Goldy

Yesterday’s Seattle Times piece on Seattle DOT’s salt-free snow removal policy apparently struck a nerve with frustrated readers, at least judging by the four follow-up stories and editorials in today’s edition, plus two more in today’s Seattle P-I.

Huh.  It turns out the lack of salt can cause high blood pressure too.  Who knew?

Mayor Nickels better hope the city thaws out soon, before the nascent Frozenwatergate scandal threatens his reelection prospects.  But for all the calls for the city to change its no-salt policy, it’s likely way too late for the current storm system, if not much of the winter season.  A no-salt policy means that the city stockpiles… um… no salt.  And anybody who’s trekked to their local Home Depot this week in hopes of buying some rock salt knows that it is usually in shortest supply when it is needed most.

With many of the city’s major arterials glaciated over the past week, including much of the downtown, the city will no doubt reevaluate its no-salt policy.  But deciding to use salt, and having it available to use are two different things, so for now we’ll just have to wait for rain and warmer weather to melt our icy streets.

Apparently, unlike the state Department of Transportation, and transportation officials in most major cities, Seattle refuses to apply salt to city’s icy roads, for fear of runoff into Puget Sound… which is, of course, salty.  Huh.

Whatever.

No doubt our city’s salt-free road clearing policy is an inconvenience to folks like me without four-wheel drive, but there is a side benefit that every car owner enjoys… our cars last longer out here.  A helluva lot longer.

My first car was a 1964 Mercury Comet, which I acquired shortly after moving here in 1992, and it sure wasn’t the oddity it would have been back in Philadelphia or New York, where road salt would have long ago digested its parts into a pile of rust.  Folks simply didn’t drive thirty-year-old cars back East, unless they were well cared for classics, but hunks of steel like the Comet were a pretty common sight back in the 1990’s, before the invasion of the Priuses.  (Prii?)

So I don’t know how much Seattle DOT’s salt-free diet does to save the Sound, but it certainly saves our cars, thus I and my rust-free, 8-year-old Altima have no complaints.

Just spoke with Will, who reported with pride the SUVs braving Belltown’s icy streets to buy crack from the dealers in the alley behind his building.  I guess all it takes to keep our local economy going through this wintery mess is a little motivation and a good, old fashioned, American entrepreneurial spirit.

While one needn’t design a transit system to deal with weather conditions that occur once or twice a decade, it’s important to note the failure of our region’s bus system to operate anywhere near full capacity during our week of snow and sub-zero temperatures.  Light rail and street cars, on the other hand, they can handle nearly anything our Puget Sound climate can throw at them, as long as trains are run frequently enough to prevent the overhead power lines from icing over.

I don’t point this out as some sort of I told you so, or as a bit of advocacy for even more rail, but rather as an observation about differing attitudes toward transit in cities with rail versus those without.  Those of us who grew up in cities with extensive rail systems expect transit to be reliable, because… well… it generally is.  In cities like Seattle however, we merely expect transit to be somewhat reliable, conditions permitting.  Snow, floods, traffic jams and accidents… that sorta shit happens, and bus commuters learn to deal with it.  (Whether your employer is willing to deal with you missing a week or more of work because your bus route was canceled, well, that’s another story.)

I think over time, as more rail comes online, and more commuters grow accustomed to its comfort and reliability, attitudes toward transit in this region will gradually change.  No longer looked down upon as mostly an alternative for folks who can’t afford to drive, we will eventually become both more appreciative of our transit system, and more demanding.  And that’s a good thing.

I just watched a bit of 60 Minutes for the first time in God knows how long, and I learned that Andy Rooney is still alive.  Sorta.

Who knew?

I parked my car by my house Wednesday afternoon, not really believing the weather would live up to the dire forecasts, and there it remains for at least a couple more days, if not a week. Silly me.

Coming from Philadelphia, I know how to drive on ice and snow, and therefore I also know when not to drive.  I have no four-wheel-drive, no traction control, and no ABS, and while I might be able maneuver down my hill without fish tailing into the cars parked on either side… I might not.  The relatively passable Rainier Ave. tantalizingly beckons only a couple blocks away, but for now I can only reach it on foot.

I can’t say I’m bored, but I’m certainly a little stir crazy, so this afternoon I’ll pass some time by hiking a couple miles back and forth to the Viet Wah to pick up a few supplies.  (I’m out of goddamn garlic, and I’m craving fresh ginger.)  And I imagine tomorrow, I’ll take the bus somewhere… anywhere… if only for a change of scene and some face to face conversation.

I suppose I could get me one of those four-wheel-drive trucks or SUVs to get me off my hill on those handful of days every few years when the roads actually demand traction… and, you know… I actually need to go somewhere… but I’ve got a better solution.  A few years from now, the next time one of these big storms hit, I intend to be living walking distance from a light rail station.  Sure, I’ll miss the view from my hill, but I’ll love the year-round convenience.

Speaking of desperate Times, more bad news may be coming for the struggling Seattle-area newspaper as longtime advertiser Windermere Real Estate mulls pulling out of the Sunday Times, and taking its four pages a week of advertising with it.  And if Windermere goes, could other realtors be far behind?

In recent meetings, Windermere managers have advised agents of the possible end to the weekly, multi-page advertising buy, which has been a fixture in the Times’ real estate section for… well… forever.  Agents were told that with 87-percent of clients now coming to Windermere via the Internet, management is exploring whether newspaper ads still provide a sufficient return on investment to justify their cost.

Managers also cited what they saw as relentless and overly gloom-and-doomish coverage of the local real estate market on the Times’ front page, complaining that compared to the rest of the nation the local market is actually much healthier than the Times reports.  I guess the thinking is, why spend money advertising in a paper that’s actually hurting your business?

But whatever the reason, chalk up yet another formerly steady revenue source on which the dailies can no longer rely.

In the latest sign of their increasingly desperate financial situation, the Seattle Times instructed about 500 managers and non-unionized employees to take one week unpaid leave by February 28.  The Times would not reveal the amount of money it expected to save by the mandatory action, only that it needed to achieve cost savings early in the coming year.

Scary time to be in the news biz.

[NOTE:  I’m not sure what happened, but the server burped and I lost this post, and all its comments.  Strange.  So please add your comments to the thread again.]

With a budget battle brewing in what will be one of the most consequential legislative sessions in years, the number of journalists covering our state government has plummeted:

During the past 15 years, the state population has increased by 25 percent and the amount of tax money spent by the state has more than doubled. Yet the number of print, television and radio journalists covering the state Legislature full time has dropped by about 70 percent.

[…] In 1993, there were 34 journalists covering the Washington state Legislature. By 2007, there were 17. This year, there may be as few as 10 full-time journalists, mostly newspaper reporters.

We are facing the prospect of a huge hole in political coverage, with potentially devastating results for our state’s citizenry, but it’s also an opportunity for new media to rise to the task and help fill the void.  I thought about heading down to Olympia myself for the session, or hiring some youngster at slave wages to do it for me, but what’s really needed is a seasoned reporter who knows the ropes.  You know… like Josh Feit, who has been covering the Capitol for years.

The problem, of course, is the money.  It’ll cost HA about $15,000 in salary and expenses to pay Josh to cover this four month session… and that’s on top of the money I ultimately need to raise to support myself.  And I’d like to hear from you, my readers, whether you think it is worth it?

I don’t expect to raise all, or even most of the money in an online fund drive; I’m pursuing larger commitments from individuals and interest groups eager to see more in depth coverage of the coming session while promoting the growth of independent media.  But it all starts with your support.

So let me know what you think about these ambitious plans, and we’ll move on from there.

Paul Weyrich, one of the founders of the Heritage Institute, and a leading force in the modern Conservative movement, died this morning at age 66.  No cause of death was reported, but I’m guessing it was of a broken heart.

… at least by Seattle standards.  I’m guessing in Erie, PA, not so much, but here in Seattle, who could argue?  It’s just a shame to have canceled school yesterday based on the possibility of snow.

Now let’s see if the various districts have the common sense to just call off tomorrow in advance, and let everybody officially start Winter break early.

School let out about an hour and half ago, and the first few drops of rain are starting fall.  But still no sign of snow.

What do you think the chances are that Seattle schools will be open tomorrow, when the roads will be considerably icier than today?

I’ll be on KUOW’s The Conversation today at around 1:30PM, talking about the most underreported news stories of the year.

My contribution?  Well, it’s an underreported aspect of a heavily reported story: the long term structural revenue deficit at the heart of our state’s current $5 billion-plus budget shortfall.

Good economies mask the problem while bad economies, like our current one, merely exacerbate it.  But no matter how you futz the numbers, long term tax revenues simply cannot keep pace with economic growth or growth in demand for public services.  That’s a fact.

So what we’re getting by default is an ever shrinking government by the only metric that really matters, and we’re getting it without any public debate.

What Dan said…

Once again here’s my surefire plan for saving daily papers: scare away the old folks once and for all. Those readers are killing you. Go tab, charge a lot more for home delivery, offer papers for free in boxes downtown, put “fuck” in a headline on the front page above the fold (if you haven’t gone tab), identify with the cities you’re freakin’ named for (and the not the freakin’ suburb your publisher lives in), and stop swimming with one anvil tucked under your left arm (“family newspaper”) and another tucked under your right (“objectivity”). Papers are for adults, not children, and mincing around about profanity turns off adult readers; people prefer openly biased media because letting your bias hang out there is, at least, honest; and, once again, catering to old timers and making sure there’s nothing in your paper that can’t be read to a six year-old at bedtime turns off adult readers.

And do all this now.

I’d add to that: think of your reporters as writers.  And as such, allow your writers to express their personalities in their writing.  Readers want to trust your reporters, but it’s much easier to develop that sort of personal relationship with a real person than it is with a faceless, disembodied byline.