Beautiful.

The Times called for the THIRD time yesterday after I cancelled in mid-October. The caller was clearly in a phone room, with many other voices audible behind him. The deal just kept getting better the longer we talked, finally down to a $1/week for 40 weeks. But its not about the money, I said. It's about trust. Say what you will with your editorials, but the ads were a step to far. He gave up at that point.

Seattle Met had a good piece recently about the continuing plunge in circulation, leaving them off the top 25 newspapers list for the first time.
http://www.seattlemet.com/news-and-profi…

#2 Glad you posted that link, showing the Seattle Times' continued circulation slide to obscurity.And I am even happier that you did not cave to the circulation shill.

This newspaper is not connecting with its community and has not for some time. The political ads are only part of the betrayal of trust story. Some journalists have bedded with the government agencies they are actually supposed to bird-dog. When that happened, I wrote the whole lot of them off. Too bad, because I do believe some reporters there are ethical. I hope they can find work elsewhere because this rag's days are numbered and Blethen and his YES advisors have only themselves to blame.

Not that we needed further proof that Frank Blethen is a fucking idiot, but here's further proof that Frank Blethen is a fucking idiot.

Having never been to Seattle, much less read the Seattle Times, I always figured The Stranger's hatred of the paper was just some kind of intra-industry bickering match, but holy fuck, how can a paper even pretend to practice journalism after this? "Experiment" my ass. Advertising my ass. If your paper buys ads supporting a political candidate, you have nothing more to say to people. @2 is right on. I wish I subscribed to the Times just so I could cancel.

Wouldn't it be cool if Seattle became the first big city not to have a daily newspaper, Goldy? Hi-5

After 30 years in the print-ad biz, let me say that the ads were really badly done: Generic, boring headlines, jumbly to look at. I'd heard about the ads before I saw them and really had to look hard to even find them. And it was a terrible idea from an ad-sales point of view because it never could have proved anything. AND nothing undermines ad sales more than undermining the credibility of the paper's content.

@7 What difference does it make? Currently the Seattle Times online has the headline "Ref. 74 supporters hanging on to hopes of a victory," while the Guardian, half a world away, told me eight hours ago "Washington joins Maine and Maryland in endorsing same sex marriage." Does anyone still work at the Seattle Times?

That's some fine, well deserved, spiking of the football, Goldy.

Sorry, that's @6.

I feel sorry for the journalists. Very sorry. The editorial staff, not so much. A couple of them have done major damage to this community with their one-note allegiance (that would be downtown business interests). Varner is way up there. Dickie and Ramsey complete the trifecta. They don't leave their offices and have no idea of the diversity of opinion out here in SLOGland.

Nothing like a little confirmation bias to start the day.

I'd love for a mole at the Times to pop in here and tell us how many cancellations there were over this.

@6 Seattle has a daily newspaper?

My biggest complaint about the paper is that its publisher and editorial board neither defend nor represent the interests and values of the city named in their banner. They routinely endorse candidates Seattleites uniformly reject, they defend shipping Boeing jobs to South Carolina, and they attempt to undermine an arena in Sodo in the service of building one in Bellevue. Etc.

That aside, the Seattle Times' problems are its own. It's Frank Blethen who gambled the family jewels with his foolish venture into Maine... and lost. Yeah, the economy and business model went south, but if the paper hadn't been leveraged to the hilt it could have survived this downturn without the newsroom cutbacks that have made the paper even less relevant.

Frank likes to present his paper as a public good. Maybe so. But if so, he's been a terrible steward of it.

Are there numbers so we can compare McKenna (2012) versus Rossi's performances (2008, 2004) in:

King County
The suburbs
The cities

Changes up or down, etc.

@8, Your argument about the Guardian vs. the Times actually demonstrates that the Times is the better source of accurate reporting, which is not, I don't think, the argument you meant to make. The Times isn't declaring a victory for R-74 because, as they say right in the article you cited, the state is still counting ballots and has not made the passage/failure official yet. Enough ballots have been counted to make it LIKELY it is going to pass, but it's not been made official yet (and "making it official" is not the Seattle Times's job, incidentally).

So, the Guardian is jumping the gun, declaring results that haven't been announced yet, and the Times is waiting, appropriately, for the official announcement (while also providing updated count figures) -- you know, so they don't end up "Dewey defeating Truman" the whole damn thing. Jesus. No wonder newspapers are dying. Everybody just believes everything they read online, even in newspapers from "half a world away."

The Times's advertising scheme was fucking bullshit, and every reporter who works there is as pissed about it as the rest of us. But it still doesn't change the fact those reporters are still working incredibly damn hard to do a good, unbiased job with their work. Keep that in mind while you're canceling your subscriptions. When the state has no newspapers left and all we have to rely on is the fucking Guardian, it's going to be a bad day for knowledge.

@16 Elections aren't really official until the state certifies them. It's media outlets that call elections, not the SOS office.

We called R-74 and the governor's race election night because the outcomes were obvious. Of course, it's possible we could be wrong, but would require some inexplicable late voter trend.

So the Times is just being over-cautious on R-74.

Frank Blethen's Dead Dog ftw!

@3 Name some names. I've got a pretty high opinion of the news staff (if not the ed board or ownership), which makes this whole thing all the more heartbreaking.

Well, the experiment may not have demonstrated anything concrete, but at least it only cost them $75000 and all of their credibility, which adds up to ... carry the one ... $75000.

@20: comment of the week.

Keep in mind, their own reporters called bullshit on one of their ads. The Seattle Times has a fact checking column, and they found that the company's ads "don't add up" (http://seattletimes.com/html/localnews/2…). Pretty cool stuff. I especially like the headline, since they could have easily spun the headline in a different way. In other words, while there may be plenty of reporter bias found in various parts of the paper, this suggests otherwise. I agree with the last paragraph of @16, there are still plenty of good reporters working there, but management is a bit nuts.

ever heard of something called Margin of Error Goldy? it's related to polling.

Bailo @15:

Have you ever heard of the internet? The answer to the county-level part of your question is trivially easy to locate. Here's 2008. For 2004, you'll have to do a bit of elementary school arithmetic (if you're capable of that).

Getting down to a finer split ("the suburbs", "cities") wouldn't be easy, but if you're willing to pay me $50/hour I'd give it a shot.

@16 OK, but the phrasing is entirely lacking.