Oh, Portland! This Seattlest contributor's hometown is currently in the midst of its biggest and juiciest political scandal in years. Turns out, Mayor Sam Adams, the city's first openly gay mayor, had a relationship with a legislative aid intern who , Tim Keck's Portland alt-weekly, has been drawn into the entire mess with accusations she helped cover up the affair. more ›

Not cool, Willamette Week. Not cool. This week one of Portland's alt-weeklies published a story about what an environmental nightmare scooters are. We know two-strokes are bad, WW. We don't need to be clobbered over the head with this kind of article. more ›

We generally keep news items concerning Seattle South to ourselves in the hopes that one day the powers that be will scoop up a handfull of clay and fashion Portlandist.com to blather on about it, but so far no luck. The thing is that there's a question of journalistic ethics arising down there and Seattlest is a sucker for stories about journalistic ethics (uh, the ethics of others, of course. Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain.) Willamette Week, generally regarded as a rather stand up sort of alt-weekly, has had a conflict of interest charge levied against it in its own 'letter to the editor' section. It seems that a restaraunt reviewer at WW freaked out about the lack of salt at an area eatery in a recent issue. As the owners of that establishment point out in their letter, that reviewer also imports food items for restaraunts in the area. Some of his biggest sellers? Olive oil and, of course, salt. more ›

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. For shame, Stranger. more ›

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 we're sure we'll never have to worry about ourselves. For those who don't know, a Pulitzer Prize is like a Bloggie, but for journalists. So to the Willamette Weekly we'd like to say, "Holy Shit!" and also, "Congratulations!" more ›

Seattlest has praised the Seattle Weekly's features section in this space in the past. They had a good string going! Seattlest was in Portland a few weeks ago, though, and being the alt-weekly whores that we are we picked up a copy of the rag down there, Willamette Week. Not a bad paper. The cover story of the issue that was out when we were there was "Good Cop, Bad Cop" about a Portland cop who had a great record despite being somewhat of a hothead and beating the crap out of a few perps (pff, so what). more ›