I’ve stumbled across another new Seattle online news source, the Seattle Courant. This one seems to have been started in February or January of this year, so it predates the P-I going online-only and the creation of the PostGlobe, but it’s still pretty new. From their about page:

The Seattle Courant represents the next-generation of independently owned local daily newspapers.

The future of daily newspapers, serving a local market such as Seattle, will be news organizations that are small and more focused than newspapers of the past.

According to Courant founder, Keith Vance, advancements in technology have greatly reduced the cost of production, giving the opportunity for many more voices to be heard.

While many of these new voices are taking on the tone and character of blogging, or citizen journalism, Vance believes that there’s still a place for traditional journalism, if properly focused, and so he started the Courant in 2009.

The focus of this newspaper will be Seattle. More specifically, Vance said the Courant will spend much of its energy covering local Seattle politics. But the stories won’t all be about the city council, the mayor, school boards, or what the legislature is up to in Olympia, the food and culture sections offer something from the lighter side of life.

This is excellent. I keep saying we need some big successes in online-only news to validate the model, and to show everyone it shouldn’t be thought of as a last-ditch effort to save your company–like it was with the P-I–but rather a viable way of doing business. Seattle is becoming a wonderful breeding ground for these efforts, and though I suspect we’ll see some failures (of the model at least, like Crosscut going nonprofit), I’d also say the odds are in favor of a couple of them becoming smashingly successful.

The only problem I see with so many new ventures coming online is the danger of segmenting the advertising market, so that each site is getting a smaller piece of a smaller pie. But that just means the advertisers need to be educated about the value of online advertising, so those ad rates start going up.

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