Today, the tech duo launched the all-new GeekWire, after quietly giving notice to the business journal last Thursday.

Cook says he will serve as the co-founder, CEO and Seattle editor focused on covering startups and venture capital, while Bishop, who is co-founder, president and national editor, will be tasked with covering Microsoft, Google, Apple and other publicly held companies.

The two reporters turned entrepreneurs, who were former tech reporters at the Hearst-owned Seattle Post-Intelligencer, are known locally for their solid and consistent startup reporting, and even for the occasional national scoops, such as Bishop’s exclusive interviews with Microsoft’s Robbie Bach and J Allard the day their departures were announced.

The two are also known for bringing the tech community together by hosting an annual awards and other regular tech meet-ups, including one that even BoomTown’s own Kara Swisher attended.

So, why the departure?

Cook said after spending so many years reporting on entrepreneurs, it was time for him to be one.

“We feel like there’s a real need for a tech news source that’s based out of Seattle, rather than Silicon Valley or New York. That’s always been a niche that Todd and I have pursued,” he said.

Cook said they have secured enough funding from an angel investor to get the venture off the ground and to keep both his family and Bishop’s fed.  And, in true startup form, Cook declined to discuss how much capital the two raised or from whom, but said to expect an announcement soon.

The sudden departure of Cook and Bishop from TechFlash leaves the site’s fate a little bit up in the air.

Emory Thomas Jr., the publisher of the Puget Sound Business Journal and TechFlash, said he is committed to rebuilding the site after losing its two original employees.

“I’m comfortable with ability to move forward and go beyond where we’ve taken TechFlash today, and I’m not just saying that,” he told us.

In a post announcing their departure, Thomas disclosed that the site was profitable, and said in the interim, the whole PSBJ staff, led by reporter Greg Lamm, will write and edit the blog.

Cook said the entire site was created over the weekend after they gave notice on Thursday with the help of  a number of Seattle-based companies that provided legal advice, web development, design and hosting services.

In fact, three of them are tangled in a lawsuit, alleging patent infringement.

Seattle-based Tippr has filed suit against two of its closest rivals, BuyWithMe and DealOn.

All three pale in comparison to the deal-swagger of Groupon and LivingSocial. While they may have close to a hundred employees and meddle in a dozen or so U.S. markets, in comparison, both LivingSocial and Groupon have thousands of employees who curate deals in hundreds of markets on an international basis.

In the lawsuit, filed in the U.S. District Court of Washington Tippr’s parent company is claiming that the two are infringing on patents related to the use of an online buying group system for aggregating demand. Kashless is requesting an award equal to an undisclosed amount of damages caused by such infringement.

This lawsuit could be seen coming from a mile away.

In December, Tippr announced a strategy around what it considers a very strong patent portfolio.

Tippr’s CEO Martin Tobias explained to us that in late 2009, it acquired the patent portfolio of defunct Mercata, a Paul Allen-backed group-buying venture from Web 1.0. Tobias traded stock in Kashless for the patents, which included more than half a dozen patents covering areas like price optimization, demand curve modeling and buyer-seller interaction models.

His idea is to license the right to use those patents to anyone, ranging from its white-label partners to its competitors. The idea even has a name: the patent licensing program for group-buying.

Tippr offers constant reminders that it owns these patents, listing them on the bottom of every page on its Web site. It also writes in its description that: “You can be assured that Tippr is using the most advanced proprietary technology to deliver you the best deals on anything you buy with us.”

This is not the first patent fight in the daily deals space. In November, Groupon counter-sued a company called MobGob in Chicago, referencing patents that predate the founding of the company.

Earlier this month, Tippr also filed for a preliminary injunction against BuyWithMe for “using or disclosing Kashless’s confidential information,” reports TechFlash. The suit claims a former Kashless employee, Andrew DeLorenzo, violated an agreement by disclosing financial information about Tippr to BuyWithMe founder Andrew Moss. (BuyWithMe has since hired Jim Crowley as CEO.)

Tobias said in a statement sent to us: “Tippr, the industry’s first patented, white-label group buying platform, owns the deepest portfolio of issued patents in the group buying space. Its patents cover many of the most fundamental aspects of group buying systems and methods. The company cannot comment on the pending litigation regarding patent infringement by the defendants, but Tippr continues to be committed to true innovation as reflected in its considerable patent portfolio.”

Another wrinkle in the plot is that DealOn was acquired by ReachLocal for $10 million last week.

It’s designed to get me to mention today’s Windows Phone 7 launch (Katy Perry! Maroon 5!), and I’m totally fine with that. Because in return, Microsoft has provided us with a series of great statistics about “Bad Mobile Phone Behavior,” gleaned from a poll conducted by Harris Interactive.

If you like bathroom humor, you’ll enjoy these stats (via TechFlash):

• 48 percent of adults think that it’s bad to talk on the phone in a public restroom.
• 43 percent of adults think it’s not okay to text, email or Web surf in a public potty.
• Which means, presumably, that the majority of adults think it’s just fine to talk, text and type away while you’re in the stalls.
• Unless that means you drop your phone in the toilet, which 19 percent of adults 18-24 say they’ve done. (Me too, though I was well out of the demo by that point.)

Still reading? You can get the press release, which has a link to the survey itself (via a Word document–go figure) here. Oh. And here is that clever Windows Phone 7 Ad*.

*Here’s why these ads are really great, by the way. Not because they’re funny–they’re funny, but more grin funny than laugh funny. And not because they sell cell phones, because who knows? They’re great because they’re inadvertently but fundamentally honest about something uncomfortable: Many times, often times, in some cases all the time, we want to be distracted by our phones. We want them to take us away from the place we’re at or the person we’re with. No one wants to say this out loud, so Microsoft deals with it by pretending that we’re all dying to get back off our phones and into the real world. But we’re in on the joke, us and Microsoft, so we just nod and grin. Truth-telling = great ad.

Layoffs are indeed under way at Microsoft (MSFT). As expected, the cuts are relatively small–in the hundreds globally, according to TechFlash. That’s nowhere near the 5,800 job cuts that Microsoft made across the company in 2009.

Sources familiar with the matter tell TechFlash that Redmond will sack some employees as early as this week–perhaps as soon as today. Just how many isn’t yet clear, though the number is said to be small in comparison to the approximately 5,000 employees Microsoft (MSFT) released into the wild last year.

Microsoft employed 88,596 people worldwide as of the end of June–including 39,824 in the Seattle area.

Remember those Microsoft ads starring Bill Gates and Jerry Seinfeld? The ones that confused and upset the blognoscenti and vanished from TV after just a brief stint in 2008?

All part of the plan, Microsoft says now. David Webster, chief strategy officer for Redmond’s central marketing group, tells TechFlash that the ads were supposed to be confusing. So you’d pay more attention to them, and to the next several campaigns Microsoft had loaded up.

“We figured that that sort of obscure nature of the communications would make people lean in a little more closely to see what we were going to next,” he says. “And that part certainly worked, in the sense that everybody leaned in, and they paid a lot more attention to our subsequent work than I think they might have had we just started with it.”

This actually sounds like a plausible explanation to me. And I seem to be in the minority of people who actively liked the ads. Still, Webster and his co-workers certainly seem to have had their feelings hurt by the public raspberries the ads generated. Check out the defensive tone here:

But you know, it is what it is, and they will live forever in Internet posterity as being either something that people treat as a cult classic, or as a random curiosity. But I still get mail from people saying, “Hey, could you guys do that as a sitcom? I’d love it as a web series, I think they had great chemistry, I’d like to see them do it in the future.” Like anything, things become cult classics for some people for some reason, and there’s a core group of people who really wanted to see us go further with those.

It’s also interesting that many of the original clips of the ad have disappeared from YouTube, though you can still find a few that give you a good sense of what Microsoft was trying to. Go ahead and refresh your memory:

No terms were announced, but given that Seattle-based Picnik is a 20-person, bootstrapped start-up, the reasonable guess is that this falls into the “acquhire” category for Google (GOOG), whereby the company is more interested in the team than the product itself.

This seems especially likely in this case because Picnik is, among other things, the default editor for Yahoo’s (YHOO) Flickr.

That doesn’t mean Google will shut the service down (a la reMail), but I do assume they have different ambitions for the team that built it.

Meanwhile, here’s an addition to the “this is what it looks like when Google buys your company” gallery we should be compiling (see: Appjet)–a video of what TechFlash’s John Cook says is Team Picnik’s celebration. Which is considerably milder than those crazy Canadian hockey players.

To work on a mysterious cloud-computing project, which has something to do with mobility and entertainment. That’s per TechFlash, which reported on the deal Sunday.

Probably best not to make too much of this one. Given that Real didn’t announce the deal (let alone report it to the Securities and Exchange Commission), it can’t be for much money (note that the last purchase Real bothered to announce was for $4 million). And the Lala deal aside, you can “acqhire” a group of engineers without laying out a lot of cash these days.

But it is a good reminder that RealNetworks (RNWK) wants to make itself a player in the next phase of entertainment–the one where you buy or rent the stuff over the Web and consume it wherever you want.

That’s at least partly why CEO Rob Glaser is still wrangling with Hollywood over his “RealDVD” system, which is supposed to let you rip copies of DVDs you already own. Because once you’ve done that, the next logical step is moving the file to your iPod or your tablet or just to different rooms in your house.

The problem, of course, is that everyone else wants to play there, too. And many already are in some form.

There are the hardware guys like Sony (SNE), who are selling TV sets and game consoles with Web connections, and cable guys like Comcast (CMCSA), who already control the pipe that brings the stuff to your living room. And telcos like Verizon (VZ), which want to do the same thing. And, of course, retailers like Apple (AAPL), Amazon (AMZN) and Netflix (NFLX), which are already selling digital entertainment. Etc.

During the first Web boom, it seemed Real would be in this list as well, since its back-end technology and its RealPlayer were commonly used to move entertainment around the Internet. Now the company is best known for its Rhapsody music service and its collection of casual games, but it doesn’t have pole position in either sector.

You’ll hear plenty more about this stuff over the next week at the Consumer Electronics Show, which kicks off Wednesday. But Real will probably be mum.

The company doesn’t have any announcements planned and isn’t renting space at the convention’s main show floor. Not a terrible idea to lie low at CES, where lots of people make a lot of noise about stuff that never comes to pass. But at some point, it will be interesting to see how Real plans to compete.

That’s how much an unnamed bidder has ponied up, via a Microsoft charity auction, for a look-see at Gates’s place. After the tour of the 48,000-square-foot complex, which is located outside Seattle on the shores of Lake Washington, the winner gets to nosh on some appetizers, TechFlash reports.

A year ago, the same tour, of the same house, fetched just $8,600. Go figure.

All of that is out of your price range? I understand. Here, for us proles, is a free, “virtual” tour of the place:

[Image credit: Tiktik]

Sources tell TechFlash that Microsoft (MSFT) will make additional job reductions this week–beginning as early as today. Cuts are expected to number in the hundreds–smaller than those made in January and May, but ugly just the same.

“As we move forward, we will continue to closely monitor the impact of the economic downturn on the company and if necessary, take further actions on our cost structure including additional job eliminations,” Ballmer said in May. Given that Microsoft posted declines in revenue and profits in its latest quarter, I suppose this week’s rumored “action” was inevitable.

UPDATE: Cuts are indeed being made today–800 of them. Here’s the official word from Microsoft:

“Earlier this year, we announced that in order to reduce costs, increase efficiency and prioritize our focus areas, we would eliminate approximately 5,000 positions by June 2010. Today, we are eliminating around 800 positions spread across multiple businesses and locations and have completed our reduction plan sooner than we had anticipated 11 months ago. At the same time, we continue to hire in priority areas, but also understand that continuing to manage our businesses closely, as we always do, can mean additional headcount adjustments.”

Both debuted this morning, along with a Web-based storage and media-sharing service called My Phone. And while they’re certainly better than Microsoft’s offerings to date, the market seems unimpressed. Said Gartner (IT) analyst Carolina Milanesi: “There is nothing in this version that makes drastic changes that will get people to choose Windows who didn’t before.”

And, indeed, that appears to be the case. WinMo 6.5 is very clearly a stopgap on the path to 7.0, which is to be released next year. “Windows Mobile 6.5 isn’t just a letdown–it barely seems done,” Gizmodo’s John Herman complains, adding that its underpinnings reveal “an OS that hasn’t been fundamentally changed in years, and which bears a strong resemblance to Windows Mobile 6.1, and a startlingly not-weak resemblance to PocketPC.”

A startlingly not-weak resemblance to PocketPC. Not the comparison Microsoft (MSFT) was hoping for, I’m sure, especially given the OS’s decidedly flashier competition. But likely about all we could expect when even the company’s own executives are saying privately and publicly that they wish the OS was further along.

So 6.5 is really just a placeholder to keep Microsoft in the game–and just barely. As Windows Mobile Senior Product Manager Greg Sullivan told TechFlash, “It’s not the destination for us, by any stretch of the imagination, it’s a step along the way.”

Except not really: Amazon actually said it wouldn’t yank books from Kindles again “in these circumstances.”

At the time, I thought that sounded like a lawyerly loophole designed to give Amazon (AMZN) some flexibility in the event that it did indeed want to remove things you bought from your e-reader. Now Amazon has removed some of that wiggle room–and not surprisingly, it’s doing so at the behest of its lawyers.

Amazon has reached a proposed settlement with a high school student who sued after his copy of “1984″ disappeared (really). Part of the arrangement: A much more detailed set of rules regarding disappearing books. Here they are, via TechFlash:

Amazon will not remotely delete or modify such Works from Devices purchased and being used in the United States unless (a) the user consents to such deletion or modification; (b) the user requests a refund for the Work or otherwise fails to pay for the Work (e.g., if a credit or debit card issuer declines to remit payment); (c) a judicial or regulatory order requires such deletion or modification; or (d) deletion or modification is reasonably necessary to protect the consumer or the operation of a Device or network through which the Device communicates (e.g., to remove harmful code embedded within a copy of a Work downloaded to a Device).

That’s more like, it, right? True, if you have a real case of Orwellian paranoia, you could argue that Amazon still has the right to take your stuff from your device for any reason, while arguing that it’s a network “protection” issue, etc. But if you’re really that worried about Jeff Bezos’s grasp, you probably don’t want to buy a connected device from him, period.

The entire settlement is embedded below.

KindleCase1 –

Last week, a cougar was reported to be roaming on the Redmond, Wash., campus of Microsoft, which led to all kinds of cutesy jokes about the new Snow Leopard operating system from Apple (AAPL).

No, BoomTown cannot make this stuff up!

Nor did I make up this original and very fine global alert that Microsoft Global Security sent last week, which assured employees of the software giant that “Microsoft Security will conduct frequent patrols of all wooded areas of the campus.”

That’s more than you can say about how the software giant handles hackers!

Here’s an image of the memo (click on it to see a large version):

Previously, TechFlash had the text of the second warning, which gives cougar-fighting tips.

They included:

“Stay calm. Talk to the cougar in a confident voice.”

“Do not run. Try to back away from the cougar slowly. Sudden movement or flight may trigger an instinctive attack. Do not turn your back on the cougar. Face the cougar and remain upright.”

And, most important of all: “Do all you can to enlarge your image. Don’t crouch down or try to hide. Pick up sticks or branches and wave them about.”

Which, if you think about it, is even better advice for Microsoft (MSFT) Bing execs–this means you, Yusuf!–in tangling with search archrival Google (GOOG).

Or at least one cougar. Over the past few days, Microsoft employees have reported several sightings of a cougar, also known as a mountain lion, roaming around the company’s verdant campus in Redmond, Wash. TechFlash posted a note that went out to Microsoft employees on Friday morning warning them about the latest cougar sighting, near Building 32 on the northern part of the company’s campus. The message said Microsoft’s security department will conduct patrols of the wooded areas on campus and is working with the state Department of Fish and Wildlife to assess the situation.

Read the rest of this post on the original site

The newly announced Google Chrome OS won’t show up until the second half of 2010, when it will first appear on lightweight netbooks. Eventually, it’s supposed to run on full-sized PCs. But Chrome OS will start working long before consumers start booting it up next year as it forces Steve Ballmer and company to open up yet another front in their long-running war against Google.

In its blog post announcing the move, Google (GOOG) explains that Chrome is supposed to address the shortcomings of existing operating systems: “Computers need to get better.” This could even be true. But what Google really wants to do here is vex its rival.

Google has been on this path for years as it systematically rolled out products that compete directly with Microsoft (MSFT) franchises: First mail, then a full suite of office software, then a mobile operating system, then a browser.

All of them are free or practically free. All of them launched without the full array of bells and whistles that their Microsoft rivals boasted. None of them produces any significant revenue for Google. And so far, mail is the only one that has generated mass adoption.

But all of them have succeeded just by existing: The chief aim here is to force Microsoft to defend its existing business, which makes it even harder for the company to attack Google’s search franchise. Now comes a full-fledged OS, the core of Redmond’s business.

As Techflash points out, Microsoft has been gearing up to roll out its newest operating system, Windows 7, as early as next week. That launch has already been a challenge, given that Redmond disappointed everyone with its last effort. And now Windows 7 doesn’t just have to compete with the ghost of Vista, but with the specter of an OS that doesn’t even exist yet.

It’s another packed week for tech, especially in Silicon Valley, where the kibitzing never ends and the econalypse is almost completely ignored.

First up this week is an event today at which BoomTown will appear called “The Free! Summit: Inside the Digital Economy” in San Mateo.

Given all the recent debate about free versus paid, as traditional media companies take aim at the issue, it should be interesting.

I will be on an afternoon panel called “Business Models That Work,” which is about the the future of news and what’s next for journalism in the digital economy.

The other panelists are: Dan Gillmor, Director, Knight Center for Digital Media Entrepreneurship, Arizona State University; Alan Mutter, Adjunct Faculty Member, Graduate School of Journalism at UC Berkeley and founder, “Reflections of a Newsosaur”; and Marshall Van Alstyne, Associate Professor of Information Economics, Boston University and Visiting Professor, MIT.

Later in the day, the event will morph into the third “Tech Policy Summit,” where I get to do a one-on-one interview with Facebook’s Chief Privacy Officer, Chris Kelly, who is still at the social-networking site but is also now running for the job of California’s Attorney General.

(My All Things Digital partner Walt Mossberg will appear on Tuesday, along with a solid slate of speakers.)

On Thursday, ContentNext Media is holding its third EconSm conference, this time focusing on mobile, in an all-day event in San Francisco.

Speakers include: Zander Lurie, CFO, CBS (CBS) Interactive; angel investor Ron Conway (see my recent video interview with him here); Eric Johnson, president and COO, Wolfgang’s Vault; Joe Kennedy, CEO and president, Pandora; and Kevin Thau, director of mobile business development at Twitter.

Wrote paidContent’s Staci Kramer: “Much has changed as we get ready for our third EconSM–including the name. The acronym is still the same but this year it’s about the intersection of social and mobile. Social media has passed the gimmick stage–although not everyone has figured that out–and is part of the daily fabric for an increasing number of people.”

And, if you have even more time, the Aspen Institute has just published J.D. Lasica’s 110-page e-book, “Identity in the Age of Cloud Computing: The Next-Generation Internet’s Impact on Business, Governance and Social Interaction.”

Lasica told me that he wrote the report after a roundtable of 30 experts in identity and technology (people like John Seely Brown and Esther Dyson) was convened in Aspen to discuss the ramifications of the cloud on a societal level.

He talked the Aspen Institute into releasing the e-book under a Creative Commons license, the first time it has ever done that.

And lest you think this is too focused on just Silicon Valley, I missed attending the Seattle 2.0 Awards last week, but here are the winners:

Best Start-up: Picnik
Best Boot-strapped Start-up: Picnik
Best Start-up CEO: Jonathan Sposato (Picnik)
Best Start-up Technologist: Nat Brown (iLike)
Best Venture Capitalist: Matt McIlwain (Madrona Venture Group)
Best Angel Investor: Geoff Entress
Best Start-up Product Designer: Peter Roman (Picnik)
Best Service Provider to Start-ups: Shannon Swift (Swift HR Solutions)
Best Blog from/about Start-ups: TechFlash/John Cook
Best Social Event for Start-ups: Lunch 2.0 by Josh Maher

As Todd Bishop at TechFlash notes, Microsoft (MSFT) previously cut 1,400 jobs, and hadn’t actually committed to the 5,000 number.

But the company just posted a miserable quarterly-earnings report, and company executives spent most of the ensuing conference call warning investors that things look dire.

Here’s Ballmer’s memo to the troops:

From: Steve Ballmer
Sent: Tuesday, May 05, 2009 5:43 AM
To: Microsoft – All Employees (QBDG)
Subject: Update: Realigning Resources and Reducing Costs

In January, in response to the global economic downturn, I announced our plan to adjust the company’s cost structure through spending reductions and job eliminations. Today, we are implementing the second phase of this plan.

This is difficult news to share. Because our success at Microsoft has always been the direct result of the talent, hard work, and commitment of our people, eliminating positions is hard.

Today’s action includes positions in the United States and in a number of countries around the world. In the U.S., affected employees will be notified directly by their managers today. In other countries, local leadership teams will provide more specific information about the impact to their organizations.

With this announcement, we are mostly but not all done with the planned 5,000 job eliminations by June 2010. We are moving quickly to reach this target in response to consistent feedback from our people and business groups that it’s important to make decisions and reduce uncertainty for employees as quickly as possible, and so that organizations can concentrate their efforts and resources on strategic objectives.

As we move forward, we will continue to closely monitor the impact of the economic downturn on the company and if necessary, take further actions on our cost structure including additional job eliminations.

For those of you directly affected by today’s announcement, I want to thank you for your contribution to Microsoft and assure you that we will continue to provide support as we did during the previous job eliminations.

And for everyone across the company, I want to reemphasize how much I appreciate the way you have pulled together to help the company respond to this difficult economic environment. There’s no doubt that these are very challenging times. But together, we are making the right choices to ensure that we will continue to deliver great products and position ourselves for strong future growth and profitability.

Thank you for your continued hard work, commitment, and focus.

Steve

Amazon has weathered the recession better than most, but not without a concession… or three.

The retailer said Thursday that it is shuttering a trio of distribution centers in three states and will sack or transfer the 210 employees who work at them. It’s the first time Amazon (AMZN) has closed a warehouse since 2006. Amazon spokeswoman Patty Smith described the closures as a balancing of the company’s fulfillment network, but its hard to view that as anything other than a euphemism for belt-tightening when a facility in Munster, Ind. that Amazon opened just a year and a half ago is among the three centers to be closed. Also shutting down: facilities in Red Rock, Nev., and Chambersburg, Pa.

“A variety of factors went into the plan to close these three buildings,” Smith told TechFlash. “We added approximately 3 million square feet of capacity in the North American fulfillment network in 2008, and will be converting a fulfillment center in Phoenix to accommodate our larger items (such as big screen TVs) and adding several hundred thousand sq feet to that facility. This additional capacity allows to the opportunity to better balance product mix and customer orders across the network year-round.”

Thanks to John Cook, who used to work for the PI but left last year to cofound TechFlash, which covers Seattle-area business news, for pointing this one out.

Here’s the paper’s own report on its impending demise:

The Seattle P-I is being put up for sale, and if after 60 days it has not sold, it will either be turned into a Web-only publication with a greatly reduced staff or discontinued entirely.

‘One thing is clear: at the end of the sale process, we do not see ourselves publishing in print,’ said Steven Swartz, president of the Hearst Corp.’s newspaper division.

Swartz addressed the P-I’s newsroom at about noon Friday, flanked by P-I editor and publisher Roger Oglesby and Lincoln Millstein, Hearst’s senior vice president for digital media.

Swartz said the reason for offering the paper for sale is purely economic.

‘Since 2000, the P-I has lost money each year, and the losses have escalated and continue to escalate in 2009,’ he said. ‘We have had to make a very tough decision. This is a business decision and it is no reflection on your work. The decision reflects our inability to see the losses turning around soon.’

In a release circulated shortly after Swartz finished speaking, Hearst said the P-I lost about $14 million in 2008.”

And here’s a reaction from John Cook, a P-I veteran who left the paper last year to start up TechFlash, a tech/biz blog he runs with fellow refugee Todd Bishop:

Could this be its final dance? It’s too early to say. The bigger questions are whether Hearst is doing some behind-the-scenes dealing, and whether the P-I could sustain itself as an online-only operation.

Obviously, we’re big believers in the power of online media. We know it is still an experiment in many ways, but given the rocky state of the daily newspaper business, we’ve always asked ourselves: ‘What’s to lose?’

Anyway, we don’t think the last chapter has been written in this story. The timing is truly bizarre. What the P-I needs now is a white knight to emerge from the Seattle tech community. A savior. Someone with gobs of money who doesn’t mind losing some of it.

What’s Paul Allen doing these days?”

To answer John’s question about the paper’s ability to sustain itself as an online-only offering: It can’t.

Quantcast pegs the paper’s traffic at 2.6 million uniques. That would keep a blog with a handful of writers and editors afloat–if it had a specific niche, like, say technology news. And if it had a national audience to sell to advertisers. But a generalized news site for a local audience? No one’s figured out how to do it yet, and a recession probably isn’t the time to solve that riddle.

It’s hard to see how the paper stays afloat without a white knight. And it’s hard to see how this won’t play out in cities across the country over the next few years.

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