Results tagged “news”

A week ago, news of Fisher Plaza’s fire-induced power outage came as a surprise to gullible emergency management types who were guaranteed the media "fortress" could withstand even the most modern of technological curveballs. But in light of the present truck stop generator makeover that's sprung up on John Street, we're not so sure.

A revamped Seattle PostGlobe--courtesy of those crazy kids at Instivate--has rolled out, and along with it, they've rolled out a refocused mission: to be "the source for economic and local civic news." The ex-P-I crew is divvying up the city thusly: Kathy Mulady is on elections coverage; Larry Lange, transportation issues; and Kery Murakami takes City Hall. Plus they've nabbed PubliCola's Josh Feit for local politics input. But wait there's more! They've got video from KCTS 9 and new reports from KPLU 88.5 FM. We applaud their work integrating local blogs into the site, too. Now to integrate the money...

Sometimes we like to see what the rest of the world has to say about Seattle, so we go to Google News and search for "Seattle". This is what's currently available--the upteen-millionth priest who molested kids, and pages and pages of sports. How is it in this day and age of declining newspapers and traditional media that sports reporters still have work?

Speaking of Mike Davidson, the Seattle PostGlobe posse, and all-digital news platforms, tomorrow night is round two of No News Is Bad News: "Making It Work" (7-9 p.m., Bertha Landes Room, City Hall). The focus is on current and near-term models in the post-newspaper ecosystem, and Cory Bergman (MSNBC, LostRemote.com, MyBallard.com) moderates a panel that includes WSB's Tracy Record, Penny Arcade's Robert Khoo, Newsvine's Davidson, Instivate's Scott Durham, Seattle PostGlobe's Kerry Murakami, and InvestigationsWest's Rita Hibbard. You can reserve your free ticket here.

The weirdest thing on the news last night with the least amount of airtime, thanks to the Sounders game (which was fun to watch, and we won 3-0, but moving on), was the stand-off down in Federal Way between a SWAT team and some guys accused of assaulting someone with a live electric cattle prod. The stand-off ended when the cops blew up the door of the guys' house with explosives. A cattle prod? Guess during a recession you're forced to get creative with your assault weapons.

What other church in our area besides Mars Hill (or, perhaps, The Stranger) could possibly have attracted the attention of a national television show looking to talk about Satan? This Friday, ABC's 'Nightline' will film a half-hour segment at Mars Hill, of course.

On the same day the Seattle Weekly was prognosticating about the Seattle Times' survival odds, and the Times was filling us in on the P-I's, sometime-Seattlester Seth Kolloen sent us this enigmatic screenshot. Are they trying to tell us something from inside the Fairview compound?

Oh, snap! According to...well, the P-I...the P-I could be going online-only--a lucky few on staff have even received new "provisional" job offers.

There's been a lot of talk about the possible closure of the P-I lately, but this Thursday there's going to be a panel discussion of Seattle as a "no-newspaper town." The cold truth is that neither the P-I nor the Seattle Times may emerge from this recession--and if one or both do, it is likely that massive restructuring will be called for. So "No News Is Bad News" asks what we rely on professional journalism for, and what we need to do to guide it through the end of the print mass media bottleneck.

The same day the CityClub of Seattle was holding--and tweeting--its panel discussion "The Newspaper Business: Sunset or a New Dawn?" strange things were happening. The P-I linked directly to a story on the West Seattle Blog. KIRO 7 TV started filing stories on Twitter, following KING 5's lead, though KING 5 was using its Twitter feed today to promote its new Facebook page. News is suddenly everywhere. At the panel, tears were still being shed over Craigslist stealing all those classified ad dollars back in the late '90s--right about the time that everyone in the U.S. was reading Who Moved My Cheese? Ten years later, major newspaper chains are still at the mercy of a cramped, ugly, lo-fi site started by some guy in San Francisco. Hearst thinks the P-I is a money-loser; from where we're sitting, the guys who've been losing billions are in the corporate suites, paying themselves top dollar while they redesign the buggy whip paper to make it more attractive to younger readers.

Tomorrow morning, Wednesday, you can join Seattlest (MvB) and CHS (jseattle) for a eye-opening talk about neighborhood and news blogs and online marketing. We're holding the big event at Office Nomads on Capitol Hill (invitation with RSVP right here). The workshop is sponsored by the Capitol Hill Chamber of Commerce, begins at 9 a.m. (should be about 90 minutes with Q&A), and comes with a $5 suggested donation to the Chamber. We just went over the PowerPoint deck with jseattle, and boy is he good with maps and infographics. If you're curious about who the new neighborhood media are in Seattle or why to advertise with them, come by and enjoy a cup of coffee with us as we explain.

Seattlest, like many of you, has to be at the office today instead of in the living room in front of the TV, which is where we want to be right now. We're following the election news on KUOW/NPR (94.9 FM) and keeping an eye on CNN.com, MSNBC.com, and King County Votes (which also has a helpful Twitter feed). If you're not watching tv today and you're trying to keep up on the news, what sites are you reading/obsessively refreshing?

In his Morning News post, The Stranger's managing editor Bradley Steinbacher lets slip near the end that after fourteen years, his end his near. No future plans, no reasons why. This continues a trend (two makes a trend!) of gnomic departures that began with news editor Josh Feit's abrupt "departure" (made somewhat less abrupt by his continued posting on Slog) earlier this summer. So we provide you instead with the fond memories elicited by Steinbacher's bio: "Some 13 years ago Bradley Steinbacher, was hired to be The Stranger’s first receptionist. After that debacle, he was bounced around to various departments—classifieds, distribution, marketing, etc.—until he was finally named both Managing Editor and Film Editor in 2003. Just how he reached such high posts at the paper remains a mystery." Perhaps more importantly, does this spell the end of The Stranger's anagrammatical public editor A. Birch Steen?

When we were dissing Clearwire the other day, we had no idea a deal this big was in the works. In fact, plenty of people thought the writing was on the e-tablet for Clearwire after its WiMAX deal with Sprint fell through six months ago. But you can't count Craig McCaw out.

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 our news online and reckon we're not alone.

Ok. We're as sick as you probably are of hearing about Sunday's pillow fight in Ballard. But a few comments on our post yesterday about it and an e-mail from Brooke, the organizer, prompted us to put up one last item about it. Namely, we'd like to ask those who think the pillow fight organizer is "self-absorbed" and worse to please calm down.

The local blogosphere has been talking today about the fall-out (literally and figuratively) from last Sunday's flash-mob pillow fight in Ballard.

Maybe it's the recession like it was in the early 90s, but as a city, we're recycling more than ever before.

If you weren't lucky enough to nab a pair of tickets to an April Eddie Vedder show via Pearl Jam's fan club presale or Ticketmaster's sale last Friday, you're only screwed if you aren't extremely wealthy—and charitable.

Do you sometimes feel like your sassy, snarky, heartfelt comments go unnoticed? Well, we hear you. Seriously. A new little feature here in the ist-averse is a log of our top commenters. So, if you want to be a big star all over town (or in your own imagination), the quickest way to blog-user superstardom is to comment. It doesn't have to be brilliant to get logged, it just has to be relevant. So go forth, comment, and get yourself to the top of the list, so you can brag to your friends about being the number one "Top User" on Seattlest. We dare you to try to knock Troy J. Morris out of the top slot. Word.

Seattlest has always felt odd using the listening stations in music stores. We love 'em and--the purchased and downloaded ringtones of strangers on the bus not withstanding--still feel that they're the best way to check out new music. It's just kind of weird rocking out in a store with the cans on while other people around you browse the shelves, blissfully unaware of the epiphany you're having, or that in some small but significant way your life is changing. Good weird, but still weird.

What with his recent Into the Wild success, it's not a huge surprise that Eddie Vedder's embarking on his first solo tour—announced today—up and down the West coast. What is surprising is that he's not playing Seattle.

Moving Under Sea-Tac by Seattlest Flickr Contributor, Grundlepuck

"The Next Slum" is the name of the article in the March Atlantic (not online yet), and Seattle gets lots of mentions. Author Christopher Leinberger, a visiting fellow at the Brookings Institution, argues that as demographics and energy use changes over the next 15-20 years, there will be a growing surplus of large-lot homes that no one wants, decaying on the market.

We have gathered some of the top political writers in the country and asked them to discuss the presidential race throughout the year. Today they discuss McCain’s new frontrunner status, religion in American politics, and Edwards’ departure.

In news certain to impact hyper-literate Seattle hardest, Scrabulous seems to have been taken down by Facebook. We're hitting the Try Again button like meth-addled lab mice, but no dice so far.

When that 25-cent fare increase hits in March...let's see, gotta calculate up...carry the exponent...Metro could be making 1,925,000 extra dollars per year (not really, we're just multiplying 0.25 by 7% of total boardings, for a quick estimate). A peak 1-zone fare will be $1.75, so make sure you're carrying around three quarters during commute times.

Following the announcement that Seattle's crime rate is the lowest it's been in 40 years, Seattle Times columnist Nicole Brodeur has an article about how it doesn't feel that way, given the the shooting at the party downtown, the shooting of DéChé Morrison, the stabbing of Shannon Harps, the schoolteacher who got beat into the pavement on East Pine, and the woman hit in the head with a hammer.

I was glad to hear about the strides police have made on the streets of Seattle. But really, all it did was remind me there have been no arrests in the three recent murders, or in the two attacks. Police have a "person of interest" in the Harps case, but to be honest, the police sketch looked like every other 30-something white guy in Seattle: wool cap, beard, earring. I think I dated him last summer.