McClatchy Will Sell. Will Frank Buy?

The McClatchy Co., which inherited a 49.5% share of the Seattle Times Co. when it bought Knight-Ridder, says it's ready to offload the troublesome stake in Frank Blethen's struggling business. So will Blethen step up and buy back his baby, as Brian Miller suggested a few months ago? Can he afford it? Has he successfully talked down the price? Or will Girl About Town step in with her own competing bid and turn it into a Seattle-based Tiger Beat?

Topics: Media

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Times Discovers South Park

I read Ty Beason's weekend story in The Seattle Times' Pacific Northwest magazine with interest. Young creative types are moving south to affordable hoods like South Park? It almost seems like a trend, something familiar, something I've possibly written before?

Yup, one of the subjects photographed (but not quoted) in the Beason piece was also a source of mine for this 2002 story. When I visited, the young creative types were still fixing up their bargain homes. They had dogs. Now as Beason's visiting, they have kids. And thus the story advances from alt-weekly to metro daily. Can Dwell and Sunset magazines be far behind?

Topics: Media and Real Estate

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Chicago Tribune: War Dead No Longer Front Page News

They didn't see today's Times.

Topics: Media

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L-Train's Bullets on KOMO

As part of our ongoing partnership with KOMO-4, the ABC affiliate broadcast a version of Laura Onstot's piece on ammunition coding last night at 11. Watch it here.

Topics: Media

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Vaginagate's Happy Ending

Remember those vadgetastic Vagina Monologues ads that the Seattle Times refused to print? Well, Times or not, they proved pretty successful, as both performances were at or near capacity at MOHAI this past Sunday, Lauren Simonds is happy to report. Simonds, you'll recall, is the executive director of the event's main sponsor, the National Council of Jewish Women's Seattle chapter, which had to hire security after receiving anti-Semitic phone threats in response to the Daily Weekly's initial dispatch on the controversy. But aside from a minor scare, Sunday's performances went swimmingly. Says Simonds: "The performances were exceptional! The 4PM show was sold out, and the 7PM show was very well attended. We had one non-violent incident with a suspicious person whom our security spoke with, and when he was clear that he did not intend to purchase a ticket, he was asked to leave since it was after 5PM and therefore the museum was not open to the public."

Topics: Media

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The Weekly on KOMO-4

We've got an exciting new partnership with KOMO-4 that came into your living rooms for the first time last night, wherein Seattle's ABC affiliate will regularly take our stories and give them the small screen treatment on its 11 p.m. newscast. Last night, KOMO broadcast its version of Aimee Curl's story on a stealth loophole in the city's Alcohol Impact Area booze ban. To view, go here and click "watch the story." Tuesday and Wednesday will be the nights you will be most likely to catch the Weekly on KOMO's 11 o'clock news. Maybe they'll even let Kornelis rant about the Bremerton ferry every so often. We can only hope.

Topics: Media

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Vagina Censorship Spreads to Cali

This time, it's an L.A. high school that has chosen not to allow publication of a vagina in its student newspaper. The image, a diagram of the female genitalia, was to have run on the front page of Grover Cleveland High's Valentine's Day issue, accompanying — you guessed it — a story on Eve Ensler's Vagina Monlogues. Meanwhile, locally, the National Council of Jewish Women has hired security to ensure that this Sunday's performances at MOHAI go off without an anti-Semitic hitch, as the organization has received a handful of threatening phone calls in the wake of this item last week.

Topics: Media

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Hanoi Jane Drops a C-Bomb

Less than a week after The Seattle Times' clitoriphobia rocked Seattle's Jewish and Vagina Monologue-loving communities, Jane Fonda went on the Today show to discuss Eve Ensler's V-Day play and let the word "cunt" slip into the ears of millions. Fonda, as you might recall, isn't British — so the C-Bomb she dropped is a million times more potent than its trans-Atlantic counterpart.

Topics: Media

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NYT Discovers Exciting Seattle Neighborhood/Trend

OK, sometimes it's too easy to laugh at the national reporters who parachute into town and then try to write up some kind of in-the-know account full of exciting local color. But still, even by the normally weak standards that apply, there's something especially pathetic about today's NYT story on how Seattle is becoming the next Silicon Valley (mentioned in Laura's post below). Leaving aside the fact that the piece seems about ten years past its date and, well, to me personally, slightly familiar, it's also just so off.
"Stroll through the hip Fremont District and you will sense the Valley vibe," says writer John Markoff. Yeah, no kidding, John. The once-unique and "hip" Fremont "district" is now indistinguishable from downtown Palo Alto. Most people here don't consider that progress. "Technology start-ups are sprouting up amid quirky neighborhood landmarks like a bronze statue of Lenin and the Fremont Troll, the giant concrete creature lurking beneath the George Washington Memorial Bridge." Oh, John. You know us better than we know ourselves.

Topics: Media

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Amazon Swallows Up Audible

If you're a regular NPR podcast listener, you regularly hear the phrase: "Support for our podcast is provided by Audible.com." Their specialty is a massive store of books and audio media reports all as downloadable MP3s because really, does anyone get them on tape any more? Or even CD? Today Amazon announced that it purchased the online literary listening source for $300 million. The question is, will I be able to keep listening to This American Life for free?

Topics: Media

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