As I promised a week or so ago, here’s some of what I would do to improve SeattlePI.com.

But first, the answer to “why bother?”

This town needs a primary news source that isn’t the increasingly Foxified Seattle Times.

The local TV newscasts and their affiliated Web sites, themselves shrinking and mayhem-centric, are no substitute. Neither is the feature-oriented KUOW. Neither are the small and scrappy Publicola and Crosscut. Barring some new entrepreneurial venture, that leaves PI.com.

As I wrote, that site’s coverage has steadily improved since its inauspicious start as a standalone entity one year go. But it still has a ways to go.

First, the easy improvements:

• The home page could become more punchy, less cluttered. The “above the fold” portion, which you see immediately upon logging in, could take on a more Huffington Post tabloidy appearance, emphasizing one to four major “cover stories.”
• The Local index page needs to be particularly de-cluttered. It should be the alternate point-of-entry for readers looking for a summary of what important’s gone on in town lately. That means, among other things, taking out the sports headlines (the site already has a separate Sports index page).
• The sidebar box hawking links to “Special Reports” mostly hypes creaky old stories from the print Post-Intelligencer. It’s particularly annoying to see the link to “JOA Update,” which concerned the deal with the SeaTimes that ultimately failed to keep the print P-I alive. Either drop this box from the sidebar or create some new special reports to promote in it.
• Bring on more freelance and part-time “content providers.” Unpaid bloggers are fine for what they’re able to do. But for key subject areas that can really increase a site’s page views, you need people who can afford the time for research and legwork.
• PI.com’s biggest initial mistake was to not include local arts-and-entertainment coverage, a proven audience builder. They’re starting to rectify this. They can do more, by adding paid freelance reviewers, then building those into staff positions as they steadily increase the site’s overall hits.

Now for the hard part:

• PI.com needs to convince Hearst management to let it hire more full-time staff. The site’s still losing money (apparently); but from all accounts it’s on track to turn a profit once the online ad market rebounds, or when additional revenue streams (i.e., an iPad newspaper) become feasible. It can become THE place to go in this region for breaking news, politics, long-form feature writing, sports commentary, and A&E recommendations. But for that, it needs to have at least twice the in-house produced content that it’s now got.

When I return to this topic in a few days, I’ll talk about how a lean startup venture could help fill some of these holes in the local info-scape.