean-n’-mean, locally-owned, online-only operation, with “a top technologist” and “a top Internet executive” on the payroll, but with much of the news-gathering outsourced to freelance “vetted bloggers,” whatever those are.

  On the same site, John Cook nominates “twelve techies who could help nurture and save Seattlepi.com.” Yes, the name of Paul Allen is predictably dropped. So is David Brewster, who’s already learned one way not to make money from online local news.

• Peter Kafka, writing on the Wall Street Journal’s All Things Digital site, agrees with some local pessimists that an online-only local “paper” couldn’t possibly turn a profit. Kafka asserts that seattlepi.com’s 2.6 million monthly unique visitors might be enough fo sustain a low-staffed site with a national niche audience (like, say, All Things Digital), but not a local general-interest site.However, Jeff Jarvis at guardian.co.uk offers grist for a potential counter-argument to Kafka. As Jarvis notes, the Los Angeles Times now claims it’s making enough money from online ads to support the paper’s entire editorial payroll (albeit one that’s almost half what it was a few years back):

  “I see hope: the possibility that online revenue could support digital journalism for a city. The enterprise will be smaller, but it could well be more profitable than its print forebears today and—here’s the real news—it would grow from there. Imagine that: news as a growth industry again.”

  At Brewster’s Crosscut.com, Bill Richards suggests profitable online local news is closer than a lot of people think, and notes that Hearst is already investing in Kindle-like digital reader products. Richards posits that Hearst might keep an all-online P-I and use it as a grand experiment in paperless news.

• And back at the P-I itself, editor David McCumber offers up his own take on the crisis:”It’s a fine mess we find ourselves in—but I’m not giving up yet. This newspaper is for sale. No, it may not be the most attractive investment around (What is the most attractive investment around? Your 401k? Your house? Yeah, right) but that doesn’t mean we won’t find someone who cares about Seattle and about journalism, and sees promise where others see only loss.

  “Might we go online only? Yes, that’s a distinct possibility too, although that operation would inevitably be much, much smaller than our current newsroom, which is to say it will inevitably have to feature other content besides the kind of journalism that takes significant people resources to execute correctly.

  “Right now, I’m determinedly positive, but I’m not completely unrealistic.”

All this quoting other people, and I still haven’t given my own P-I Rx. Tuesday, I promise.