The Seattle Post-Intelligencer, which has been publishing for 146 years, will print its final edition on Tuesday.

In a time when newspaper layoffs and closures are regular new, this one hurts. As a student at the University of Washington, I was a voracious P-I reader. The P-I was always the smaller and scrappier paper, compared to the larger and stodgier Seattle Times.

Or, as the P-I's about-to-be-former art critic, Regina Hackett, wrote on the blog of Seattle's alt-weekly, The Stranger:

"The P-I offered a reasonably sensible collection of stories written without the we-precious-few tone of the Times, which rubs itself against the legs of the comfortably middle-class like a cat looking for a handout. The P-I connects with its city without undo flattery."

Besides, I always loved the P-I's landmark neon globe - the sort of thing you'd see atop The Daily Planet in a "Superman" movie.

The paper's owners, the Hearst Corp., plan to maintain an online news entity, seattlepi.com - but with a bare-bones staff compared to the paper's newsroom. (The AP reports the digital-only P-I will employ about 40 people - half in the newsroom, half selling ads - compared to the 181 employees of the print edition.)

Anyone who thinks we can live without newspapers is invited to tell that to the 140 soon-to-be-unemployed professionals in Seattle. Good luck getting all your teeth back.

UPDATE: The AP is reporting that the Tucson Citizen, which has been printing for 138 years, will put out its final edition on Saturday.

(Photo: Joshua Trujillo/Seattle Post-Intelligencer)

Labels: journalism