The Newspaper Guild’s looking into midwifing a Post-Intelligencer employee buyout, which, at the paper’s recently-announced financial burn rate, would obligate each of the paper’s current employees to $80,000 or so in annual losses. On the surface it sounds like a no-go from the get-go; but an employee buyout, perhaps with outside backing added, could be one way to keep the paper (or at least its Web site) alive through the long process of hashing a new business model together.

Meanwhile, Hearst is rumored to still be considering a small-staffed online P-I, but is still weeks away from announcing anything.

And, from way back in December, here’s David Byrne comparing what’s happening to the newspaper biz these days to what happened to the record biz in the ’80s and ’90s—consolidation, buyouts, corporate debt, layoffs, and an institutional death spiral.