Sunday is March 14th, Saint Matilda's day. Also Saint Mathilda, with an "h," both 10th Century martyrs. It's also "π" day. more ›

Good thing the P-I is still around to focus on such breaking news as this hard-hitting think piece from Redbook. more ›

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... more ›

• Hella Bus has an engaging, creative, relevant (and short!) video episode about politics in Olympia--including the best fifteen seconds of political film we've seen in ages tucked in at the very end.
• Videogum wrote about 'Nightline's Great Satan Debate--apparently it was a laugh riot!
• The Daily Weekly got a hot tip about a man wearing a jacket printed all over with Asian call-girl ads. Weird.

• Capitol Hill Seattle has a retrospective on the Kyle Huff murders from three years ago.
• Seattle 911 reports on a guy who shot at toll booths down in Gig Harbor...with a slingshot. That's so mature, man.
• Spring is here, on Beacon Hill at least! Beacon Hill Blog has photos to prove it.

• Hella Bus is back with the rap from unexpected sources, this time flowing from the verbally gifted mind of Mark Trahant, the editorial page editor of the P-I ("until tomorrow," Hella Bus sadly notes).
• Seattle Transit Blog has an opinionated piece on solving Metro's budget gap, with two suggestions that have elicited dozens of comments.
• Seattle 911 is talking about the case of the untaxed cigarettes in Stilliguamish.

We re-learned an important lesson this afternoon: when nearing overwhelm status, listen to some legendarily good music. You'll feel better. That said, put on "Seed 2.0" by The Roots and read today's music edition of Seattlest's local blog round-up. more ›

• Jobs are difficult to find, but not so scarce that P-I staffers aren't feeling free to turn down Hearst's online operations job offers. "Bottom line: An online-only P-I is not a done deal. At least not yet," says Publicola's Sandeep Kaushik.
• Southlake reports on a man shot in the butt, and Queen Anne View has a kickass firefighter who won a stair-climbing competition.
• Over at Schmudget (caution: policy wonkstrosity ahead), they're talking about sub-prime lending in Washington state all week long. Today, their angle has to do with the depressing racial disparity in the mortgage market. Best of all, the post includes an infographic!

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. more ›

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. more ›

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. more ›

A girl in trouble is a temporary thing, but what about a troubled mayor? The Rainier Valley Post has some complaints for Mayor Nickels who will be on the hot seat tomorrow at 6 p.m. at NewHolly Traffic, Parks and Safety Committee meeting at NewHolly Gathering Hall. HorsesAss wants the P-I's Joel Connelly to run against Nickels for Mayor after Connelly lamented the lack of challengers. And crooks broke-in to Neptune Coffee over the weekend, the latest in a string of burglaries in PhinneyWood. more ›

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Everyone says the Post-Intelligencer is going "all electronic," but that's manifestly untrue. If there were a secret plan to turn the venerable Hearst paper into a digital flagship, don't you think, maybe, they'd be printing banner headlines every goddamn day saying "It's in the P-I...and it's still going to be in the P-I, online"? They've got 30-odd days to convert their 200,000 or so remaining print readers into online readers, and every day they don't scream "Read it online" is a day lost. No, the only conclusion is that Hearst just don't know what they're doing. Seattlepi.com serves about 4 million unique visitors and 45 million page views each month. But those are electrons, not dead trees. Don Smith, who carries the bizarre title "Interactivity Director," must be tearing his hair out. Doomed. more ›

Hearst's special investigative team reveals today that the Boy Scouts aren't the angels of righteousness and environmental integrity everyone thought. No, instead they are foreign hucksters. Oh, wait. We're mistaken. The honey-launderers were the foreign hucksters. The Boy Scouts of America are profiteering tree-haters, as it were. The charge is that over the past twenty years, various BSA councils in the Northwest have irresponsibly and potentially illegally logged their land in order to turn their assets into cash to fund the organization's programs. Our biggest takeaway from the story is that apparently, foresting laws are unsettlingly easy to bypass. You gotta wonder, though: which secretly dirty all-American institution is the P-I going to go after next? The sins of pie? Football, maybe? more ›

NICK LICATA'S AFTERNOON DELIGHT: The City Council's Nick Licata wants to save the P-I this afternoon. KOMO puts it bluntly [UPDATE: and wrongly, says Licata's office--Licata wants simply to discuss newspapers formed as an L3C (low-profit, limited liability corporation).]: "Licata's plan: convince the city to intervene by putting up its own money to keep in print the oldest newspaper in town." He's convened a Superfriends panel--Roger Simpson and Douglas Underwood, Professors of Communication from the University of Washington; attorney Anne Bremner, Co-Chair of the Committee for a Two Newspaper Town; Beth Hester, programming manager for Seattle Channel; Liz Brown of the PacNW Newspaper Guild; David Brewster, publisher of Crosscut; and Jennifer Towery, President of the Peoria Newspaper’s Guild--to help him. Unfortunately he's made one huge mistake--most people are at work at 2 p.m. If you're near a TV, tune in to Seattle Channel 21, or you can watch the live webcast. more ›

Microsoft's Zune sales plunged $100 million dollars, or 54 percent, this holiday season compared to last. CNET says iPod unit sales were up 3 percent, though Apple's revenue was down 16 percent. more ›

So we're cruising Craigslist, as is our wont, and there this ad for a reporter for the Seattle Courant? UW journalism grad Keith Vance "quietly"--perhaps too quietly?--launched the site sometime the past few weeks. Vance writes a bunch of stories about Obama and offers links to the P-I, which will likely be broken in another 55 or so days. But the recipe for potato cheddar chowder? That one's a keeper. more ›

• Monica Guzman over at the P-I's Big Blog published an un-cut transcript of the story Denise Gloster told her about why she chose to get involved with her community in the Rainier Valley. The story is powerful and heart-wrenching, well worth your ten minutes to read it closely.
• Whoa, since when do elementary schools in Seattle auction off fancy Palm Springs condos and offer pine-nut crusted salmon as part of their fund-raising dinner menu? West Seattle Blog says Schmitz Park Elementary is doing just that to net money for the school's core programs.
• Shauna, the Seattle-based new mother and food writer over at Gluten Free Girl, has crafted a sensible list of must-have pantry items in response to Mark Bittman's controversial compilation on the same topic. Beans, onions, vinegar--sounds just like our pantry!

• The B-Town blog's seventeen-year-old film critic loves racist grandpa Clint Eastwood. In other Burien child labor news, the blog has also taken on a fifteen-year-old intern.
• If someone broke into your car and stole your things sometime before December 11th, MetBlogs has the info on how to stop by a police station and claim that which has been ganked.
• Phinneywood reports that the 12,000 tons (24,000,000 lbs!) of sand spread during Snowmaggedon will be all cleaned up a week from today. As always, when it comes to city services, we'll believe when we see it.

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

The P-I's big, splashy story today is on the crucial problem of "honey laundering," a horrific pun which made us snicker and then cry a little bit. The issue is that certain nefarious companies are shipping sub-par and potentially contaminated honey out of China on its way to the U.S. markets, stopping at intermediary shipping points (Vietnam, for instance) to alter the documents to make it look like said honey didn't actually come from China. The sweet goods are then slipped across our borders, where the P-I's investigation showed that officials can be less than hyper-vigilant about inspections. People might get sick. The other point of interest is that apparently the FDA has no legal definition for honey. (Seriously? Form a committee at once.) more ›

• They grow up so fast! The Southlake reminds us that the S.L.U.T.'s 1st birthday is this Wednesday.
• Speaking of Seattle streetcars and public transportation, the Central District News has some new details on the Rainier Avenue Light Rail Station.
• The West Seattle Blog wonders aloud a question we've been screaming in our head recently: how about a bailout for education?

Faithful readers of these e-pages may remember one Geoff Kaiser, who covered the beer refreshment beat--that's his name on a sidebar in the newly diminished (three-section) Seattle P-I this morning: his review of Alaskan Smoked Porter makes us thirsty for campfires. "You can find it for about $5.99 per 22-ounce bottle, and it would pair perfectly with smoked cheeses and smoked salmon. Bottleworks in Wallingford often sells older vintages of this beer for a few dollars more." To stay posted on beer doings, get your RSS on over at Geoff's P-I blog, What's on Tap. more ›

A Hitler mashup about the Apple Cup made it onto the P-I's Big Blog the other day, and Managing Editor David McCumber has ordered it taken down posthaste: "I think we goofed in this instance." Hitler isn't funny, McCumber says. more ›

In the midst of the Election Day 2008 hullabaloo, we want to take a second to remember Seattle's Tuba Man, Edward McMichael. Robert Jamieson, who did this terrific interview with McMichael last year, brought the horrible news of Tuba Man's death:

On Oct. 25, police say, McMichael, 53, was near a bus stop in the 500 block of Mercer Street when thugs attacked, beating and robbing him after midnight. He was taken to the hospital for head wounds and was home recovering. But he died sometime Sunday or early Monday.

For many Seattle residents, the Death With Dignity Initiative (I-1000) gets a heartfelt, fairly immediate vote of approval. P-I columnist Joel Connelly is not so sure. Today's paper includes Connelly's long-ish rant about I-1000 supporters' misguiding ads on the radio, and he awards the initiative his "Sheer Gall Award" for its advertisements' "anti-Catholic" "landslide of distortions." We suggest you read his fact-checks and decide for yourself. more ›

Business reporter John Cook, who came to the P-I in 1999 and founded a cottage enterprise of entrepreneurship coverage (including his Venture Blog), and tech reporter Todd Bishop (at the P-I since 2002, and author of the Microsoft Blog) are departing the P-I, leaving two huge holes in the daily's business coverage and web stats. Outside of sports, their blogs were the top traffic-getters for the P-I website, and both are award-winning reporters. What makes this news even more startling is that both are joining the Puget Sound Business Journal. It's like the Ms losing Beltre and Ichiro to the Aquasox. Word is, the PSBJ has big plans for its new blog-ebrities. more ›

• MyBallard clears up the confusion about when it is actually okay to drive in 15th's bus lane.
• PhinneyWood has photos to show what happens when a car gets t-boned by a metro bus, careens into a parked car, and sends the once-parked car crashing on to a Phinney Ridge porch.
• Ron Sims twitters about what good shape Dan Savage is in, the P-I's Big Blog reports it, and now we're linking to the P-I. We really are all connected.

If you're driving a white Subaru and in a hurry, you might want to give the Critical Mass bike ride a wide berth this afternoon. The scourge of Western civilization will be meeting up at Westlake Center at 5:30 p.m., with a UW "cell" leaving Red Square at 5:00 p.m. and heading to Westlake to join the main insurgency. Goddamn fixies everywhere! The SPD will be out in force, but we echo the concerned P-I commenter who asks: "Why is the Seattle Police Department allowing urban terrorists to run amok? This is one of the most idiotic molly-coddling of criminals I've ever heard of." It's probably not too much to say that the entire city is shivering in fear right about now. more ›