But it still won't get that 14 acres of prime downtown Seattle real estate between Denny Park and the Ban Roll On building developed - cause the developers pulled the plug today (front page major article in the Wall Street Journal, spills to a full page in the A section).

Which means no building along the streetcar route for most of it's length after Denny and no big increase in streetcar ridership.

Shutting down the grow ops just cuts the cash flow for big building investments ...

What's good for you is good for your staff.

As for Dom's header v. my header: I thought Dom's header seemed much angrier the post it appeared on top of, so I asked him to change it. It didn't work. My header is right in line with the tone of my post. It works.

Thank you for playing Slog.

I'm sharing your e-mail with the folks involved in the coverage and with
other decision-makers here. Take care. -- Leon Espinoza, executive news
editor

-----Original Message-----
From: ____ _ [mailto:______@______]
Sent: Friday, April 25, 2008 1:07 PM
To: Leon Espinoza
Subject: Question of fairness

Good afternoon, Mr. Espinoza.

I've been reading the continuing coverage over on The Stranger's Slog
regarding the recent pot bust article in The Seattle Times. I have to
say that The Stranger's staff raises some good questions about
objectivity, and about The Seattle Times' willingness to cover both
sides of the issue or not.

More specifically, they asked:
Do such raids work? Are they cost effective? Are they unnecessarily
dangerous, either to the police or the suspects? Do they actually reduce
the amount of pot on the streets? Do they make us any safer? Would
simply legalizing it make us safer? Does filling our prisons with
everyone involved in pot growing or smoking help or harm society in any
measurable way?

Will The Seattle Times be looking into these questions, and writing any
articles to address them?

Thank you,

_____ _____
Snohomish, WA

Ah, dammit, way to crush my beliefs in the omniscience of the Stranger writers. I thought you guys were hardwired into Slog 24/7. Other work to do? Besides read us bitching? What a letdown.

There's a bigger issue here, namely the establishment media's absolute failure in their entire raison d'être which (presumably) is informing the public.

We have more access to information than any other era in human history, yet Americans are even more ignorant, misinformed, and just downright stupid than ever.

There are no facts anymore in loo-loo Mainstream Media Land, only opinions and government press releases. Open lies--hello weapons of mass destruction--are published as without question. Remember that one White House correspondent who said she couldn't ask Bush about his lies since she was intimidated by the Office of the President? She's STILL a political correspondent!! (Of course).

FSM help me, I don't want to sound like one of those looney tunes commenters on Alternet or HuffPo, but for fuck's sake, how can people stand this Pravda-esque bullshit?

It's no wonder politicians treat the media and the public with such open contempt.

When can we start mailing them something?

Nah, I think anything Dan would dish out you'd like way too much. Unless it was taping your eyelids open and being forced to read ECB's posts while simultaneously listening to her read them. That might do it.

...that would have been awkward, anyway. Mike would have been cool about it. The other guy (whatever his name is shukubanakakaru) would have been a total douche.

@15

I love ECB's posts.

I mean if you want punishment, we will give you punishment you won't like.

Lazy reporting happens more often than good reporting because good reporting is more expensive -- much more expensive -- in terms of both time and money. Two things neither paper has much of right now.

What came first in the newspaper biz, the degenerating product or the degenerating business model? The degenerating product, actually, but now these papers are on a death spiral that's going to get worse before it gets better, so don't expect a big turnaround in depth of coverage on stories that are already conveniently covered in government press releases.

This all is a good opportunity for papers like the Stranger to pick up the slack and segue from their trademark snarky pee-pee bar-scene reporting to more useful reporting, but that doesn't seem to be happening. Or maybe the big, heavily researched Stranger cover story on the effects of the drug war is in production now. Looking forward to it.