Results tagged “crosscut”

Crosscut's Bill Richards has the story on Hearst's signal of disinterest: "Hearst Corp. said today that it won’t make a final $1 million payment to the Times’ majority owners, the Blethen family, for the right to bid first for the Blethens’ 50.5 percent stake in the company." Hearst also said that if they turn P-I into a pixel-only publication, they would do so outside the warm bosom of the JOA. But they haven't decided yet. "What's the big rush? Stop pestering us!" Meanwhile, the Seattle Times is in "survival mode," reports the Stranger--they're asking the unions for 12 percent payroll cuts. This is grim news indeed for Stranger staffers who were hoping to sell out and snag a cushy MSM job one day.

The vote on school closures is fast approaching! On Thursday, the city school board will make the official call--and emotions are running high. Parents and teachers at the schools on the final recommended closure list made sure their voices were heard this weekend at a rally at T.T. Minor Elementary, one of the schools on the recommended closure list. Though it's possible the school board will vote not to close any schools (a strategy recommended by former school board director Dick Lilly over at Crosscut), it's not likely. Money is just too tight, and something's gotta give. The complaint, however, is that the "somethings" taking the brunt of the cuts are Seattle's poorest, least lily-white neighborhoods--and some are going as far as to call the selective closures racist, flat out. The local chapter of the NAACP is on the case, though last we heard, NAACP national leadership hadn't heard about or approved any legal action.

STELLA! YOU MAKE US YELL-A!: It's a good week when we get to use the phrase "comedic stylings," and the stylings of Stella--that's Michael Ian Black, Michael Showalter, and David Wain--fall squarely in the comedic category. We're not really "comedy" people, but even we have seen Michael Ian Black live and laughed like there was no tomorrow--when in fact there was, and that became a whole thing we won't get into. The group has been called "bizarre, nonsensical, and very funny" and "dumb comedy in a suit," if that gives you some idea.

Probably the first question P-I staffers need to ask themselves is, How badly do they want it?

So there's an article about bus fares over on Crosscut--by the Cascadia Center for Regional Development's Matt Rosenberg--that suggests raising the one-zone peak bus fare to $3.50, an amount to make even the most evangelical of bus riders clutch their wallet. (We throw in "evangelical" because the Cascadia Center is a division of the intelligent-designing Discovery Institute.) But it could be a very good idea, we think, against our skinflint judgment.

Yesterday afternoon we were trying to jaywalk across 15th when a #10 bus pulled up. We walked past it, hoping to use it for blocking. Another #10 bus pulled up.

If you were here right now, you'd see us looking around suspiciously like we don't quite trust we're awake because we just read Knute Berger's latest deep thought over at Crosscut and we...agree with him.

While promoting green consumption might be politically more palatable than getting people to change their habits and expectations, promoting consumption still offers an answer that doesn't solve the bigger problem. Global warming's hawks have to be honest with us: Fighting the good fight isn't all economic upside. We're going to have to do more with less.