Goldy

We all know that Hearst intends to shut down the Seattle P-I within 60 days, but it looks like their coverage of the legislative session has already ended :

Chris McGann, our outstanding state government reporter, resigned this morning to go to work as Communications Director for State Treasurer James McIntire.

As I quipped at the time of David Postman’s departure from the Seattle Times, if many more reporters quit the business to go into media relations, pretty soon there won’t be any media left with whom to relate.

Of course there are political reporters available, and I could hire them for relatively little money.  So if you believe that independent political reporting is absolutely essential to our democracy, and you’ve got some money to help support it, drop me an email.

Classes will stop region wide and throughout the nation Tuesday morning, as school officials give students a chance to watch the historic swearing in of Barack Obama, our first African American president.  Except down in Federal Way, where kids will have to find something else to do unless they bring in a signed permission form from their parents.

Hell… I’m all for parental control and participation, but I can’t really imagine a good reason for a parent to deny permission for their child to watch history in action, and I can’t imagine a good reason for a school district to give parents that option.  But then, this is Federal Way, the same school district that imposed a moratorium on the showing of Al Gore’s documentary An Inconvenient Truth .

Forget Obama… it’s time to inaugurate a new Federal Way school board.

The League of Education Voters has released it’s annual Citizen’s Report Card , and Washington’s education system is far from making the honor roll:

And that’s an improvement from the previous two report cards.

But, you know, if that’s good enough for Washington’s children, it’s better to just cut education funding rather than even starting a conversation about raising additional revenues.

I’ve been neck deep in tech stuff recently, preparing for some cool new stuff in the HA universe, so I haven’t been writing much recently.  But I will again.  And soon.

So please be patient.

Crying in your beer over the impending demise of the Seattle P-I?  Well join the sobfest tonight at the Seattle chapter of Drinking Liberally, which meets every Tuesday night from 8PM onwards at the Montlake Ale House, 2307 24th Avenue E. As always, some folks will show up earlier for dinner.

If you’re not in the Seattle area, no worries. check out the Drinking Liberally web site for dates and times of a chapter within snowshoeing distance from you.

It’s been a rough night, but I think I have the software upgrade mostly functional.  You shouldn’t notice any changes at this point, but if you do, let me know.  Especially look for things I might have broken.

Once I’m comfortable the upgrade is stable, we can start rolling out some new features.

Comment threads have been temporarily disabled as I upgrade HA’s software.  Expect service interruptions.

UPDATE:
Commenting has been enabled.

Well, it’s official:

The Seattle P-I is being put up for sale, and if after 60 days it has not sold, it will either be turned into a Web-only publication or discontinued entirely.

“One thing is clear: at the end of the sale process, we do not see ourselves publishing in print,” said Steven Swartz, president of the Hearst Corp.’s newspaper division.

At the end of the next decade I think we’ll see a lot of cities without daily newspapers publishing in print, but it’s still sad to see it happen in the here and now.

I sure hope Hearst does invest in a web-only venture, but if they don’t, and they can’t find a buyer, I’ll be sure to put my bid in.  It couldn’t hurt.

So how is it that KING-5 TV has “a source close to the deal” telling them that the sale (and ultimate closure) of the Seattle P-I is imminent, while everybody at the P-I and the rival Times seemed to have been totally in the dark?  Could it be that KING-5 got the scoop on the deal because they’re at the heart of it?

That’s the rumor that’s making the rounds now, which has Hearst in a deal to buy KING-5’s parent company Belo Corp., and it’s 20 TV stations, thus being forced offload the P-I in compliance with the FCC’s cross-ownership rules.  And since nobody’s buying newspapers these days, that’s essentially a death sentence for Seattle’s oldest daily.

Expect light posting from me the next few days, and perhaps a few service interruptions, as I implement some major upgrades under the hood in preparation for some exciting new changes here at HA.  Stay tuned and be patient.

KING-5 is reporting that the Hearst Corporation is putting the Seattle P-I up for sale… a prelude to the folding of Seattle’s first daily newspaper.

[A] source close to the deal tells KING 5 that the paper’s owner, Hearst Corporation, will announce as soon as tomorrow that it’s putting the P-I up for sale. Under the joint operating agreement between the P-I and The Seattle Times, the P-I must be offered for sale for at least 30 days before it can cease operation.

[…] We’re told Hearst does not expect another buyer to step forward and that Seattle will likely become a one newspaper town within the next few months.

Fuck.

Ironically, there’s been much chatter recently about the Seattle Times’ fast deteriorating financial situation, with speculation that the Blethen family might be forced to sell or shut down it’s paper.  Hmm.  I wonder if Seattle might become a no-newspaper town?

No doubt you have a damn good reason for closing down such a large chunk of Rainier Ave South, but when you detour traffic from such a major arterial, you might want to think about placing the detour signs along the entire route, instead of just leading us into the hills above Renton, and leaving us to figure out the rest by ourselves. (The u-turn on Waters ST followed by the sharp right on Holyoke was not intuitive.)

I’m just sayin’….