There was a time, years ago, when William Randoph Hearst worked hard at expanding his newspaper empire, and after his death in 1951, his successors continued to acquire, building one of the world's great media empires.

These days the successors of those successors are working hard at shedding what doesn't work in what's left of that newspaper empire, and it's a lot.

A peek into how it might all play out may well be gathered from what's about to happen at the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, Hearst's money-losing morning daily, which has a weekday circulation of 118,000.

Unable to find a buyer, which comes as no surprise in this down market, Hearst has said it will either close the paper entirely or convert it to an online-only paper, and it now it appears it's about to follow that second course, based on a report in the PI that top newsroom managers have approached some reporters about working on an online-only publication.

In the meantime, management has given every indication that it's preparing to fold the print edition, ordering up a story for the last day of publication.

The question Hearst hopes to answer is whether an online-only paper has any better chance than the print edition it will replace, and it's an experiment other newspaper chains around the country will be following closely as they ponder what to do with their money-losing dailies.

Already a number of smaller dailies have gone online-only, and some online-only papers have launched in recent years, but the PI will be the largest paper to date to attempt the switch, and the economics of it all are a puzzle.

Will the revenues from advertising be sufficient to support an editorial staff of sufficient size to attract an audience that advertisers will find attractive?

The paper, now with a news staff of some 150, reports that the online staff might number only 20. The site would ramp after the print edition folded, presumably some time in the next week or so.

Further, that PI online staff, of whatever size, would be competing with the editorial staff of the morning Seattle Times, which will also be posting online content as it continues to put out its print edition, which has a circulation of around 225,000.

The PI and Times have operated under a joint operating agreement since 1983, splitting costs and profits but maintaining separate news operations.

Hearst claims it has lost $14 million on the PI in the past year, and just how long it would support an online edition is an open question.

The chain has newspaper woes beyond Seattle it also must worry about, including the money-losing San Francisco Chronicle, which it is also threatening to close because of ongoing losses.

Also clouding matters is the dicey media economy, which has been especially brutal to newspapers. It makes it a less-than-ideal time to experiment.

But then Hearst may not have all that much choice. The other option is simply to fold the PI, and write it off.