Goldy

“The terms of the President and Vice President shall end at noon on the 20th day of January, and the terms of Senators and Representatives at noon on the 3d day of January, of the years in which such terms would have ended if this article had not been ratified; and the terms of their successors shall then begin.”
— US Constitution, 20th Amendment

UPDATE:
Publicola: read the text of President Obama’s inaugural speech.

There was a lot of mention of God and faith in the speech, which has become pretty standard fare in modern American politics, but Obama did make a shout out to us “non-believers.”  I don’t know for sure, but I’m guessing that might be a first for a presidential inauguration speech.

The sudden collapse of our local news industry and the resulting mass exodus of political reporters is a bitter pill to swallow for those of us who believe that maintaining a vibrant Fourth Estate is absolutely critical to maintaining a vibrant democracy… but… well… every crisis also presents an opportunity.

That’s why I’m pleased to be playing my part in the launch of Publicola, Washington state’s newest news and opinion site.  Largely the editorial creation of former Stranger news editor Josh Feit, Publicola strives to help fill the void in state political reporting, while providing the kind of fresh writing and analysis online readers demand, and Josh has made great strides toward that goal by recruiting the likes of Sandeep Kaushik and Glenn Fleishman to help contribute to the site.

Publicola is also the first of a series of new and existing blogs and other websites to join HA under the umbrella of the newly created JOA News Co-op, an ambitious effort to share resources, content, traffic and revenues while creating a sustainable (and ultimately profitable) business model.  This new JOA is less of a business agreement and more of an ecosystem of tools and services… but more on that later.

In the meanwhile, be prepared for some big changes here at HA as I start to roll out the full suite of new features I’ve been developing.  And wish us luck.

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.