Geez. their theme song at the Weekly should be "Another on Bites the Dust" by Queen.

i like phillip dawdy's writing. his departure is a big loss for seattle weekly.

Wow. Philip Dawdy quit the Weekly!?! That was probably the only person left at the Weekly that:
1) could write a serious article.
2) gave a shit about Seattle
3) gave a shit about The Seattle Weekly.
Now all that's left are company "plug ins" rotated from their other chain papers and Nina and Rick what's-his face.
Philip's writing on mental health issues and the nanny state were, to my mind, the only reason left to read that paper.

I wish Philip would say why he quit.

Damn disrespectful? You quit, dude. Go away.

Philip did great work on the downtown height and density legislation.

can the stranger do an exit interview on any of these guys? i'd like to know what's going down over there.

Actually, #7 is a GREAT idea. Pick their brains.

ditto post #3...

stupid, stupid Seattle Weekly!

An aside: can the market handle a 3rd weekly?

Actually, #7 is a stupid idea. Who cares. Yawn.

Care to explain, Stacey? Some of us would like to know what has changed over at SW since the handover, and departed writers can provide good firsthand accounts.

The issue at the weekly mostly revolve around leadership, including both the local editors and the New Times suits, namely Andy Van de Voorde. Essentially, the weekly’s has turned into a puppet-regime, run by Andy, who lives in Denver. Editor Mark Fefer, fresh on the job, wants to keep his job and impress Andy. Therefore, he’s taking marching orders, careful not to rock the boat. Managing Editor Mike Seely is simply dumb. He too wants to keep his job and please Andy. However, Mark might have a better chance of maintaining a local, newsy flavor at the paper if his sidekick Mike isn’t around. Mike is old-school New Times. He’s green as an editor and a news reporter. We the staff are having a hard time digesting this situation. We believe we may have a better chance if Seely disappears.

I'm sure you can't divulge specifics and so I won't press you, but my curiosity leads me to wonder what sort of 'marching orders' those are.

Geov Parrish wrote about what happened at the Weekly for Eat the State!

http://eatthestate.org/11-03/SeattleWeeklyMe.htm

Is there anyone actually still writing at the Weekly? Seriously?

Nap XIV;
Film and music reviews increasingly come from other chain papers. "Ask a Mexican" comes from our "sister" paper OC Weekly. Our popular advertorial auto column "AutoTalk" obviously is from St. Louis (where our publisher is from he must of simply loved that advertorial!).
Our classifieds are pure BS just ads downloaded from Oodle. (that gem comes from Phoenix)
Our very stupid horoscope column comes from, I think, LA.
Date Girl is from NY.
Seattle office is sales, production, calendar and a few ed folks who are on their way out.

I doubt I got any business with them anymore. :(

I'm sure Dawdy appreciates your kind comments.

I was never one of the alternasnobs that hated the Weekly just because it wasn't the Stranger. Unlike Playboy, I read the Weekly for the articles, and they had some really good ones that the Stranger and the Dailies didn't cover. I found that if I read both the Stranger and the Weekly, the truth would fall somewhere in the middle.

It's a shame that such a good bunch of writers have had to find work in other places. Soon the P-I will follow suit with another bunch of writers having to look for work, most likely in other cities.

Perhaps another weekly could rise from the ashes and between The Stranger and this new weekly (in my mind named after Camus "The Plague") could kill off this new Seattle Weekly.

What about the new column, Ask an Uptight Seattleite?" Is the concept taken from somewhere else?

Uptight,
Yeah. It was taken from The Stranger. It's what the Stranger has been spoofing for 10 years.

'the plague' has nice symetry, but maybe 'sisyphus' might work as well.

I imagine the "Ask an Uptight Seattleite" column is a direct response to the flames they got over "Ask a Mexican". Oh, these uptight Seattleites don't like our syndicated column? Let's make fun of them for it!

FWIW, I actually don't mind "Ask a Mexican" -- what I object to is that it's not local content. I had read the column on the web before and it was OK. But give us local content.

And the "Ask an Uptight Seattleite" comes across as a whiny, pissy response from a bunch of out-of-towners just because Seattleites didn't welcome the changes at the Weekly with open arms.

The Weekly has sucked for a very, very long time -- but at least it was local content (mostly) which gave it some interest and value. I have no interest in a paper made up almost entirely of imported content.

I almost said Sisyphus. Maybe a column in the current Weakly could be written by a feauxmosexual called "Sissy Fuss." Sorry, I am baked.