Today’s closure of the Seattle Post Intelligencer - fondly called the P-I here in Seattle – sends the second major print newspaper online in a year. The Capital Times, Madison Wisconsin, made the move in April 2008, and now the P-I, a much larger circulation paper, has moved from print to pixels.

The two “papers” have a lot in common including a close business relationship with a sister publication in the same city. For the Cap Times, it was the Wisconsin State Journal, and for the P-I it is the Seattle Times.

While the new P-I website is the only venue for the publication, the Cap Times is also published as a free weekly magazine, distributed with the State Journal on Wednesdays and in news racks around the city.

Because the Seattle Times handled the printing, delivery, advertising and marketing of the P-I, the effects on that company are yet to be known.

The Times’ weekday circulation is about 199,000 and the P-I just topped 118,000.

To produce the combined volume of papers, the Times’ North Creek printing facility in Bothell Washington houses four Goss Colorliner presses capable of printing 75,000 papers per hour.

More than 3,000 people are employed by the Times, according to the company website. It is clear that at least some of those now staffing the printing facility will be affected by the move from print to online delivery.

Jill Mackie, VP Public Affairs at the Times said, “how well we convert P-I readers to the Times” will determine the capacity needed in the future. There is not a lot of overlap in the subscription lists between the two.

The newspaper industry will be watching developments closely; especially interested because the P-I is the largest city newspaper to go straight from print to online delivery.

(Images are from the "Last Day at the Seattle P-I" slideshow.)