Results tagged “postintelligencer”

"out of paper" by Kurt Schlosser, from the Seattlest Flickr pool

It probably means something that we just heard about the last print day of the P-I on Twitter. Publisher Roger Oglesby just made the announcement on behalf of will-they-won't-they Hearst corporate. Over the weekend, the P-I's web address simplified itself to seattlepi.com, and the word is, the online-only version is a go. The P-I is dead, long live the P-I! [UPDATE: P-I Executive Producer Michelle Nicolosi expounds on plans for the online-only version.]

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.

As the minutes tick past, that blurb keeps getting updated. Now, it's a full story, complete with quotes from Swartz: "One thing is clear: at the end of the sale process, we do not see ourselves publishing in print."

The 2008 football season ended last week for Walter Jones, the Seahawks' offensive tackle and general-prover-of-Einsteinian-physics. Jones was suffering from a knee injury so severe that it would require a cutting-edge procedure called microfracture surgery. The P-I's Danny O'Neil wrote that Jones had headed off to Colorado to have the intricate surgery performed by the world's leading expert, Dr. Richard Steadman.

• 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?

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.

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.

Nothing ages as poorly as sketch comedy television. You remember it being it hilarious, but when you sit someone down in front of a "Mr. Show" or "Kids in the Hall" or "Ben Stiller Show" DVD, invariably, the first episode passes in uncomfortable silence before you have to admit that, at the time, it was hilarious, but maybe it would have made more sense to watch a few clips on YouTube instead of buying the boxed set collector's edition DVDs.

There's an article bemoaning our pending loss of Daly's Drive-In in Eastlake in the Post Intelligencer today (with accompanying blog item--probably both inspired by a slightly previous blog item from the Stranger) headlined "Popular drive-in on way out." The thing is, Daly's isn't popular. It should be, and it was, but it isn't.

If P-I blogger Monica Guzman in fact knew this guy was coming before he walked up behind her in her cube at the Post Intelligencer with a video camera, then she's in the wrong line of work. Monica appears to be the new, more female version of Brian Chin at the P-I (i.e., post random shit), but if this is her acting like she's confronting a I'll-get-famous-video-blogging-or-else stalker then there's a place for her in Hollywood.

We're only weeks away from that magical time of year when we turn our local waters over to those diesel coughing, gray water vomiting, tourist dollar extracting devices the cruise ships. All hail! There have been a few changes at the Port this year and the new cleaner, greener personal have passed muster with the Bluewater Network, the cruise industry's traditional foil in local media, but Seattlest remains skeptical that increased cruise traffic in the Sound is in our best interest. See today's article on maritime pollution in the Post Intelligencer or this one on cruise ship wastewater. Let's throw our worries and a rock into a burlap money bag for the time being, though, and toss the whole thing overboard. Welcome to Seattle, cruise passengers! Hopefully you find something interesting on Seattlest for your 17 hours in the city! We're going to be talking a little bit about some of the cruise vessels that are coming to town and we're starting with the MS Zaandam.

The Seattle Weekly government in exile launched its website today and has promised to continue posting to it until the people rise up and give them their paper back. Anyone pining for the city's other weekly and its lovable cast of characters circa the Bronze Age through about a year ago should head over to Crosscut immediately. We'll see you back here when you've had your fill.

The advisory vote on the Viaduct is in and a crushing defeat has been issued to the “No and Hell No” campaign by write-in candidate “Hell No and No.” With strong turnouts in West Seattle, Magnolia and Capitol Hill, voters voiced their opinion on the mayor’s tunnel: as of 11:30pm, 69.88% responded in the negative to a tunnel-surface hybrid--a dramatic “Hell No” in our book. And voters rejected the elevated structure alternative with a less emphatic 55.48%-44.52%--a definite “No” by our reckoning, but definitely not a “Hell No.” Remember the scene in Dumb and Dumber when Dumb takes a one in a million shot to be good news? “So I have a chance!” We’re going to hear from Dumb regarding this 55%.

That's how Mayor Ole Hanson described the beginning of the general strike that was held in Seattle February 1919, one of the few general strikes ever attempted in the U.S. The Bolsheviks had just won their revolution in Russia two years earlier and the Red Scare was coming into play in our country. Add 35,000 striking shipyard workers. Subtract the city's more moderate labor officials - They were in Chicago for a vote. Those left behind broached the subject of a general strike with other unions and the city was shut down on February, 6, while rumors of poisoned water, blasted dams and union heavies en route from Chicago kept everyone else either locked in their homes or fleeing for the country. In an effort to keep the peace, or kick a lot of union ass anyway if the peace got queered, the mayor brought in soldiers from Fort Lewis and deputized 2,400 frat guys and student organization members whom he armed with clubs and guns. The city teetered towards open war in the streets.

We got an email last week pointing us to a West Seattle blog post and a thread on Seattle LJ about Pagliacci and their delivery areas. The speculation was that since the pizza place wouldn't deliver to some shady neighborhoods that seemed more physically proximate to its store than other, more upscale, neighborhoods that it would deliver to, there must be a great Pagliacci conspiracy going on in West Seattle. The email suggested that it might make for a decent Seattlest post and on the surface it was interesting but we didn't really have the time to go dig into the comments of the posts it cited and it seemed like an email that we weren't the sole recipient of by a long shot. What seemed like too much work for not enough scandal to Seattlest was P-I gold, however. Apparently the anonymous email also went out to Robert Jamieson Jr. of the Post Intelligencer and today he commented.

While it's tempting to make fun of the Seattle Times (or the P-I, for that matter) for not getting the story the Los Angeles Times reported this weekend on the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the conflicts that exist between the foundation's charitable work and its financial holdings, and while we're somewhat inclined to point out the fact that no one in Seattle is in a position to say boo to the Gates Foundation, it's really just fantastic work by the L.A. Times which continues to be one of the country's best newspapers despite the fact that it's under assault by its owner the Chicago Tribune. The Gates Foundation is based here so it's easy to lose sight of their place in the universe and jump on them for things like buying up the land that contains Seattle's only municipal skatepark and bulldozing it, but they're really a global giant with a tremendous amount of money. Thank you to the L.A. Times for pointing out that while a fraction of that money is injected directly into various charitable causes the Foundation also has a mountain of cash the size of Rainier that can also be working either for, or, in some cases against, those same causes. Take some time out on Snow Day #1 2007 to read the entire article - We learned more about the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation from that piece than we had previously through years worth of Seattle Times and Post Intelligencer full-release massage pieces. Kudos, at least, to the Seattle Times for reprinting it.

Happy New Year! We were only a few minutes into it when the first Seattle gun violence of 2007 happened at Skyway Park Bowl and Casino (which is actually in Renton, but whatever). A pregnant woman, a woman and a man were all shot just minutes after midnight at the bowling alley and taken to Harborview. The P-I doesn't list a motive.

A little over a month ago a fine was levied against Celebrity Cruises for dumping waste water into Puget Sound. Oh how we wish we could say "for illegally dumping waste water into Puget Sound," but, unfortunately, we can't. Cruise ships operate under a Memorandum of Understanding in the Sound that says what they can dump, where, and what happens to them when they completely disregard those rules. It isn't a law, though. It's just something they signed. California has a law governing cruise ship behavior in California waters. Oregon has a law. British Columbia has a law. Damn Alaska has a law.

The Post Intelligencer has an article today on the pesky old buildings that dot Seattle and the heroes who have been swooping in to convert them to condos. No need to tear down a perfectly good old building, necessarily, although that sometimes works too, but you can only wring so much out of renters before you shuffle them off to Kent or something where they belong and get some buyers in there.

The Post Intelligencer did the obligatory Boomerang Generation story today - You know the one, where they talk with a bunch of late-twentysomethings who moved back in with mom and dad to "catch up on bills" or whatever. The headline is, "You can go home again -- and in this housing market, many do."

By this point it's pretty obvious that the Seattle Public School Board's strategy is to continue this shell game of school closures until students, parents and the public at large is so completely confused as to put up little or no struggle. And as if by magic, the budget will be balanced. If we were the sadistic type, your computer would currently be downloading a MIDI version of some clown music to further illustrate our point.

-Last night you could have attended the city's Target: Nightlife meeting or the Target: Maritime History thing. Few likely attended both.

The first weekend of summer is here and Steve Pool told us last night that we're actually going to have some weather that befits the season. We got us a second opinion today that verifies it! It's pretty nice outside right now at 74°, but tomorrow the high is listed at an incredible 82° and even gets a few degrees warmer for Sunday (and Monday also at 85° if you want to stretch the weekend). Woo hoo! It's not only hot and summer time, it's also Pride Weekend.

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 it at all, but a few things are noteworthy regardless, particularly in the Online Media arena.

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 P-I, sure, but we'll take the two squabbling siblings over one big daddy paper any day.

In yesterday's Sunday edition Eric Pryne dropped his first article on the Joint Operating Agreement between the Seattle Times and the (more youthful and urban, apparently) P-I since he took over the beat from the independent contractor Bill Richards.

We warned you in late December and early January that this was coming: a confrontation between residents of the Pomeroy and its new tenant, Twist.

Well, it was nice having the Post Intelligencer around for as long as we did. We're very much in favor of two-paper towns (two dailies, two weeklies, whatever) because we like to think that they keep each other honest. The P-I has been trending a bit to the left lately (is that true?) and it would have been great to see two major papers on opposite ends of the political spectrum in Seattle, but alas... Our media consolidation radar is pinging like crazy after we read today that the Seattle Times will not be renewing the contract of the outside freelancer who was covering the Joint Operating Agreement between the Times and the P-I.