Archives for November 2009

Few would dispute that one of the keys to the Seattle Times’ Darwinian triumph over the rival P-I was its success in altering the terms of their Joint Operating Agreement to allow the Blethens to shift publication from the afternoon to the morning. Afternoon papers had been declining for decades, and the Times was intent on avoiding what former Executive Editor Michael Fancher dubbed “death in the afternoon.”

Ironically, now that the dead-tree version of the P-I is dead, and the omnipresent Internet has compressed the news cycle to the point where it has disappeared entirely, I can’t help but wonder if a shift back to the afternoon slot might not be the Times’ best strategy for long-term print survival?

Conventional wisdom states that the rise of TV news conspired with changing demographics and commuting patterns to condemn most afternoon newspapers to a slow but inevitable death. While print and TV newsrooms both faced similar deadlines for their evening editions, the live format of the latter made their reports fresher in appearance if not in actually substance, and certainly took less effort to consume. The once-dominant afternoon papers still outnumbered their morning cousins as late as 1999, but they were gradually losing the battle against their 1950’s-era new media competition: TV. Nationally, paid daily afternoon newspaper circulation peaked in 1968 at about 37 million; by 2008 it was under 6 million. And falling.

The morning newspaper’s heyday was much more recent, with circulation peaking at 47 million as recently as 2003, but those numbers have declined nearly 9 percent over the past five years, and even that anemic performance is inflated by the continuing shift from afternoon to morning publication. Overall, daily newspaper circulation has declined 12 percent over past half decade to its lowest numbers since 1945. Afternoon paper circulation is now a little more than an afterthought, but the future of the morning paper looks just as dim.

The culprit today is of course the Internet, which makes the process of reporting, delivering and consuming news virtually instantaneous. For example, today at 5:43 AM PST, the AP buzzed a breaking news notification to my iPhone: “Weekly claims for jobless benefits plunge to 466,000, lowest level in more than a year.” That same “news” won’t be reported in the print edition of the Seattle Times until tomorrow morning, to be read by subscribers more than 24-hours after it broke. And the rest of tomorrow’s Times will be at least half a day old by the time subscribers extract it from its protective armor of rubber bands and plastic bags.

So really… why even bother?

It’s easy to imagine a not too distant future in which Seattle becomes a no-newspaper town, at least if you consider “paper” an integral part of the definition. That doesn’t mean the Times (or even the P-I) will necessarily cease to exist, just their print publication. But perhaps it doesn’t have to be that way?

With their modern typesetting and printing facilities, the Times could easily publish an afternoon edition filled with same-day news only a couple hours old… nearly, if not quite as up-to-date as their website. Newsprint may be an anachronistic medium for delivering news in the digital age, but it would be a little less so if the news it delivered wasn’t so damn old. Perhaps that’s not enough to compete with coming age of Kindles, Nooks, eReaders and iPads (or whatever Apple’s much anticipated tablet is called).

But perhaps it’s worth a try?

The recent execution-style murder of Officer Timothy Brenton has justifiably shaken the residents of Seattle. The suspect, Christopher Monfort, is most certainly the culprit. His car was seen at the crime scene, and when discovered at his apartment a few days later, police claim to have found DNA and ballistics evidence that links him to the crime. Monfort openly talked of waging war against the police, having previously sent threatening letters and is likely also responsible for firebombing several police cruisers. He’s expected to stand trial for these crimes, but I must strongly disagree with that decision. He should be permanently held as a war criminal and not given a trial at all.

There are a number of reasons why I’ve come to this conclusion. For one, a trial is exactly what Monfort wants. He wants to be given a stage to air his views and be seen as a Che Guevara-type figure. He’ll be able to speak freely and criticize the police. And this will fulfill his desire to go down as a martyr for his cause. In addition, the independent media, who are generally anti-police in their perspective, will never present his trial in the proper light. And finally, the city of Seattle simply shouldn’t be subjected to the painful sight of watching a defense attorney try to downplay the seriousness of Monfort’s crimes.

Obviously, I’m being facetious with this argument. It seems odd to consider not trying Monfort in a criminal court, even for crimes that we’re fairly certain he committed. But each of the reasons that former 9/11 co-commissioner Tom Kean gave in the links above are just as true for Christopher Monfort as they are for Khalid Shiekh Mohammed. The distinctions we make in order to separate the two are purely technical – he’s not an American citizen, we’re “at war” with the terrorists. Neither excuse changes the overall logic of having trials for people who’ve committed even the most heinous of crimes. And the excuses for not giving Mohammed a trial for his crimes are just as invalid and absurd as they are when applied to Monfort.

I’d still imagine that there are some who’ve thought (or maybe even still think) that whenever a crime like the murder of Officer Brenton is committed, that we can just do away with our centuries old system of due process and just hang the accused in the public square. But that impulse is usually blunted by the reality that we have a system here that works, and has worked for hundreds of years. Yet when the accused is from another part of the world or when the circumstances feel like a “war”, it gives people an excuse to follow that impulse, regardless of how illogical the rationale becomes. That’s how we end up with someone who was once considered your typical “moderate” Republican making extremist arguments like the ones Kean makes in that interview.

Trying Khalid Sheik Mohammed in an American court for his crimes is no more a danger than trying Monfort for his. We don’t fear the possibility that Monfort will have a trial in which he’ll have the right to representation and can speak only in court. Even people like me, who write about the kinds of police abuses that Monfort became agitated over, have no interest in listening to what that jackass has to say about it. The belief that this dynamic is somehow different in the Muslim world, in that a coward like Mohammad has the ear of large numbers of people, is rooted solely in prejudices about the Muslim world. There are certainly large numbers of people in the world who are agitated by some of the same things that Mohammed was agitated about (the plight of the Palestinians, brutal dictators propped up by the U.S.), but the vast majority of them know that killing 3000 civilians in New York is not the right way to respond to it.

The foundations of our justice system work for a reason. They don’t just work because America is great. America is great because those foundations work. They establish a basic set of rights that allow people to feel a basic sense of security that their liberty is protected – that we won’t wake up one day being tortured in a secret prison, accused of a crime that we didn’t commit and have no platform for refuting. And as some recent pieces of good reporting have shown, the fact that we don’t make assurances like that to the rest of the world is precisely what feeds the extremism against us. The idea that denying trials for the Khalid Sheik Mohammeds of the world is what will make us safer has it exactly backwards. If our struggle against terrorism is a battle of ideals, then abandoning our ideals is how we lose that struggle.

It is a special pre-Thanksgiving edition of Drinking Liberally for the Seattle chapter tonight. Festivities take place at the Montlake Ale House, 2307 24th Avenue E. beginning about 8:00 pm. A few of us will show up earlier than that for dinner.

As you might imagine…we’ll be talking us some turkey….

Not in Seattle? There is a good chance you live near one of the 341 other chapters of Drinking Liberally.

When did liberals become such prudes? Isn’t it odd that Seattle, unquestionably a liberal city, had an 18 year moratorium on strip clubs that was only recently lifted? And that lap dance proximity became a ballot measure just a few years ago?

Now it seems some of Seattle’s priggishness has sloughed off on Bellevue:

The sign for Knotty Bodies Espresso went up last Thursday at the intersection of Northeast Eighth Street and 164th Avenue Northeast, said resident Nick Bean, who took pictures of the bright-red hut and emailed them to other residents.

“I was incredulous,” he said.

The stand, in the Crossroads/ Lake Hills area, opened Saturday, and sure enough, the baristas were scantily clad, he said.

Apparently, baristas in bikinis aren’t Mr. Bean’s cup of tea. (Personally, I find the name “Knotty Bodies” pretty unappealing….)

But…scantily clad? Like…the way everyone is dressed at the beach, or at the pool? Okay…so beaches are not so much of a thing in this region. Good point. But still, scantily clad women adorn the cover of magazines in the family grocery store, seduce us into buying books in the most corporate of book stores, and are plastered all over the freaking TeeVee!

One concerned Bellevue resident (Bellevutian?), the mother of two children, points out:

There’s a bus stop near the espresso stand and several bus routes pass through the intersection, she said.

She is concerned that five bikini-clad baristas in Everett were charged with prostitution earlier this year.

“I really don’t think that’s an appropriate activity for children to witness,” she said.

I seriously doubt children are going to “witness prostitution,” per se, even under the dubious assumption that the coffee kiosk is a front for a prostitution ring. Yeah…they’re selling something wet and warm…it’s called Joe.

My advice for this woman and the other neo-puritans who are outraged: “go Amish.” Seriously, get a buggy and get off the grid.

If a bikini-clad barista is too much, then general proximity to American culture is simply not going to work for you.

I need to bake cookies, so in the meanwhile, here’s the video from last week’s roast of Geov Parrish.

Of all the tidbits from last’s night’s post-mayoral-election consultancy tell-all, the conversation about McGinn’s tunnel “flip-flop” was the one I was looking forward to the most:

Just two weeks before the Nov. 3 election, McGinn shocked many by saying he would no longer oppose the controversial, $4.2 billion tunnel replacement. McGinn made his announcement immediately after a City Council vote to move forward with the project.

McGinn campaign guru Bill Broadhead said his candidate made his statement after what he said was a surprise council vote, and McGinn wanted to emphasize he [would] “honor agreements.”

“He didn’t flip,” Broadhead said.

McGinn did flip, and he flipped his way into the mayor’s office, Neuman said.

“It was a brilliant move, genius,” said Neuman, who added she initially thought McGinn’s “flip/flop” would hurt him. “For the first five minutes, I thought, ‘yep, this is my Christmas present.’ Five minutes later, I thought, ‘oh, fill in the blank with your favorite four-letter word.’ This could really work for him. Flip-flopping is an inside baseball game. And Mike McGinn is no John Kerry, he can articulate things very well.”

Huh.

And what did I write at the time?

McGinn’s admission that a 9-0 council vote (not to mention the pro-tunnel stance of the governor and the legislature) is not something a mayor is likely to overcome shows a pragmatic side that I wasn’t sure he had coming into this campaign, and should help assuage the concerns of some who feared a vote for McGinn would be a vote for gridlock, both figuratively and literally.

I’d previously argued that McGinn had “overestimated the breadth and depth of popular opposition to the tunnel,” and that if he ended up losing, this was the issue that might have done him in. So I’m feeling kinda smart right about now.

I think the tunnel has always been a much more nuanced issue than it is usually made out to be. And in the end, voters turned out to be pretty damn nuanced as well. Who’d a thunk?

A curious happening greeted my cross-country news browsing this morning as I searched for something blog-worthy in Washington state. I looked to Publicola for firsthand coverage of last night’s Publicola-sponsored, post-election face-off between McGinn consultant Bill Broadhead and Mallahan consultant Jason Bennett, but found zilch. Yet there was a link to coverage of the event smack dab on the front page of the Seattle Times web site.

Two ironies. Last year, Publicola didn’t even exist, yet it was the fleet-footed, political reporting startup that sponsored last night’s intriguing consultant confessional, not the lumbering Times. And yet, the Times scooped Publicola on covering its own event, and by a long shot.

Despite Frank Blethen’s triumphant decades-long quest to turn Seattle into a one-newspaper town, I guess a little competition can be a good thing.

UPDATE:
Oh, and there’s coverage in the P-I too. Lazy, late-sleeping, Publicola bastards.

“Bomb squad called to Bothell newspaper box Sunday morning.”

Turned out it was just the Sunday edition of the Seattle Times. Common mistake.

I flew into Philadelphia yesterday in time to watch the Eagles-Bears game with my family, one of those typically frustrating Eagles performances where they can’t seem to get any rhythm going, yet show flashes of brilliance, only to eke out an unsatisfying win or a disappointing loss in the fourth quarter.

Last night it was one of those unsatisfying wins, and in reading the headlines in the Philadelphia Inquirer’s sports section this morning I was reminded of Phillies hall of fame third baseman Mike Schmidt’s classic quip on the city’s demanding fans: “Philadelphia is the only city, where you can experience the thrill of victory and the agony of reading about it the next day.”

True to form, the Inquirer headlines were far from celebratory. “Birds claw back in fourth quarter, avoid a grisly loss.” “Stumble and fumbles mar win.” “In night air, whiff of desperation.” “Eagles lucky that Bears were worse.” Apart from the score, about the most positive thing the Philadelphia headline writers could manage was an eye-roll of a grudging acknowledgment: “At last, a comeback.”

Now compare that to the headline in the Seattle Times after the Seahawks’ thorough ass-whooping at the 40-year-old hands of Brett Favre: “Favre has masterful performance against Hawks.”

Yeah, sure, the Hawks lost 35-9, but Favre had a masterful performance, so what could they do?

My point is, if at times I come off as a little critical of our media… well… I come by it honestly. This is the way we were trained to celebrate a win, so just imagine the way Philadelphia responds to a loss. Don’t get me wrong… we love our Eagles. But it’s a tough love. A very tough love.

And as an inveterate newspaper reader, that’s exactly the same way I love the media.

Carla Axtman discusses the pitfalls of dealing with race in politics.

Last week’s contest was Placentia, CA. The winner was wes.in.wa, with an assist from Liberal Scientist, who provided this map of California oil wells.

I think the server clock on HA is off by a bit, so if this wasn’t posted exactly at noon, my apologies.

Here’s this week’s contest, good luck!

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

With Senate Democrats securing the bare 60 votes needed to bring the healthcare reform bill to the floor for a full debate, it is important to note that had Washingtonians followed the Seattle Times advice, and elected Republican Mike McGavick over Democrat Maria Cantwell, healthcare reform would be dead. Completely and utterly dead.

So thank you, Frank Blethen, for consistently putting estate tax repeal above the welfare of your community.

I’ve been meaning to comment on David Brewster’s post-election analysis over at Crosscut — “A bad election for moderates” — but I just can’t work up the energy necessary to read it through a second time. So rather than a thorough, line-by-line fisking, I’d mostly just like to focus on the first few paragraphs.

I wish this change-election had gone further, empowering another new force: the independent center. Roping in disaffected independents is critical to resolving some of the big issues. But in most cases, the new faces from the vital center had trouble, and the electorate (and media) reverted to partisanship. What went wrong?

Start with Susan Hutchison, who bombed in her run for county executive against Dow Constantine, losing 59-41.

I’m not sure I buy Brewster’s notion that most independents are necessarily disaffected, or even that they are critical to resolving big issues, and I certainly don’t accept the existence of a partisan “electorate (and media)” as evidence that anything “went wrong.” And with Mike McGinn in the mayor’s office, and two newcomers on the city council, I don’t particularly “wish this change-election had gone further,” assuming that’s even what it was.

But the words “centrist,” “independent,” and “vital center” used in close association with the name Susan Hutchison? I mean… what the fuck?

Yeah, sure, Brewster goes on to criticize Hutchison for failing the “candor test,” but more from a strategery perspective than an ethical one.

I think her basic mistake was to rely on Dino Rossi’s aw-shucks strategy of brushing off all questions about divisive social issues, such as abortion (not a local issue, etc.) and her obvious-to-all past Republican leanings. Everyone knows, when you dodge issues like that, that you are probably on the conservative side, the less popular side, of the ledger, so nobody is really fooled.

“Probably on the conservative side”…? “Republican leanings“…? Hey David… could you throw in a few more caveats?

I thought the thesis of Brewster’s post was that this was “a bad election for moderates,” so how exactly is Hutchison’s failure to fool voters into thinking she is one, bad for Brewster’s mythical centrist voter?

But the stonewalling candidate looks inauthentic, untrustworthy, devious.

Hutchison didn’t just look inauthentic, untrustworthy and devious, she was inauthentic, untrustworthy and devious. That’s an important distinction.

It keeps the credibility issue alive in the media, enabling Constantine to win simply by charging that Hutchison was (gasp!) a Republican once.

“A Republican once“…? Yeah, like right up until the minute before she filed for a titularly nonpartisan office.

What kept the credibility issue alive in the media was Hutchison’s stunning lack of credibility. And by the way, what exactly is wrong with Constantine (gasp!) educating voters about Hutchison’s obvious-to-all Republican affiliation? Aren’t voters better served by being more informed, rather than less?

To get the independents’ vote, you have to level with them, avoid political evasions, be your authentic self.

Except, you know, when your authentic self is a far-right-wing, intelligent-design-promoting, climate-change-denying, in-bed-with-the-BIAW, ideologically rigid conservative Republican.

(Query: Can anchorpersons actually retain an authentic self after years on the banquet circuit and on the tube?)

Answer: Yes. And perhaps that helps explain why an aging Jean Enersen still has an anchor job while an aging Susan Hutchison doesn’t.

Too, Hutchison’s past, from what I can tell talking with people who knew her in unguarded moments in recent years, was quite conservative.

Again with the caveats.

She probably wasn’t going to be able to come off as a new version of Jennifer Dunn, the popular Eastside Republican congresswoman with many decidedly moderate views on education and the environment.

Jennifer Dunn wouldn’t be able to come off today as the kind of moderate Republican Brewster wistfully imagines her to be.

Not a good choice if the GOP really wants to capture the independents and the center.

“Capture” the center? And what… hold them hostage? Ship ’em off to Gitmo? Water-board them into voting Republican? Strikes me as an odd but apt turn of phrase, considering Brewster’s analysis thus far.

I agree that Hutchison was not a good choice if the GOP wants to appeal to independents and the center, but rather than attempting to capture these voters through lies and deceit, perhaps Republicans should attempt to remake their party by running and endorsing moderate, independent-minded candidates?

You can’t wish your past away, and if you don’t put those values out there, saying you’ve changed in some regards and want to build on some other beliefs you consider core, you just look false and unprepared.

Um… but what if, like Hutchison, you haven’t magically “changed in some regards” simply because the office you’re running for has recently been made officially nonpartisan? What if, like Hutchison, you are false and unprepared?

(Congressman Dave Reichert, for instance, hardly denies that he once was a sheriff.)

Huh? I think that parenthetical line is supposed to be a joke. Either that, or a sign of early onset Alzheimer’s.

The Democrats had only to warn that the “real” Hutchison (fill in the blank with whatever fears you may have) would emerge after the election. Who wants to chance that, particularly with someone so totally inexperienced?

Who would want to chance that? At last count, only 40.68% of King County voters… about the same percent that supported David Irons, a man whose mother accused him of beating her.

Which raises the question: how exactly does Brewster define the word “centrist?”

Is Brewster referring to the ideological center, a somewhat vague and fluid fulcrum between left and right, liberal and conservative, that tends to wander slightly over time? Or does he mean the electoral center, a still vague, but somewhat more quantifiable space that, in a given election, in a given jurisdiction, is large enough to hold at least a bare majority of voters?

By either definition I suppose Hutchison could accurately be described as a centrist… in, say, Lewis County, or in Alabama. But here in King County? Not so much.

Indeed in King County, it’s Dow Constantine who is the centrist, as evidenced by his ability to capture nearly 60% of the vote in a hotly contested race.

So who was this election really bad for? Not moderates. Not centrists. Not independents. It was bad for Republicans.

No doubt Brewster longs for some sort of Republican revival, whatever the label, if only to keep the local Democratic majority in check. Hell, I’m no fan of one-party rule either, and I too fear that without viable challengers from without or within, the Democratic leadership will grow fat, lazy and ineffective. But not having lived through the Dan Evans era, my political judgement isn’t clouded by a nostalgia that fails to differentiate between, say, the Bruce Chapman of then and the Bruce Chapman of today.

I’d argue that the center is alive and well in King County politics, and firmly in control of the reins of power. Both Ross Hunter and Fred Jarrett, who Brewster lauds as “highly regarded suburban moderates” would have been Republicans twenty years ago… in fact, just two years ago, Jarrett was. Now Jarrett has become the number two man in King County government, while Hunter will continue to control the House Finance Committee, from which he can effectively block the progressive tax structure reforms the more liberal wing of his caucus is quietly clamoring for. Indeed, as evidenced by their acquiescence on last session’s all-cuts budget, even the supposedly liberal Seattle legislative delegation reliably votes well to the ideological right of their constituents.

If anything, we don’t need any further checks on Seattle liberals, we need them to get up off their collective ass and deliver the economic justice and tax fairness they’ve been promising for decades. Or at least, get off their ass and try to deliver it. Trying would be a good first step.

As for Republicans, it’s not a rigidly partisan Democratic electorate that is denying them victory, even in so-called “nonpartisan” races, but rather the GOP’s own pathological slide to the far right. Had Hutchison won, based on name ID, smiles and lies, it would have done nothing to improve the GOP’s long term prospects, and nothing to serve the interests of the moderates who Brewster implies shared in Hutchison’s loss. Any Republican victory based on strategy alone will only delay the reformation the GOP needs to embrace in order to bring their party closer in line with the values of the majority of King County voters.

So if Brewster really wants to see local Republicans come back to a point of political relevance, my suggestion is that he stop coddling them. It’s not their strategy that is at fault. It’s not their lack of candor. It’s their extremist views.

And I just don’t see how the electoral loss of an extremist like Hutchison supports the thesis that this was a bad election for moderates.

Why am I drinking Mike McGinn’s wine? Because he was out of beer.

Yeah, sure, I didn’t actually work for McGinn, and in fact, I voted for Mayor Nickels in the primary. But I gave McGinn my vote in the general election, and since I don’t expect a job offer in return, and he was holding a victory party down in my neck of the woods, I thought I’d stop by and grab myself a free drink or two.

And it was quite a party, filled with folks celebrating not just a new mayor, but a new regime in which the powers that be, no longer are.

That said, there were still quite a few familiar political faces in attendance, but fortified by the good cheer of the crowd (and a little of Mike McGinn’s wine) I’m willing to give the new mayor and his supporters the benefit of the doubt. At the best, we could be on the verge of one of the most progressive and effective administrations Seattle has ever seen. At the worst, it’ll at least be fun to watch.

Cheers.