Archives for January 2009

About a month or so before the November election, Mass Transit Now communications director Alex Fryer stopped by Drinking Liberally to help push the Prop. 1 cause, and we got to talking about the state of the campaign and the media coverage of it.

Fryer, a ten-year veteran reporter for the Seattle Times before jumping ship in 2007 to work for Mayor Nickels, complained about the difficulty he was having pushing the campaign’s message to the local media.  He lamented the paucity of coverage of Prop. 1’s impact on Eastside communities, yet couldn’t find a single reporter who considered Eastside transportation issues to be their beat.

The Time’s spent years building up its Eastside bureau, Fryer recalled wistfully.  And today… nada.

Talk to communications professionals around the region, many of whom are ex-journalists themselves, and you’ll find Fryer’s frustrating experience far from isolated.  As our local media universe contracts, the opportunities for media relations contract with it, a particularly troubling trend for the political community, which has watched the size of our state political press corps shrink by as much as two-thirds over recent years.

Imagine you’re a Seattle area legislator or advocacy group attempting to garner a little hometown coverage for a particular bill that would benefit your constituency.  It wasn’t so long ago that Seattle’s print media alone had a half-dozen or more reporters and opinion writers based in Olympia during the session, plus a slew of political journalists back at home.  But today, if the Times’ Andrew Garber isn’t interested in your story, or he already has his dance card punched, you’re pretty much out of luck.

What’s the solution?  Well, I suppose communications staffers could just work harder—be more diligent, more creative, and more relentless—and I know that our state’s various progressive organizations could do a better job coordinating their message.  And, I suppose these organizations’ backers could sink more money into their communications efforts to help defray the added expense of going around the traditional media gatekeepers and straight to decision makers and the public at large.

Or, of course, the broader progressive community could come together to fund and support the creation of  independent progressive media… you know… like the kinda work we’re doing here at HA, Publicola and the JOA News Co-op.  An independent media that not only moves stories into the corporate press and helps to frame the coverage therein, but also, increasingly over time, reaches a larger and larger direct audience.  A truly independent media, that’s honest about its bias and fearless in its opinions, and never shy about biting the hands that feed it, if that’s what events dictate.

That’s what folks like Josh and I are attempting to do here with the JOA, but we can’t do it alone and we can’t do it for free.  A credible and sustainable independent media is going to have to pay real journalists to do real journalism, and until we can establish a large enough audience and revenue stream, it’s going to require a cash subsidy, pure and simple… a cash subsidy that should be coming from the backers of all those progressive organizations and candidates for whom our success would directly benefit.

Sure, that’s a pretty self-serving analysis, but if there’s a better idea out there of how to address this growing communications crisis, I’ve yet to hear it.  And as for those progressive organization communications directors concerned about protecting their own budgets and salaries from hungry vultures like me, well, I’m the least of your worries, for no amount of media relations is going to help you get your message out if there isn’t any media left to relate to.

There’s a familiar cliche about the Chinese character for “crisis” meaning “danger” plus “opportunity,” and while it’s apparently not quite true, it’s still an apt metaphor for our current communications crisis, which does indeed present a great danger to the progressive community while also presenting an opportunity to reshape the local media landscape in our favor.  But there’s another cliche that also comes to mind in describing our efforts thus far to muddle through in the face of our local media’s dramatic collapse: “The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result.”

Over the coming weeks I not only intend to expand on my thoughts about what we need to be doing differently to confront and exploit our changing media landscape, I also intend to start demonstrating this vision by example. But while it has been tremendously gratifying to hear from folks about how much they appreciate my work, at some point, some of this appreciation needs to translate into substantial financial support for me to have any hope of success.

This is way more than I ever wanted to know about Barack and Michelle:

(There are some 60 other clips from the past week in politics posted at Hominid Views.)

Given the state of our government’s budget situation, and the sense of urgency that our legislators are trying to display with their current round of budget freezes, it was eye-opening to see Brad Shannon’s report earlier this week that newly minted Superintendent of Public Instruction Randy Dorn had made an appearance in front of the citizen salary commission to, let’s be honest, whine about his salary.

Dorn gets paid $121,618 each year in his new post, and he told the commission that ranks him below his chief of staff, below the state Department of Early Learning head, and even below 121 district superintendents here in the state.

Adding some perspective, the 122nd largest school district in the state according to the 2000 census is located in lovely Coupeville, and a few other comparable in size include Elma, Naches Valley and Chimacum. Some of my favorite places all of them, but nothing one would equate with educational or cultural dominance.

It really begs the question, is Dorn grossly underpaid, or are these superintendents overpaid?

To be fair, Dorn didn’t ask for a raise, and he did acknowledge that he chose to run for the office knowing the pay grade in advance, but he basically made an official proclamation that, as the kids these days might put it, I’m just sayin’, is all.

Dorn added, according to Shannon, that he was more concerned that the most qualified administrators might not seek the post when they can make at least twice as much in any of the major school districts in the state.

Really, now?

Meanwhile, Dorn himself benefited from the lack of credible candidates in the race. When early favorite Richard Semler, the Richland superintendent, dropped out of the race because of a family health issue, it essentially became a two-person race between Dorn and incumbent Terry Bergeson, who obstinately stood by the WASL even when she couldn’t answer some of the test questions herself.

Still, to call attention to his comparatively low pay at a time when state salaries are frozen, unemployment is rising pretty much everywhere but Pittsburgh, and even just four days before the Lily Ledbetter Fair Pay Act passes in the U.S. Senate shows a galling lack of tact.

Especially since this isn’t Dorn’s first money grab. Recall that back in May of last year, he tried to boost his pension by getting his old colleagues in the legislature to make his retirement benefits based on his cushy $137,705 salary as the head of the Public School Employees Union instead of the $57,720 he earned as principal of Eatonville High School.

Dorn came to the office by way of Eatonville, a small Pierce County town that is best known to some of us as the home of former national prep football record holder Bobby Lucht, but this recent meeting smacks of an entirely different former Northwest athletic hero.

But hey, at least he is taking on the WASL, and most of us can agree that is far, far more important than a few thousand bucks here or there for a government job.

That’s what Publicola is reporting:

King County Executive Ron Sims has accepted a post in the Obama administration, according to a source in D.C. Details are sketchy, but Sims, who has been KC Executive since 1996, is reportedly going to D.C. for a job at HUD, the Department of Housing and Urban Development.

Calls to the Sims office were not immediately returned this morning.

Hmm… perhaps it was more than just the chocolate that had King County Councilmember Larry Phillips in such high spirits last night at Chocolate for Choice?  (Come to think of it, Councilmember Bob Ferguson seemed in pretty good spirits too.)

UPDATE:
Sims’ office denies it.

Olympia – Senate Democratic leaders held a press conference today, joined by a few of their House colleagues, to announce their intention, as Josh mentioned earlier, to tighten the belt that holds up our state government’s proverbial pants.

Another way to describe the event would be to pose it as follows:

Q: How many times can a group of lawmakers use some variance of the phrase “belt-tightening” in a thirty minute press conference?

A: Considerably more than you would think.

Senate Majority Leader Lisa Brown (D-Spokane), acting somewhat gubernatorial in her initiation of hard budget cuts, kicked off the afternoon presser by announcing the news that, in light of recent gloomy budget news, the state Senate would begin cutting operations in order to save money even before final cuts are made later on in the session.

Those cuts include reducing administrative budgets and freezing salaries, hiring, travel and major spending.

Brown emphasized repeatedly that the actions Democrats were taking had bipartisan support across the board, though Republicans used their position to talk some too-little-too-late smack, with state Sen. Joe Zarelli telling the Tacoma News-Tribune’s Joe Turner that “we moved from a 52-inch waist to a 51-inch waist and we desperately need to get down to a 32-inch waist.”

Zarelli also told Turner that the Senate’s plan to wait until late February or early March would further hurt the state’s ability to maximize budget savings. Brown, however, reiterated during the press conference that cuts for the sake of cuts were unwise, and that her caucus would be “deliberative as well as urgent.”

Sen. Rodney Tom (D-Mercer Island), who himself may seek greener pastures in the future, added that this move was more than just financially important, it was necessary to show the public that their elected officials have a real “sense of urgency” and that through across the board cuts the message they hoped to put across was that “we are all in this together.”

Tom also added, on multiple occasions, that the Senate plan goes above and beyond the governor’s call, citing a $78 million figure from the governor’s office compared with the $105 million that the state Senate aimed to cut.

House Democrats are also hoping to instigate some budget cuts, though they are taking the more traditional approach of calling for an early action budget bill.

“We appreciate what the Senate did in dropping an early action bill,” said House Ways & Means chair Rep. Kelli Linville (D-Bellingham), and added that the House was taking the more traditional route of creating a fast-tracked budget bill, evoking President Obama’s call for a line-by-line budget review.

“Everybody is going to share the pain,” she added.

Linville appeared tempted, but ultimately refused to give any examples of specific budget cuts prior to caucus meetings, which were set to take place after the conference. She did, however, say that they were hoping to save about $300 million from this budget, which would carry forward into $600 million during the next biennium.

Still, in spite of all the gloomy news for those on the wrong end of the budget machete, the day was not totally without cheer.

When the press conference opened up to questions from the gathered hacks, the politicians responded with the kind of comedy gold that tends to be glaringly absent from the political trail that we have been following for the last year and a half.

A couple of examples:

Asked who would be the watchdog for the coming budget cuts, Brown jokingly responded that it would have to be the seven or eight gathered journos, before immediately amending her answer to say that it would instead be the doomed P-I, which was greeted with equal amount of groans and chuckles.

Sen. Jim Hargrove (D-Hoquiam), meanwhile, did his best Dark Helmet impression when he stated that the Senate Dems would be working at, I kid you not, “ludicrous speed” in order to get the budget cuts rolling.

I suggest they go on a comedy tour with proceeds going toward paying down the budget deficit. Watch out, Paul Blart, Washington State Senate Democrats are gunning for you.

I’ve been writing a lot about marijuana news recently, but it’s because a lot has been happening. There’s an increased focus in the media on the absurdity of the current prohibition that feels more intense than ever. I’m not sure it has only one reason, but either way, I welcome the increased spotlight and hope that it triggers even more debate. Here’s the roundup:

– There are two television specials to check out before the weekend. Tonight, CNBC is airing Marijuana, Inc, which takes a look at the economics behind the current growers of the plant in northern California. And tomorrow night on Dateline NBC, they’ll be covering the case of Rachel Hoffman, the young woman in Florida who was killed by drug dealers after she’d been pressured into becoming an informant rather than face jail time for selling pot to her friends.

– Scott Morgan has posted on some breaking news from the Lake Tahoe area this evening, where DEA agents raided a medical marijuana dispensary. President Obama vowed to end these raids, so it will be interesting to see what he does in response.

– Nina Shapiro writes in the Seattle Weekly about the coalition of legislators, the Governor and other public officials who are moving towards ways to reduce the amount of money spent to lock up non-violent drug offenders. This part knocked me for a loop:

Faced with a $5 million budget cut to his office, King County Prosecutor Dan Satterberg in October started kicking felony cases involving less than three grams of narcotics down to District Court, where they are prosecuted as misdemeanors. He says the move affects two-thirds of his caseload.

That’s just amazing. To get an idea of how much 3 grams is, put three paper clips in your hand. Having that much drugs on you has not only been treated as a felony (a felony!), but it bogs down the majority of what even the most progressive County Prosecutor’s office in the state has been working on. Wow!

– Finally, the Cannabis Defense Coalition (full disclosure: I’ve been a member since last year) has updated its website with more information about the upcoming prosecution of medical marijuana patient Bruce Olson in Kitsap County.

Back on Keith Olbermann’s “Countdown,” for the second night with Russell Tice, former National Security Agency analyst:

Not a whole lot new and it seems Tice is bound legally from naming names. Olbermann asks about specific journalists and specific publications, which Tice apologetically dodges.

Olbermann then chats with James Risen, New York Times investigative reporter, about the implications of government wiretapping. Risen, author of State of War (about the CIA), notes the “chilling effect” of government monitoring not just on reporters but on their sources. But the real issue here is that any program of routine monitoring, if tolerated, can produce data that can be twisted, manipulated or outright doctored to incriminate journalists the government finds inconvenient or unacceptable. It simply isn’t true that if you haven’t done anything illegal or wrong, you’re home safe.

Tice’s and Risen’s revelations raise many questions, but I can’t figure out why this isn’t a bigger story in MSM (the blogosphere is another story; Jonathan Golub has a post at Slog. Also Rachel Maddow to her credit is picking up on Olbermann’s report with Shadow Factory author James Bamford, who says PBS is doing a special on February 3). Have we forgotten completely the lessons of the McCarthy era? Isn’t government monitoring targeting journalists a direct flout of the First Amendment?

One hope is that Tice’s revelations will encourage others to step forward, helping President Obama to end the program (to help make amends for his FISA vote) and stop government hounding of news sources on the illegal wiretapping.

Buying an airline ticket is not a jail sentence.

Some enterprising Congress-critters could create a lot of good will among their bosses (that would be voters) by getting their name attached to the proposed legislation that will give airline customers basic human rights.

So far it’s not clear why customs officials couldn’t be bothered to interview a small number of hungry tourists. If it turns out to be a staffing issue, then that needs to be addressed. Flights sometimes get diverted due to weather, and it’s not like PDX is some teeny tiny airport or something, and it does handle other international flights.

But good on the firefighters who bought the passengers hamburgers and helped some sick people.

On Monday, former Stranger news editor Josh Feit introduced Publicola, a news and opinion site intended, amongst other things, to help fill the gap in WA state political coverage left by our ever shrinking political press corps.  Check it out.

Well today I’m pleased to announce HA’s own extended Olympia coverage with the addition of Bryan Bissell to our stable of bloggers.  Some of you may remember Bryan from PolitickerWA, where he covered state politics for much of the past year before its investor pulled the plug.  Bryan is a Tacoma native, and conveniently, a current resident of Olympia, from where he will be providing his own coverage and commentary of this year’s momentous legislative session.

Welcome Bryan.

I don’t pretend that Bryan and Josh can make up for the number of political reporters we’ve lost over the past couple years.  But they’ll try.

Microsoft’s long rumored job cuts are no longer a rumor, with the company announcing plans to cut as many as 5,000 jobs over the next 18 months—about 5-percent of its worldwide workforce—in the wake of a weaker than expected earnings report and what Steve Ballmer called “the most challenging economic climate we have ever faced.”

Sure, these layoffs are a helluva lot less than the massive, 17-percent reduction some rumormongers had predicted, but that’s little solace to the 1,400 workers laid off today, the majority of whom had been working in Redmond.

Microsoft ouch.

Microsoft Corp. said Thursday morning it would lay off up to 5,000 employees, or 5 percent of its work force, over the next 18 months, including 1,400 jobs today, marking the first time in its history that it has laid off workers across the company.

The announcement came as Microsoft posted quarterly results far short of analysts’ and its own expectations.

—snip—

The company said that jobs would be eliminated in research and development, marketing, sales, finance, legal, human resources, and IT. At the same time, the company said it would continue to hire in other areas, including its search business, so its work force would actually fall by between 2,000 and 3,000.

And Intel ouch.

Intel will close an aging computer chip factory in Hillsboro late this year, eliminating 1,000 positions as it ratchets back production in response to a spectacular decline in sales.

The 12-year-old facility, known as Fab 20, is one of five sites worldwide that Intel will shutter in 2009. As many as 6,000 workers will lose their jobs globally, about 7 percent of Intel’s total work force.

People have less money, they buy less stuff, then people lose jobs, meaning they have less money and buy less stuff…

Some really outstanding reporting by Columbian reporter Courtney Sherwood about the failure of Bank of Clark County, the first Washington bank seized by the state since 1993. Well worth a full read if you are trying to understand how a smaller bank got into such serious trouble. For starters, the bank began making riskier loans starting in 2005, according to The Columbian.

Another factor that seems to be worth focusing on is the issue of brokered deposits, which are (of all things) deposits made by brokers on behalf of clients, usually those seeking a higher rate of return. As Sherwood notes in her article, the FDIC has rules about this sort of thing.

With its core deposits falling, the Bank of Clark County appears to have sought out even more of the risky brokered deposits it had come to depend on. Over three months, it brought in $28.7 million this way, and brokered deposits climbed to 35.7 percent of all deposits.

Mounting loan troubles may have triggered an FDIC rule that forbids banks with lower capital ratios from taking on any more brokered deposits, though there’s not yet enough public data about the bank’s finances to be certain.

If I understand correctly, one reason brokered deposits can be risky is that large dollar amounts can quickly be pulled out of a bank when, for example, brokered CD’s expire and investors chase higher returns elsewhere. In other words, the use of brokered deposits is part of the mix, but too heavy a reliance can be dangerous.

The underlying cause of the failure, of course, was a collapse in real estate values. While it wasn’t a Southern California scale bubble, it was still a speculative bubble fueled by lax lending standards in the house buying, selling and financing industry. As we move forward, state and federal regulators (not to mention lawmakers) are going to have to come to grips with what worked and what didn’t work in terms of oversight.

Tomorrow night (Thursday) is NARAL Pro-Choice Washington’s annual Chocolate for Choice fundraiser, celebrating the 36th anniversary of Roe v. Wade, and if love chocolate and support reproductive rights, it’s an evening you don’t want to miss.  This is my third year as a “VIP chocolate judge,” and I always jump at the invitation.

Thursday, January 22, 2009
7-9pm
Safeco Field
1st Base Terrace Club
1250 First Ave South, Club Level

Tickets are only $40 at the door, and I promise you a tongue-dazzling selection of chocolate treats from 50 Seattle-area bakers, restaurants and chocolatiers.  Don’t miss it.

Russell Tice, former National Security Agency analyst, is on Keith Olbermann’s “Countdown” right now saying that the Administration wiretapped all communications of targeted journalists. He has not mentioned specific publications or individuals but did not reject Olbermann’s mention of The New York Times and Olbermann (MSNBC) himself…

This comes after Olbermann ran old video of Bush saying only individuals and groups suspected  of terrorist activities were targeted, only foreign communications, etc. etc.

Olbermann says he will have Tice on again tomorrow…

Also, Olbermann just said Caroline Kennedy has NOT withdrawn her name from consideration.

(Tice is a well-publicized whistleblower but it looks like he’s going to expand his revelations now that there’s promise of change.)