Boston’s largest newspaper seems to have dodged the closure bullet for now, but the question of what the city might look like without it – and what might spring up in its place – remains. For environmental reporter Robert McClure, the question is not a theoretical one. His paper, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, closed two months ago; he and his former colleagues are now finding their way through a post-newspaper world. Some joined the new web-only P-I, others left journalism. Meanwhile, on June 1, McClure and seven other former P-I staffers are set to launch InvestigateWest: a nonprofit news service, focused on the American West, which hopes to fill a void left by the closure of major dailies in Seattle, Tucson, Denver, and Albuquerque. McClure took a break from fundraising efforts to talk with me about the last moments of his paper – and his early days in the great unknown.
How much warning did you have of the Hearst Corporation’s decision to close the P-I?
Well, I remember this very clearly. My wife’s birthday is January 7. We went out and had a nice dinner and talked about how lucky we were that the joint operating agreement [on which the P-I’s future depended] seemed to have been worked out. Then, on January 8, a source called and told me our closure was on TV news. I found out that way.
You found out from television?
Yeah. It was kind of insulting that Hearst didn’t at least let us break the story. A lot of us just couldn’t believe it. Hearst was on the verge of winning this newspaper war. We were incredulous, and I thought, “This has got to be wrong.” But the next day at noon, the VP of Hearst walked in, and I thought, “Oh, I know what this is.” They set a 60-day time frame. Fortunately, they didn’t do what they did in Denver and say, “We’re closing the paper tomorrow.”
What’s happened to all your colleagues since the closure?
Well, it’s all still sorting itself out. About 10 to 15 people from the newsroom are on the website, out of about 150 to 160 total [from the paper]. How many are still in journalism is really hard to answer. I know for sure there are some who didn’t even try. I can think of one guy who has a psychology degree, and he right away got some kind of government job. Then there’s the group of us doing Investigate West. A good chunk of people went off to do something else, and that’s the heartbreak of this. People who’ve won national awards, not in journalism anymore. It’s heartbreaking.
Were you invited to be one of the people on the website?
Oh no, there was never any question of my being part of that. It was very plain to me that Hearst was going away from the kind of conceptual coverage I got into journalism to do. I’m interested in doing in-depth environmental stories. Now, to be fair, for a small staff, the website does a decent job. For the staff that they have, they’re trying to keep the city covered and, you know, tip of the hat to them.
Tell me about InvestigateWest.
InvestigateWest is a nonprofit news venture dedicated to preserving and enhancing narrative reporting on the West. Newspapers in the West have fired about 2,000 people since the beginning of the year. We’re going to do stories we’ll place with broadcast and radio and on-line services. We’ll have a website, but we’re not primarily trying to draw people to us. I think we’ll do a news aggregation blog for the website. The point is to do the hard, in-depth reporting that requires filing FOIA requests and really digging into stories. We’re onto a couple of really good stories that have implications across the country. The concept is, we’ll get some philanthropic funding. We want to get members and philanthropists to subsidize issues they think are important.
What’s the biggest change for you from your P-I days?
Fund-raising. We’re getting help from people – we’ve had some pro bono help on our business plan. I feel fortunate and blessed that we’ve had a lot of support in the community. The main skill I’ve had to learn is thinking all about how to do fund-raising. But you have to watch it. As a journalist, you don’t want to promise to do a particular story a particular way. Some funders get that, and some don’t. That’s a tough thing.