If it walks like a duck, but barks like a dog, it’s a … what? Likewise, if it’s called SeattlePI.com, but staffed by only 20 or so people with the skill set to produce a portal with an attitude, isn’t it really just branding on the cheap?

And branding to what end?

Like a college athletic program that just committed a minor infraction, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, on death watch, self-reported plans for an online staff that would survive the printed version’s post-March 10 demise. As Chuck Taylor noted in his blog, Seattle Post-Times, the presumed SeattlePI.com staff would include 10 editor/producers, one Web developer, one social-media specialist, one columnist, one photographer, one general-assignment reporter and two business reporters. I’m assuming one or two more GA reporters would be added to the mix, as the Seattle P-I story quoted one Metro reporter as having turned down the provisional offer.

Reading between the lines, parent company Hearst offered either Guild (union) exempt personnel (editors and online producers) or younger reporters whom they believed would be so desperate to stay in journalism, they’d agree to slashed salaries, lower benefits, zero severance and zero vacation accrual. Many newspapers, including the P-I’s competitor, The Seattle Times, already have been making a move to cheaper, online and non-union staffing instead of training and shifting current staffers to now-generation, multimedia mode. Enlightened national publications such as the New York Times and Washington Post, of course, have spent considerable time and resources in both retraining and consolidating its print and digital newsrooms.

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