I think a point that's gotten missed a lot in all the "WHERE THE HELL WERE YOU GUYS ALL DECADE?" shouting is that local journalism is important too.
The Port of Seattle has been run by corrupt incompetents for most of the last three decades. Our infrastructure is crumbling while Frank Chopp sits on his well-funded ass and refuses to let any transportation bills go through. Boeing's machinist strike last year was ruinous in ways that are only now becoming apparent. Eastern Washington's economy was deeply broken long before the credit crisis. We're a state divided in more ways than I can count, and nobody's doing the legwork to talk about it.
Since the P-I folded, the only paper in town is the Seattle Times, run by the Blethen family, deeply conservative, and arguably in the pockets of every power-broker and developer in town. Oh, and they're in financial trouble too. Their capacity and interest in investigative reporting is, shall we say, minimal.
The hope a number of us have is that the online P-I will become a model for the next generation of news reporting. It starts locally, and goes from there. My heart still goes out to the over 100 people at the paper who lost their jobs.
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The Port of Seattle has been run by corrupt incompetents for most of the last three decades. Our infrastructure is crumbling while Frank Chopp sits on his well-funded ass and refuses to let any transportation bills go through. Boeing's machinist strike last year was ruinous in ways that are only now becoming apparent. Eastern Washington's economy was deeply broken long before the credit crisis. We're a state divided in more ways than I can count, and nobody's doing the legwork to talk about it.
Since the P-I folded, the only paper in town is the Seattle Times, run by the Blethen family, deeply conservative, and arguably in the pockets of every power-broker and developer in town. Oh, and they're in financial trouble too. Their capacity and interest in investigative reporting is, shall we say, minimal.
The hope a number of us have is that the online P-I will become a model for the next generation of news reporting. It starts locally, and goes from there. My heart still goes out to the over 100 people at the paper who lost their jobs.