So begins a post yesterday in the personal blog of Real Change publisher Tim Harris, and it’s easy to understand why. Apparently the Weekly is getting set to print a story next week that “exposes” Seattle’s homeless newspaper as employing, among its 250 vendors, a few people who are not entirely homeless, and even a handful who, by working countless hours, can make as much as $20,000 a year (without benefits)! The horrors!
Please don’t misunderstand. This sort of thing doesn’t piss me off because I once wrote for a paper with the same name. (I almost wrote “the same paper,” but, well, it’s not.) I don’t even care that Managing Editor Mike Seely would rather take personal potshots at me than address the indisputable fact that most Seattleites I hear from feel like his paper is now a pile of shit. I don’t know the reporter working on the Real Change story, Huan Hsu, who only came to Seattle two months ago. (Raising the question of who in the Weekly food chain thought up this story; the paper’s new owners, Village Voice Media (ne: New Times), have a history of kicking the homeless in some of their other cities.) I really don’t care about personal history or personalities here.
What pisses me off is when anyone – anyone – tries to make a buck or ingratiate themselves (e.g., with dimwitted readers) by pissing on the powerless. It’s one thing to lampoon the idiocies of Seattle liberalism; I might not agree with it (or think it’s well done), but it’s fair game. But trying to manufacture a “scandal” involving one of the few activist-initiated social service projects in town that truly does help people and change lives, all the time, is pure bullshit. Or, in Harris’ words, “What the Fuck”?
I guess the idea is to create buzz for the “new” Weekly by being bold and provocative (and irresponsible). Whatever. What Hsu and the Weekly will find is that Real Change’s vendors are often the downtrodden and powerless (“92% homeless or formerly homeless. 63% reporting a disability. 83% over 40. Illiterates. Addicts. Felons. Disabled people. Mentally ill people. Etcetera.,” writes Harris.) But Real Change as an institution has a lot of admirers in this community, and for an obvious reason: it has a better track record than any other media outlet in town (including the Weekly, and during my tenure there as well) in walking the talk and making this a better city.
We’ll see what the Weekly’s story is next week. But if it follows the arc that Tim Harris anticipates, Seattle Weekly will have only succeeded in further marginalizing itself.
who is geov?
Jesus, get out of the let me preach at you – pulpit, geov, Real Change is OK, very expensively funded, great jobs for the staff who print 16 pages twice a month….far from its original purposes…..of course
anger at the new Weekly, your former paycheck is silly…..between the PI Times Weekly and Stranger …..the who farted at City Hall stuff was just too too much
Yah, I actually talk to some of the Real Change vendors, and so I’m aware that some of them are not presently homeless. But the ones I know have been, and are in the process of making things better for themselves. So The Weakly wankers writing some “expose” on that fact would definitely smack of pissing on the powerless.
About the only thing I read in the Weakly anymore is “Ask an Uptight Seattle-ite”…. when it’s on, it gores some pretty sacred cows around here (and when it isn’t, it isn’t any lamer than the rest of the paper).
One thing I will give them credit for. There are usually plenty of copies in the box outside my local post office, and they are great for lining parrot cages.
Thanks, Geov – hope you are feeling well.
The reason I pick up Real Change at my local Safeway is because I want to help the vendor get off of the streets.
Is such a concept too difficult for Hsu to comprehend.
They probably view them as competition. New Times used to trade on solid investigative reporting. Those days are gone. They see the Stranger becoming a bit stodgy and figure now’s the time to go for it.
It reminds me of the 1993 Weekly cover “is Grunge too white?”
Rep. Dan Roach Provokes Uproar In Legislature
“By Associated Press
“OLYMPIA, Wash. (AP) – House Republicans lambasted trial lawyers during raucous debate Thursday but when one lawmaker singled out the Democratic House majority leader’s husband for scorn, the place erupted in shouts. …
“The presiding officer … called it the worst breach of decorum he’d ever seen in the Legislature.
“The debate was over the proposed Insurance Fair Conduct Act, which would prohibit the practice of delaying or denying a claim without proper cause. It would allow the policyholder to collect triple damages if the insurance company unreasonably denied a claim or violated unfair practice rules.
“From the start, Republicans denounced trial lawyers as money-grubbers who would hurt insurance companies, clog the courts and drive up premiums. … Rep. Doug Ericksen, R-Ferndale … said trial lawyers were pushing ‘an extreme, radical bill.’ …
“Insurance Committee Chairman Steve Kirby, D-Tacoma, retorted that the industry has some bad apples. ‘There is no incentive for insurance companies to pay claims on time or at all,’ he said ….
“Back and forth it went, with Speaker Pro Tem John Lovick, D-Mill Creek, trying unsuccessfully to rein in the rhetoric. … Then it got personal.
“Rep. Dan Roach, R-Bonney Lake, said it is ‘very, very concerning’ that only trial lawyers are pushing the bill. ‘This is not for the consumers,’ he said. …
“After being gaveled down for impugning the sponsors’ motives, he said, ‘Look out! The train is coming through! The Keith Kessler train is coming through and you better get out of the way. Whooo woooo!’ Roach cried, mimicking a train conductor tooting a whistle.
“Keith Kessler is … a former president of the state trial lawyers and the husband of House Majority Leader Lynn Kessler, D-Hoquiam. … Lawmakers aren’t supposed to refer to colleagues by name or criticize members’ families.
An angry Lynn Kessler demanded an apology. None was forthcoming …. Kessler stormed across the chamber to confront Roach and other Republicans. ‘What is wrong with you?’ she asked. ‘You can insult me, but not my spouse!’
“‘I signed up for the job, my family didn’t,’ Kessler, still furious, told reporters later. ‘… I have never in my 15 years here heard anyone insult … a spouse or a family member. It’s outrageous. …’ She said Roach is ‘just the epitome of someone who shouldn’t be in the Legislature. If you can’t be an adult here then you have no business being here. He made this institution look pretty shabby.’
“Keith Kessler said he listened to the debate on TVW’s Web site after his wife called him. ‘I thought, What has happened to common courtesy? He attacked my wife. I have never witnessed a personal attack on the House floor before. It was demeaning.'”
Quoted under Fair Use; for complete story and/or copyright info, see http://www.komotv.com/news/local/6896307.html
Roger Rabbit Commentary: Aside from the fact Dan Roach is an immature ass — which is so obvious it need not be mentioned — I want to point out that what Republican legislators object to is penalizing dishonest insurance companies that fatten their profits by denying or delaying legitimate claims. I suspect we’ve all had personal experience with that — I certainly have.
Memo to consumers: Next election, remember whose side the GOP is on … and it’s not yours.
If it’s any comfort to you, Geov, the last issue of the SW you helped write is the last issue I read, or ever will read.
But you really should get that colonoscopy, Geov. We’d all hate to lose you.
Which reminds me, I need to call the vet and make an appointment for mine. I’m overdue.
I know all of you (well … most of you) would hate to lose me. (wink) =;)
@1 If you don’t know, you need to spend less time in the can with toilet paper in your paws, and more time in the library with newspapers in your paws.
Geov,
Could the Weekly perceive Real Change as a threat, a competing paper?
Things have been going from bad to worse at the Weekly, but denigrating Real Change vendors for making too much money, would be a new low.
The country is awash in Republican scandals and the only thing Seattle Weekly can find to print a story about is some homeless guy making (gasp) $20,000 a year — with no benefits?
Nothing could more graphically demonstrate the paper’s irrelevance under its own ownership.
new not own
Geov,
Like Roger, I have not picked up the Weekly since you left, either. Roger, good call on that Roach piece. Keith Kessler has more integrity in his hemmorhoids than does Dan Roach. And, as you know, that insurance bill is a helluva piece of legislation. How could anything the insurance industry opposes not be proconsumer?
I stopped reading the dead-tree issue of the Weekly when the web edition started. I canceled my subscription to that version about 6 months ago. It wasn’t even worth clogging up my inbox.
I watched a rebroadcast on the public-access channel Wednesday night of a KEXP interview with Eric Klinenberg, the author of Fighting for Air: The Battle to Control America’s Media He pointed out that the original owners of the Weekly originally entertained bids from the then-competing Village Voice and New Times syndicates, and chose the former because they felt that organization was closer to their own liberal/progressive outlook, while the New Times folks were “gruff libertarians from Arizona”. In the long run it didn’t make any difference, because New Times ended up buying out Voice.
The surprise here is that Mike Seely is a local kid (his parents are friends of ours) and really ought to know better than to shit where he eats. By the time the operation wheezes its last breath, he’s probably going to have to leave town again to find his next gig.
I haven’t picked up a copy of the Weekly for months. I tried reading a few issues after they changed ownership but found it to be lacking in both wit and intelligence.
I’m with harry tuttle on this; I’ve been buying Real Change from the same person for 8 years now, and I do it so she can have a roof, however humble, over her head.
Seems like an odd story-line to me, but then its The Weekly. Working to get yourself off the street or working to keep yourself off the street is a distinction without a difference, in my view. The Real Change vendors I know and the people within the organization that I have seen all work very hard toward the same laudable goal of ending homelessness and building self-esteem. If some one manages to make $20,000 a year selling newspapers on corners and manages to keep a roof over his head in this city on that money, that sounds like a success story to me, not a scandal.
Back in October 2003, the Weekly wrote a story about a Real Change vender:
Let’s hope the upcoming Weekly article is as unbiased.
Nevertheless, I’m a firm believer in freedom of the press and the Weekly readers can always send in a Letter to the Editor.
Here’s the URL for the Weekly article, which appasrently didn’t come through in my previous posting:
http://www.seattleweekly.com/2.....l-work.php
Why don’t you have the cojones to wait until the article is published, instead of abusing the publication’s managing editor and seeming to doubt the writer’s integrity?
If we arejudged by the quality of our enemies, then Mike Seely is a journalist of the highest integrity.
Wake up, Jesus: Real Change has been weekly for two solid years. That’d be a tough feat to pull off on an all-volunteer basis.
None of you has read the story yet, but hey, don’t let that get in the way of some good, knee-jerk, righteous anger.
Let me get this straight, Geov. You critique an article that you haven’t even read, and then lambast The Weekly for shoddy journalism? That’s sort of funny, but mostly just pathetic.
Sadly, it seems your critical thinking skills haven’t improved since your days at The Stranger and The Weekly.
So, Geov, now that you’ve had a chance to read the article, which if anything was a testament to Real Change’s success, are we going to see a post acknowledging what an idiot you are?
I read the article this morning. Looks like Geov described it spot on. Joel Connelly, I know that your main news source is The Stranger blog-uh slog, but if you think Mike Seely is doing a good job, you are either judging his work by PI standards, or not reading it at all.