So, the P-I is for sale. Its parent company, the Hearst corporation, says that it it doesn’t find a buyer in 60 days, it will shut down its print version. (The news last week held out hope that the P-I might continue as a web-only news service, but with a much reduced staff.)

I don’t pretend to have any inside information on any of this except that I know the economy is in tough shape and that it impacts newspapers.

What I found interesting is reading the comments on both the P-I’s website and that of the Seattle Times, which also reported on the situation.

I was surprised by how many people apparently hate the P-I – or the Times. There seemed to be few who would easily switch from one to the other. A number of comments actually cheered the news about the possible closing of the P-I.

I’m not in that camp, although when I worked for the King County Journal having both the P-I and Times around made it unprofitable for the Journal to stay in business. That paper closed two years ago, so I’ve been there.

Still, it’s never good to see a media source disappear. While I think most people are pretty honest, it never hurts to have some organization around who has, as part of its job, the task of checking things out.

Reporters, sort of by nature, are inclined to want to do that. That’s one of the reasons people go into the profession. They tend to question things.

That’s upsetting to some people, particularly if they think the snooping around has a political motive. Many comments on the P-I’s and Times’ web sites thought that was the case with the P-I.

If so, those doing it weren’t very good at the task. Real partisan newspapers, the type we had when our country was formed, were far more strident in denouncing those they didn’t like. Heck, as recently as 40 years ago, the Chicago Tribune ran a color cartoon on page one of the newspaper with a conservative slant. Now, that’s being political.

I also found it interesting that some people commented that they don’t subscribe to the print version of the P-I, but get their news from its website. The only reason the P-I has local news on the website is because the journalists for the print version put it there. Take away the print version and you take away that news.

Even if the P-I tries to maintain a web presence, a greatly reduced staff means greatly reduced news.

The difficulties at the P-I don’t transfer directly across the lake. Here in Bellevue, we at the Reporter don’t compete with either of the Seattle newspapers for news over there. We concentrate on Bellevue. Both in print and on our web, our goal is to tell you what’s going here, in your own backyard.