McGinn Doubles Down on Village Voice Feud, Slams Seattle Weekly
Unpopular politicians pick fights. If a politician is losing connection with voters, it's wise for him to demonstrate that he is on their side by taking up a sympathetic cause. Saddled with slipping poll numbers and a cash crunch brought on by the recession and belt-tightening at all levels of government, it's no surprise that Mike McGinn is pursuing this strategy. What is surprising is the zeal with which he has entered the fray.
The spat started between Ashton Kutcher and his anti-human trafficking activist allies, and Village Voice Media, which owns the eponymous New York weekly, as well as alternative papers around the country, including the Seattle Weekly. VVM also runs a classifieds service called Backpage, which Kutcher and company claim is a conduit for underage prostitution. VVM-run papers have ferociously defended the mother company in a series of editorials and investigative pieces, including personal attacks on Kutcher, and articles questioning the integrity of organizations supporting the campaign. After a few days of twitter sniping, dueling interviews and editorials, and reams of blog commentary, Mayor McGinn weighed in on Kutcher's side, sending an open letter to VVM CEO Jim Larkin calling Backpage an "accelerant" of underage prostitution, and claiming that the SPD uncovered four separate cases of underage Seattle girls being sold on the site.
Friday, a week after his letter was published, McGinn began playing hardball. The Mayor's office has instructed all arms of the city government to cease advertising with the Seattle Weekly, which includes suspension of a contract with the Seattle Center with around $75,000 left to be paid. McGinn's statement accused the company of "playing games." Weekly editor-in-chief Mike Seely protested that his paper's coverage of the issue has faithful used the city's own statistics, and that his company cooperates with law enforcement to combat child prostitution. According to Seely, his calls to the Mayor's office have not been returned. Still, the boycott may be short-lived: McGinn and Village Voice Media representatives are meeting next week, and McGinn said that he "might change his mind" after the meeting.
Mike McGinn's background is in activism, not politics, which is perhaps why he has come out swinging on this issue with a tenacity that we're not used to seeing from our politicians. But while his rhetoric has been pugnacious, he seems to already have telegraphed that his tough stand will only last until he meets his adversaries face-to-face next week. A bit of righteous anger is quite becoming for a politician, but the appearance of pique or capriciousness is not. Against a massive, national media conglomerate, a few hundred thousand dollars of revenue and a bit of bad local press may not be enough to extract concessions, which could leave McGinn in the position of maintaining the useless boycott as the public loses interest, or admitting defeat and looking like the whole fracas has been nothing but hot air. However, if VVM papers continue with their shockingly tone-deaf "child prostitution isn't such a big deal" series of articles, they may give McGinn enough rope to hang them.
