seattle times, nov. 24, 2001; 8 wide sections for 25 cents

The Seattle Times suddenly raised its cover price to $1 today. Retailers had been notified in advance, but readers hadn’t. Not even a bottom-front-page “To Our Readers” notice. The paper’s corporate website still lists a single copy price of $.75.

What does the extra quarter get you? Not more content. Tuesday’s paper was a recent record-low 24 pages. It had been this thin a few times in the past couple of years, but only on Mondays or post-holiday Tuesdays (i.e., days without stock listings). When you factor in today’s narrower page sizes, the SeaTimes hasn’t been this small since the days of WWII paper rationing.

I hadn’t noticed when it happened, but the Sunday Pacific Northwest Magazine section now appears to be printed on cheaper paper, the same kind of stock used by the Varsity Theater film calendar.

Meanwhile, the paper’s editorial staff has completed moving into the former furniture warehouse next to the 13 Coins restaurant. Other departments (ad sales, circulation, management) will move in as their new, smaller office spaces get installed. For now, the John Street front office and mailing address remain.

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To try to quantify the paper’s shrinkage, I’ve been looking up its past online staff-directory pages, as maintained at the Wayback Machine site (web.archive.org).

But first, let’s review the page’s current incarnation. It lists 134 editorial employees (not counting a few executives listed twice). These include 35 local news reporters and columnists (including two listed as “on leave” (unpaid)), 35 reporters and writers in the paper’s other sections, and 12 photographers.

This is the same as the final Post-Intelligencer staff list from early 2009. (The P-I had a couple more people in some sections, a couple fewer in others; but the total’s alike.)

Remember, the print P-I didn’t put out a Sunday paper, and hadn’t since 1983. The same staffing level at today’s Times is thus spread more thinly. Especially since the Times continues to support long, research-heavy, Sunday “cover stories.”

On Jan. 15, 2009, near the time of the print P-I‘s end, the Times staff page listed 150 editorial staffers. These included 37 local news reporters/columnists, 45 writers in the other sections, and 15 photographers. The Times was about to decimate its weekday “living” section, a move planned before the P-I closure was announced.

In contrast, the Times staff page for Dec. 4, 2001 boasts a whopping 281 names.

But this difference seems even more drastic than it is.

That’s because the 2001 staff page lists several job categories that got dropped from the page in later years. They include 10 “news artists” (map makers and illustrators), plus a total of 80 copy editors, wire editors, page-layout designers, researchers, and other assistants.

The P-I‘s 2009 staff page listed four artists and 36 of these other assorted personnel. Today’s Times probably employs at least that many or more, what with all the Sunday and Sunday-preview pages to fill with wire and syndicated matter.

In an apples-to-apples comparison, the 2001 Times employed 53 local news reporters and columnists, 66 writers in the other sections, and 15 photographers.

Those included separate Eastside and Snohomish County bureaus.

They also included such now exotic sounding job titles as “home economist” (recipes editor), “assistant metro editor, metro growth,” and “director, brand and content development.”

Also remember that in a 2006 lawsuit, the P-I (which was then trying to stay in business, despite its unfortunate position in a Times-controlled Joint Operating Agreement) alleged that Times management employed more people than it had to, so the Times could claim it was losing money and thus legally kill the JOA (and with it, the P-I).

During the JOA, the Times had to share profits with the P-I.

Now the Times gets to shoulder its losses alone. (Be careful what you etc. etc.)