Even with the demise of the print P-I, hard times in the newspaper business have led to cost-cutting everywhere, and The Seattle Times has been consolidated to the point that most of the local news worth printing appears in the front section, rendering the metro section a hodgepodge of local crime shorts and lifestyle tidbits. Thank goodness, then, for Danny Westneat, the paper's lone metro columnist who upholds the standards set by Emmett Watson, Joel Connelly, Frank Lynch, John Reddin, Terry McDermott, Robert Jamieson, our own Rick Anderson, and the Susan Paynter. With the economy tops on everyone's mind, Westneat has found a way to dig up consistently compelling, well-reported columns on folks' street-level struggles, grounding anyone who begins to think there's a whiff of hope in the air. There is, but only in Canada. ?Mike Seely