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Friday, October 19, 2012

2012 The Other Seattle Times Scandal: Penmanship.

Posted by Eli Sanders on Fri, Oct 19, 2012 at 9:09 AM

Over 100 Seattle Times employees have signed a letter protesting their company's purchase of political ads favoring Republican Rob McKenna and the Approve R-74 campaign. But, uh, it's a little hard to figure out exactly who signed:

The most interesting signature I've been able to make out so far is the one in the upper right below. (Dissent within the Blethen family?) Runner up for most interesting: that "signature" in the upper left below. (Did someone get cold feet or is that just the most amazing autograph in the building?)

Anyway, I figured I'd crowd-source this one. Sloggers, for posterity, or just to waste some time on a Friday morning, can you figure out who all signed this thing? (And, by the way, I'm told some people in the newsroom didn't sign because they were involved in reporting or editing the paper's story about the letter.)

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L'Étrangere should do a penmanship review and reveal of their own! Un petît "compare et contrast," perhaps?

Posted by treacle on October 19, 2012 at 9:24 AM

People that write a lot if longhand quickly tend to develop ugly script. Doctors being the canonical example but I would imagine even today reporters fit that catagory.

Posted by david on October 19, 2012 at 9:30 AM

I bet Frank is getting to know each and every one. Guess who will be first to get pink slipped.

Posted by Pope Peabrain on October 19, 2012 at 9:37 AM

That one in the upper left hand corner is someone who signed, then got cold feet about having done so and just drew a squiggly line through their previously legible signature. I mean, it has to be.

Posted by mikethehammer on October 19, 2012 at 9:44 AM

One in the upper left looks like a squiggly line through J. Balter to me.

Posted by ratcityreprobate on October 19, 2012 at 9:59 AM

To me it looks like the signer on page 1 just realized s/he was about to duplicate its signature (the loops of the G, l, and f match the first signature) and squiggled it out. Too bad Lynn Thompson has a short memory and signed twice.

Posted by Keister Button on October 19, 2012 at 10:02 AM

I'm not gonna throw stones. My handwriting looks like a serial killer's handwriting.

Posted by Paul Constant

on October 19, 2012 at 10:12 AM

Everybody should go back and repeat 2nd grade. Except for me. I have fantastic handwriting.

Posted by care bear on October 19, 2012 at 10:15 AM

@7 This is true.

Posted by Anna Minard on October 19, 2012 at 10:15 AM

Obviously America is losing the penmanship race.

Our Cursive Gap must be overcome!

Posted by Will in Seattle

on October 19, 2012 at 10:17 AM

Oh wow, it's like those Seattle Times' employees never realized super-rightwinger predatory capitalist, dog-killer Blethens and spawn were maybe not on the up-and-up???

Shocker of shockers....hopefully among these 100 employees are no people who consider themselves real journalists, real investigative reporters, huh?

Posted by sgt_doom on October 19, 2012 at 10:34 AM

For journalists, that letter was really badly written.

Posted by Get Me Rewrite on October 19, 2012 at 10:34 AM

A sloppy signature is the sign of a sick mind.

Posted by Sargon Bighorn on October 19, 2012 at 10:45 AM

Penmanship is for writing, not signing. Complaining about illegible signatures aligns you immediately with grumpy old white Dads. Now get off my lawn!

Posted by Lugh on October 19, 2012 at 11:52 AM

@14 For serious-do you all sign with giant block letters or something?

My penmanship is completely unrelated to my signature-both are terrible, but in different ways!

Posted by Unregistered User on October 19, 2012 at 12:32 PM

@7

You cut out block letters from magazines and paste them on a sheet of paper?

Posted by seatackled on October 19, 2012 at 1:31 PM

To give y'all a head start, in yesterday's posting on the letter I did a partial identification of what's on the first page of signatures:

Many of them don't write legibly, but with the aid of their Newsroom staff page I could figure out these:

Kenneth Rosenthal, Lynn Thompson, Steve Miletich, Emily Heffter, Kristen Jackson, Kathy Long, Alan Berner, Danny Westneat, Holly Henke, Brian Cantwell, Nicole Brodeur, Keith Ervin, Sara Jean Green, Rick Lund, Mike Lindblom, Sanjay Bhatt.

@6: Anyone who looks through the letter will see that Lynn Thompson isn't the only one who signed it twice. I'm sure I saw the names Berner and Henke on other pages.

Posted by N in Seattle

on October 19, 2012 at 2:14 PM

Courtney Blethen Riffkin is Frank's niece, and a staff photographer on the paper. There are something like 11 or 12 next-gen Blethens, though I doubt they all work for the paper.

Posted by Fnarf

on October 19, 2012 at 2:58 PM

Here's some, but not all.

Melissa Allison
Ken Armstrong
Michael J. Berens
Amy Bergstrom
Hal Bernton
Misha Berson
Sanjay Bhatt
Nicole Brodeur
Gabriel Campanario
Brian J. Cantwell
Paul de Barros
Andrew Garber
Greg Gilbert
Sara Jean Green
Katie Greene
Mary Ann Gwinn
Bettina Hansen
Emily Heffter
Mark Higgins
Kristin Jackson
Beth Kaiman
Susan Kelleher
Ken Lambert
Nancy Leson
Mike Lindblom
Katherine Long
Rick Lund
Moira Macdonald
Cathy McLain
Steve Miletich
James Neff
Mark Nowlin
Maureen O'Hagan
Jeff Paslay
Bob Payne
Cheryl Phillips
Lauren Rabaino
Courtney Riffkin
Evelyn Ringman
Steve Ringman
Dean Rutz
Teresa Scribner
Linda Shaw
Kelly Shea
Kyung M. Song
Larry Stone
Jennifer Sullivan
Michael Upchurch
Bob Warcup
Danny Westneat
Christine Willmsen
Rita Wong
Lori Taki Uno
Mary Cauffman
Jane MacDonald
Karl Neice
Sandi Doughton
John Frey
Bob Higgins
Albert McMurry
Evan Bush
Darrell Hay
Alan Berner
Holly Henke
Lynn Thompson
Kenneth Rosenthal

Posted by bedipped on October 19, 2012 at 4:28 PM