According to Slog, the Seattle Times is about to lay off 200 employees (at least 45 of them from the newsroom). As a friend noted, it's not entirely surprising. Print media far and wide are bowing to the evolution of demand for media. This Seattlest, for one, only ever touches a newspaper anymore if it's in a bin at our local coffeeshop. And, even then, it's to pull out the crossword. We get all......

Eric Alterman is the sort of liberal we like to refer to as a "Democrat," as in, capitol "D" Democratic Party stalwart. As such, this Nation columnist and Media Matters blogger was an arch-partisan prototype for those crazy kids at DailyKos, back in the days when armchair politicos were relegated to penning rants to the editor of their local newspaper. In advance of his appearance tonight at Town Hall to promote his new book, Why......

Chinese Official: The world’s media is here, and they are going to be looking around. I need you to make sure that these Tibetan monks are locked up and don’t disrupt anything. Guard: Make sure that these locked-up Tibetan monks disrupt everything. Official: No, don’t disrupt anything. Guard: Okay, don’t disrupt anything. Official: The monks. Guard: The monks. Official: Correct. [starts to leave] Guard: Sorry, just to recap, lock everyone up with no disruption...or wait,......

It's become fairly commonplace for the brighter real estate bloggers, like Timothy "The Tim" Ellis over at SeattleBubble, to mock P-I reporter Aubrey Cohen once a month. See Cohen--the P-I's lead real estate reporter--writes an article about the state of the national housing market once a month when the industry standard Case-Shiller numbers are released. The Case-Shiller index (from S&P) tracks the changes in home prices for 20 US metropolitan areas each month as......

Next year’s publication of Itch, Love Stories About Heroin means that if you've been waiting for a full-length, in-depth book about Alice in Chains' Layne Staley—well, don’t get your hopes up. You'd think someone would've managed to write a Heavier Than Heavenish Staley biography by now. After all, Staley's voice was as unique, his contribution to Seattle's 90s music scene (arguably) as important, and his death as grisly as fellow heroin addict Kurt Cobain's.......

So we'll begin, the guy at the podium said, the huge black blast door in the Microsoft Auditorium at the Downtown Library eased down its track, slowly cutting off our view of the lobby, and we shivered. "I wish the P-I were here," said the Stranger's Josh Feit at one point. "This is what they do really well." Oddly enough, the Seattle P-I, the hands-down leader in news on the web around here, wasn't on......

A confidential informant reported to Seattlest on the condition of anonymity that when he cashed in his $25 Ezell's gift certificate for an $18 purchase, the cashier not only refused to give him cash or credit for the difference, but also acted all incredulous and pissy that anyone would even dream of ever holding such ridiculous expectations. Meanwhile, another confidential informant reported to Seattlest that when she cashed in her Ezell's gift certificate a......

Ron Rosenbaum, in Slate, has discovered and dissected the worst op-ed article ever written: Stanley Fish's "Getting Coffee Is Hard to Do," in the August 5 New York Times. Rosenbaum spends three amusing pages shredding Fish's article, examining the many, many instances of "unintentional humor" and "comic cluelessness." And he pegs early on one of the shopworn observations Fish attempts to pass off as insight. As Fish notes: First you have to get in......

From Seattlest's investigative journalists stationed in Factoria: At about 3pm today, several workers at my office building in Factoria watched stunned as a semi-truck that apparently had accidentally pulled into our parking lot, proceeded to do a hit & run on our building and get onto I-90 for a get-a-way. Unfortunately for the driver, witnesses saw the truck's company name (withheld). If the truck company logo looks anything like this than you can rest......

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,......

Remember we posted about former Seattle Weeklyite Philip Dawdy's blogging on mad meds the other week? Now Australia's ABC Radio National has interviewed him. Dawdy's account of his brush with radio down under is here. Here's the ABC teaser: The Zyprexa story Pharmaceutical company Eli Lilly (makers of Prozac) have agreed to pay upwards of 1.2 billion US dollars to nearly 30,000 patients who claim their bestseller antipsychotic medication, Zyprexa (Olanzapine) has caused diabetes,......

Two of four misconduct charges were dropped just yesterday against Watada, which would reduce the maximum sentence he could receive from six to four years. It also means that the Army will no longer pursue subpoenas against journalists who interviewed Watada-- journalists like Sarah Olson, who was threatened by the Army to comply with the subpoena or face six months in jail. We wonder why the charges were dropped, though we doubt it was the......

MUSIC: Earl Greyhound. Power drums + steel blanket riffs + soaring vocals = a good old fashioned rock beat-down. Our ears are already ringing from all the comparisons to Zeppelin. *mp3: S.O.S. 9pm // The Crocodile // $8 READING: Book-It Theatre presents Darfur Stories, a staged reading, created from written accounts and original interviews with Darfurians, activists, journalists, and aide workers 7pm // Roosevelt High School Theatre // $5 suggested donation BOATS: 60th Annual Seattle......

Activist journalism is a shifting target -- yesterday's activism doesn't always apply. (You'd hope because it's been assimilated by the mainstream.) Here's the classic face of mental illness local media usually provides. But regular, conscientious reporting has got to focus more on the wealth of treatment modalities and medications "made available" to people who may or may not be able to judge between them. And how even doctors are snowed under by pharmaceutical data.......

Monday AUTHOR, AUTHOR: Dr. Neal Barnard has his self-promotional finger on America's pulse with his book: Dr. Neal Barnard's Program for Reversing Diabetes: The Scientifically Proven System for Reversing Diabetes Without Drugs. Is a low-fat vegetarian diet in your future? 7pm // University Bookstore, Bellevue // FREE Tuesday SOUND ECOLOGY: John Lombard, senior policy analyst for Steward and Associates, an environmental consulting firm, presents a proposal detailing the legal and political realities necessary for......

Today marks the final edition of the King County Journal, a newspaper that, in various incarnations, has been covering suburban King County for like, a hundred years or something. Yeah, I know: Stop the presses. Newspapers, those rough first drafts of history, aren't supposed to just cease to exist. I worked as a reporter at the KCJ until the end of the year, then started another job. It was a lucky break; I didn't......

Mark your calendars for Seattle Times columnist David Postman's "Blogging 101" workshop, sponsored by local SPJ chapter (that's Society of Professional Journalists, you scabs) 7pm Monday Dec 4 in the "Blogging World HQ Suite" at the P-I building. Non-SPJ members pay $7, but it's totally worth it, not just for the free pizza but because once you learn blogging, you can pretty much write your own ticket, dude!! And if you're gonna get certified as......

You know those journalists? That report real news? They're idiots. Google News round up link: LIFE STYLE EXTRA (UK) - "Britney Spears' half-eaten sandwich is for sale on eBay." The Post Chronicle: "Britney Spears' half-eaten sandwich is for sale on eBay. The snack was snatched from a table at a music awards ceremony Britney attended with her husband Kevin Federline at a New York hotel earlier this year." Etc, etc... Apparently none of these......

First there was the Honda Fit concert series, and then the Yaris Works. And now, the next chapter in Cheap Japanese Car-Sponsored Hipster Activity/Youth-Focused Advertising Campaign is the Scion Route Independent Film Series. It's taking place in only six cities, so Seattle's in good company with Atlanta, Austin, L.A., Minneapolis, and New York. Looks like the guys in marketing think we're cool. This time, the targeted advertising is in the form of one Scion-sponsored......

-Two journalists are refusing to testify against Ehren Watada. Apparently he "spoke contemptuously of the president" to them. Man, is that a crime? -Not all biodiesel is vegan. -All over the city today expectations are being adjusted according to the fact that the Seahawks failed to find the endzone yesterday. -It's hard to comment before seeing the tools and reading the fine print, but if Microsoft is really releasing a hobbyist/indie/DIY game development kit......

Joe Lieberman may have a very bad day. Polls say he'll lose the Democratic primary to Ned Lamont, who besides being filthy rich after inventing the shoe, is also using local political consulting firm Moxie Media to design his mail (whoop-whoop). Lieberman has angered left-leaning Nutmeggers with his support of the Iraq War. Our own Maria Cantwell also voted for the war and has refused to back away from that vote. Yet, instead of fighting......

The Western Washington chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists retreated to their hidden bat cave this weekend, probably performed some elaborate initiation rituals for new members involving chalices, robes and candles and then handed out some lucite. We covered this last year and blah blah blah it costs money to be considered for awards so a lot of people don't submit and it's hardly the Pulitzers anyway. We weren't going to say anything about......

Seattle baseball fans stand at the ledge of a great divide today, which is why the World Baseball Classic is so awesome. Do you love Ichiro, or do you love America? It's a good thing for all of us that it's not 1944. The U.S. team needs the Japanese team to lose to South Korea tonight in order to advance. Well, there's also some crazy scenario where the U.S. could advance if Japan and Korea......

We enjoyed reading Eli Sanders' piece in The Stranger this week about the imminent death of the Post Intelligencer and how he's personally all for it and everything, but for the record we personally aren't. We've said as much every time a few JOA tidbits leak out to the public (which is infrequently) and we'll say it again now. We would prefer if there was a little more ideological space between the Times and the......

The Boston-area rap duo Big Digits will make their triumphant return to our side of the hood Saturday, nearly one year after their victorious "rap battle in Seattle" (Get it? It rhymes...) whereby their west coast rivals Cancer Rising "got served" a rap-tastic smackdown that shamed Larry Mizell into hiding. But seriously: The show Big Digits put on last May at the Lo_Fi was one of the year's best performances, particularly for the insane,......

Thirty-five journos and Guinness officials (plus two air crews) are loaded into a Boeing 777 that began an attempt at the record books this morning. The flight is trying for the record for the longest continuous commercial flight and will be in the air for nearly twenty three hours as it circles the globe from Hong Kong to London. This sounds to Seattlest like the set-up to a hot new reality TV show more than......

Fans of the "rock'n'roll" genre will presumably enjoy tonight's "Art of Modern Rock" exhibition held in conjunction with the Flatstock poster show series presented by the American Poster Institute. The Seattle Times already scooped Seattlest's team of investigative journalists on the story, but we think the show merits worth mentioning again, in so much as this may turn out to be the only part of the Bumbershoot festival certain members of Seattlest will see this......

In October of 2004 two servers belonging to Indymedia.org were believed to be seized by federal investigators. Indymedia, remember, "was established by various independent and alternative media organizations and activists in 1999 for the purpose of providing grassroots coverage of the World Trade Organization (WTO) protests in Seattle." The Electronic Frontier Foundation is reporting today that after months of secret legal proceedings they have gotten access to documents concerning the missing servers. The documents say......

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.......

Last week's insightful critique of area weeklies included a summation of Portland's Willamette Weekly. "Not a bad paper," we said. Little did we know that members of the Pulitzer Board in New York City would follow our links to the Oregon weekly and agree with us. Apparently, the Pulitzer Board likes to make a big fuss over things, though, and their way of saying "not a bad paper" involves a whole award ceremony rigamorale. Something......