Their parent company Hearst said the Seattle P-I will either close or go online only within 60 days if a buyer can’t be found. Given that Seattle is a highly wired city with lots of techies, an online-only newspaper might well have a better chance of surviving there rather than elsewhere.
This is probably where newspapers are going. They can still have reporters and cover local news (which is crucial) but having a print edition with eight hour old news arrive on the porch in the morning seems an anachronism when news on the web is vastly more timely.
Crucial to this is having powerful search capabilities and making it easy to find stories online.