OLD Media Moves

Seattle paper cuts standalone business section

December 8, 2008

The Seattle Post-Intelligencer has cut its standalone business section, beginning with Monday’s paper, according to an internal e-mail sent by managing editor David McCumber.

The Seattle Times, the rival paper, announced earlier that it was cutting its standalone business section.

McCumber writes, “Those of you who attended our last staff meeting know this has been in the works. As of Monday, the P-I will be configured in a new way. We’ll be divided into three sections: The day’s front-page news, plus foreign, national, local, editorial and weather in the A section; Life & Arts, Coffee Break, TV, classified and Going Out/Staying In in the B section; and Sports and Business in the C section. We will still have full-page starts for Local and Business, and whenever possible they’ll still carry color. Sometimes, they won’t. Most of the time, they will.

“This does not affect Getaways, What’s Happening and any special sections we produce.

“We’ll do our best to communicate this effectively to our readers. No, I don’t expect they’ll all be pleased. But this is a change that’s made necessary in a climate where anything we can do to cut costs and maintain the quality of our journalism must be done.

“I don’t believe this will affect the quality of our product dramatically, and it will save us some money by making our layout more flexible and adaptable to whatever our level of advertising is from day to day.”

“Thanks for your understanding.”

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