Weekly Catfight

Seattlest is feeling an amount of motivation to write on this subject that is nearing absolute zero, but we already contacted the editors of various weekly newspapers so we feel committed to posting something. The Western Washington branch of the Society for Professional Journalists recently released an avalanche of awards, a great many of which buried the Seattle Weekly under mounds of lucite. Congratulations Seattle Weekly. Seattle's other alternative weekly paper won one honorable mention. For shame, Stranger.

It turns out, though, that the biggest difference between the two papers isn't the quality of the journalism they contain, as much as the Weekly's willingness to pick up the tab for articles submitted for awards. Only a handful of Stranger writers entered stories into the competition, so the fact that they walked with so few trophies (one honorable mention) is a pretty poor gage of The Stranger's reporting. But, hey, on paper (PDF actually) the Weekly won 54 awards and the Stranger nicked an HM. That's a funny thing to point out to your staff if you're the Seattle Weekly, right? Why not send an internal email saying as much? Well, gloating internal emails have a tendency to not stay internal for long. Seattlest received a copy of the memo as did others from an A Nonymous source. Maybe it was a staffer tooting their own horn, maybe it was a Stranger mole exposing snark. The world may never know/care.

Among alt-weeklies in Washington, Oregon, Idaho, Montana, and Alaska, the next-biggest winner was Portland's Willamette Week with 11. Seattle Weekly's direct competitor, The Stranger, won an honorable mention, which was awarded to a former SW staffer and was that paper's sole honor in either contest.

Actually, it's pretty tame as far as internal naa-naa na-naa-naa emails go. Seattle Weekly editor Chuck Taylor expressed his feelings on journalism awards to Seattlest in an email saying, "they reward a craving for recognition, and what people in media actually need is more humility," and generally conveyed his uncomfortable relationship with awards.

We also asked Dan Savage at The Stranger for comments and we got an earful which you can read in its entirety over on the Stranger blog.

So, big news, the weeklies are sniping at each other. Seattlest just hopes that this doesn't endanger our future access to internal alt weekly emails, although it's hard to imagine how it doesn't.