Both the Weekly and the Stranger have big feature stories this week about the P-I‘s probable-but-maybe-not demise next month. Neither story contains any actual info about the paper’s fate. If anyone at the P-I or parent Hearst Corp. knows anything, they’re not saying.

This could just mean Hearst is being the secretive, private bunch it’s been since ol’ Wm. Randolph H. died in ’51.

Or it might mean a deal’s being slowly, quietly negotiated with a potential purchaser; said deal may, if it exists, still collapse or succeed before we hear about it.

Or it might mean Hearst’s seriously thinking about maintaining an online-only P-I but is still sorting out what form it might take.

Or it might not mean a darned thing.

One actual piece of news in the Stranger article concerned an attempt by the Pacific Northwest Newspaper Guild to explore starting up its own local-news Web site. No matter how the P-I saga plays out, we need more local info sources, not fewer.