Phoenix Paper Looks into the New Seattle Weekly

We don't really have to look any farther afield than the Stranger to get more than our fill of Seattle Weekly bashing in any given week, but right now there's an article in a Phoenix daily about the New Times Media vs. Village Voice Media culture war that jettisoned Weekly longtimers out the Weekly's door (and into something yet to be seen). The gist of the article is that across the country the left-leaning, axe-grinding, political alt-weekly veterans have been replaced with ass-kicking, name-taking whipper-snapper upstarts who don't much care for politics or other traditional alt-weekly stomping grounds.

Here's the Seattle Weekly section which works the well-worn territory of Weekly managing editor Mike Seely's proverbially backwards hat:

One former Seattle Weekly staffer I spoke with had high praise for the paper’s changes under new editor Mark Fefer, who’d worked there prior to the merger. The paper looks better, they said; the Web site is much improved; and Fefer deserves credit for running arts and culture stories on the cover, something Berger was reluctant to do.

Another point cited in Fefer’s favor, though, is that he’s more sophisticated than managing editor Mike Seely, who joined the paper after the merger and ran it between Berger’s departure and Fefer’s arrival. Seely, this former staffer complained, is “kind of a backwards-hat guy.” Dawdy, too, is a vocal Seely critic, and references an e-mail exchange he had with Seely last October to bolster his case. The conversation began with Seely citing a story from the East Bay Express, the company’s paper in Oakland, as an example of the kind of stuff he’d like from Dawdy, who specializes in mental-health issues. The article in question, by Lauren Gard, was on the link between the Internet and sex addiction. “One thing the writer hints at here are the tendency for massage parlors to double as hand-job factories or more,” Seely wrote. “I’d love for someone to gauge whether this sort of thing is going on in Seattle.”

Dawdy then mentioned knowing a therapist whose business consists largely of Internet-porn addicts working at Microsoft. Seely asked if the therapist would go on the record. Dawdy said it was doubtful, but that details could probably be gleaned from online chat rooms. To which Seely responded:

“yep. think it might be futile to start from there and simply replicate this story. frankly, if you were up to visiting some massage parlors to see if certain practitioners would finish you off, that’s the sort of street-level expose i’d be up for running. but i’d never force you to do that.”

Dawdy took a pass. A week later, he quit.

In an e-mail, Seely confirmed this exchange, but noted that Dawdy wrote a story on a Star Wars–loving, gay-porn-producing, suicide-committing Seattle-ite that ran that same month. “Of all the writers to be evoking this sort of ‘criticism,’ ” Seely told the Phoenix, “you may indeed have found the least credible.” Dawdy, however, claims Seely urged him to play up the gay-porn component of the story in question. Told of this, Seely pointed out that the massage-parlor story never ran, and added: “Dawdy took direction well and never put up a fight in regards to suggestions on this or any other story. Not once. I’ll leave it at that.”

Update: On his blog Dawdy is apparently not willing to let it be left at that:

OK, Seels, apparently I have to draw a fucking map for you. I don't have to put up a protest when shit like that is offered to me for a story in order to be "credible." Why? Because it's a crime and you being a "made man" in the New Times hierarchy sort of made it impossible for me to question you on anything since you guys were firing folks who you didn't think were cool enough for your street-level exposes.

And, here's a wee bit of remedial journalism for you, 'bro. Credible journalists don't create stories in order to have news to write about. Nor do they commit crimes in order to create news. Why? Because then their more regular sources--like, oh I don't know, cops and politicians--will then have a really hard time seeing a reporter who commits a crime for a story as being "credible" and the old source network dries up. Readers have problems with it, too. Besides, it's illegal, except for vice cops. I am not a vice cop.