Mónica Guzmán

After the Rocky Mountain News closed shop a couple weeks ago, I knew it was only a matter of time before the P-I followed. However, I didn’t expect the P-I to remain with an online-only staff.

But you know what, I’m excited to see what they do. I had the chance to meet Mónica Guzmán (@moniguzman) a couple of months ago. Guzmán is the PI’s first full time online-only reporter (which I read as: first full-time blogger) as the main contributer to The Big Blog. I’ll be honest that I haven’t been following the her blog very much (I have about 175 others that I’m following and I’m trying to cut back), but I think now that the P-I is switching to an online-only format that I will start following TBB.

I think people like Guzmán are the future of what newspapers were.

Jason Preston agrees that the P-I could be on to something:
From eatsleeppublish.com:

It looks to me like Hearst is taking a very smart approach to their first online-only big-city daily. This from Michelle Nicolosi, currently Executive Producer at the Seattle P-I:

We don’t have reporters, editors or producers–everyone will do and be everything: Everyone will write, edit, take photos and shoot video, produce multimedia and curate the home page. That’ll be a training challenge for everyone, but we’re all up for the challenge and totally ready to pick up all these skills.

I think this will prove that newspapers can make the jump, if they try.

Finally, I just wanted to point out how cool David Horsey‘s final editorial carton was:

© 2009 Seattle P-I

Note the eagle, which is usually perched on top of the globe.

Anyway, I’m really excited to see what the P-I does now and that concludes my thoughts.