Has Digital 'P-I' Hit First Stumbling Block Already?

The front page of the final edition of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, which shifts to online-only publication starting today, becoming the biggest newspaper yet to do so. Read coverage in the P-I, The New York Times, and Editor & Publisher.

Meanwhile, Crosscut -- a regional-news site with which the new seattlepi.com will compete, reports that Hearst, which owns the Post-Intelligencer, has yet to inform the Justice Department of its plans to alter the joint-operating agreement under which the P-I and the Seattle Times have been published since 1981. Writes Bill Richards:

While there is nothing in the JOA language to prevent Hearst from halting the publication of the P-I on its own, once it has met federal guidelines for proving it is a failing newspaper without any prospective buyer, the agreement is less clear about replacing the print P-I with an electronic version. Numerous JOAs have been allowed to end in recent years, including the Denver JOA, but federal antitrust officials have never been called on to deal with a situation in which a JOA is terminated, but one paper lives on in an electronic mode.