Watch Tesla go from a Stimulus boondoggle to a thrilling private sector success on Fox News in just over two minutes:

Because the president can seize stuff from news outlets when he's investigating a crime:

Asked to address the controversial seizure of phone logs from Associated Press journalists by the Department of Justice, President Barack Obama on Thursday said he had no regrets for prosecuting individuals responsible for leaking classified information because they placed the country at risk.

"I make no apologies and I don't think the American people would expect me as commander-in-chief not to be concerned about information that might compromise their missions or might get them killed," he said, standing alongside Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan in the White House Rose Garden.

I wonder how far this logic goes. If the Feds are investigating a murder in Los Angeles, can they just clean the hard drive of every LA Times reporter who may have gotten a tip?

Wired explains how to be a confidential source in the age of Obama's leak investigations. Tools of the trade include "burner" phones, long walks, and hammers.

We all had a good chuckle yesterday over Seattle Times editorial board member Jonathan Martin's unselfconscious post about the "The Stranger’s obsession with the Seattle Times." Martin attempted to use our crappy search engine to find the number of times we've written about his paper since the beginning of the year (he says 22) compared to the number of times we've written about, say, "Ed Murray" or "the homeless" (Martin alleges 16 and 7, respectively).

How many hours did he labor over Slog, typing in search phrases? Geez... talk about obsessed.

But as usual when it comes to his editorial board, I question Martin's math. I can't make our search engine work any better than Martin, but I'd be damn surprised if I've personally written fewer than 22 posts critiquing the Seattle Times this year. And if I'm obsessed, it's not like I'm unaware. In fact, I'm frequently taunted for my Seattle Times posts within the office (fuck you, Paul). Indeed, a few years back, after forcing their hand on a particularly big story, I printed up Seattle Times business cards with the title "Volunteer Ombudsman."

So yeah, I'm a bit obsessed with critiquing the publication that claims to be our state's unchallenged paper of record since it successfully drove Seattle's other daily out of business.

That said, 22 posts on one subject may seem like an obsession to somebody like Martin, who only has 39 bylines since January 1, but it's a drop in the bucket within the context of the 3600-plus posts that have scrolled through Slog over that same period. I mean, a little perspective. As of yesterday afternoon, the Seattle Times entire seven-member editorial board had only generated 199 bylines this year, compared to 372 from me alone. Sure, when you throw in their approximately 200 unsigned editorials, they collectively have me beat. But not Paul, whose freakish 777 bylines this year (and counting) nearly doubles the combined output of the Seattle Times ed board.

I'm not saying Martin and his colleagues are lazy. But if his paper can afford the luxury of a seven-member ed board, surely it can afford to hire a real ombudsman instead of relying on volunteers like me to keep it honest.

That's the problem with The Stranger lately. We haven't used the word "homeless" enough. And we supposedly care about the homeless!

In conclusion, homeless homeless homeless homeless homeless homeless homeless homeless homeless homeless homeless homeless homeless homeless homeless homeless Ed Murray.

There is this:

Cable News Guests Were Largely White Men. According to the most recent U.S. Census data, white men make up only 31 percent of the U.S. population. On evening cable news, they represented a much larger percentage of guests — 62 percent of guests on CNN, 60 percent on Fox, and 54 percent on MSNBC.

There is also this:

White Guests Hosted Most Often On Cable News. Fox News had the largest proportion of white guests — 83 percent. African-Americans were the largest non-white group on all networks, representing 19 percent, 10 percent, and 5 percent of guests on MSNBC, Fox, and CNN, respectively

Non-Hispanic White or European America - 63.7 %

Posted by news intern Ansel Herz

In what certainly looks like the first casualty of right-wing media conglomerate Sinclair Broadcasting's takeover of Fisher Communications, Seattle Pulp has been shut down, along with Portland Pulp. The Seattle site launched two years ago and was billed as covering the city's lifestyle beat "with a more urban, witty and fun voice," targeting the 18-34 age demographic.

However, Kevin Cotlove, Director of Content at KOMO, says closing the site had "nothing to do" with the pending Sinclair merger. "It was a business decision solely related to the performance of those sites." Fisher's website says the site earned a million annual pageviews.

"I adored writing for Seattle Pulp," a former Pulp staff writer, who prefers not to be named, explained to me via email this morning. "We weren't huge, but we did inform our readers of interesting, local happenings... It's a sad day any time a locally-focused website is shuttered, because it means lost jobs and lost voices."

RIP, Seattle Pulp.

The always-awesome David Carr at the New York Times writes:

Will Bourne, who became editor in chief of The Village Voice in November, and Jessica Lustig, the deputy editor since January, are leaving the weekly publication.

They met with the staff at 11 a.m. on Thursday and said that Christine Brennan, executive editor of Voice Media Group, had instructed them to lay off or drastically reduce the role of five employees on the 20-person staff. Rather than carrying out the cuts, they resigned and left immediately.

Good for Bourne and Lustig. Cutting (or drastically reducing) the staff of the Voice by a quarter would have been a truly awful experience. And working in that post-cut newsroom would probably have been worse than being unemployed. If these cuts go through, I can only imagine that the Voice's scope is going to have to be drastically reduced.

Yesterday I got a tip that Seattle Times employees—including the reporters—were expected to pony up for their own website's paywall (at a discounted rate, but pay nonetheless). Is that a real thing? As a reporter, I frequently have to search our website's online archives for linking, providing context, or developing backfill on articles. It didn't seem possible that a newspaper would actually charge its reporters for an essential function of their jobs. That would be like installing payphones on everyone's desk and pocketing the money. So I wrote to Seattle Times executive editor David Boardman:

Hi, David. I just heard that Seattle Times reporters must pay to pass the newspaper's paywall (at a reduced rate).

Is this accurate? If so, why is that the policy? What's the rate they pay? Does that complicate their own reporting? Like, how do reporters gather backfill from the paper's archives without paying? Have there been problems (reporters losing a password and/or having trouble looking at the website)? Have there been complaints?

Thanks!

Dominic Holden
News Editor, The Stranger

Continue reading »

Eater.com has the details, and quotes departing critic Hanna Raskin as saying the position is being replaced with someone who will "write press releases, create brochures and represent the paper at public events." While Raskin says that Seattle Weekly hasn't "ruled out the possibility" of running restaurant reviews, it is "unclear who might write them," which makes it sound pretty damn unlikely. To have less food coverage in Seattle—less public discussion of what's become a great local food and restaurant scene—is sad.

Last Wednesday, Seattle Weekly eliminated its music editor position.

I've emailed Seattle Weekly's new editor in chief Mark Baumgarten for comment. Baumgarten took the editor in chief job last month.

UPDATE: Mark Baumgarten responds:

The new Food + Drink Editor position will not involve writing press releases and brochures as a primary function, although it will involve contributing to public communication about developments with our Food + Drink coverage. It's one of the editor's many tasks, as it is one of mine. In fact, I just wrote a press release about Hanna's departure and the new position this morning.

The press release is after the jump.

UPDATE #2:

Seattle Weekly's editor in chief Mark Baumgarten writes:

Seattle Weekly will continue to review restaurants. The shape of that review coverage and who will be writing those reviews will be largely determined by the editor we hire to run the section.

Continue reading »

I'm not sure I've ever seen such a brazenly dishonest mismatch between a letter to the editor and the Bizarro World headline the editor slapped on it, but then I don't often read letters to the editor in the Seattle Times, so who knows?

Someday, I hope to be as fair, balanced, neutral, and objective as the Seattle Times.

Great news for local out-of-work journalists: According to Politico, Al Jazeera America is opening up a Seattle bureau! You know those stories about 3,000 people applying for a barista job? This could be the news industry equivalent of that.

Barry Diller talks about his lack of "great expectations" for Newsweek, which he bought half of back in 2011, on a Bloomberg News clip via BuzzFeed. This has to be a great day in the Newsweek offices.

A great blog post by former Washington Post critic Tom Shales:

I regularly denounced editors as a species, insulting them with such disparagements as, “Those who can, do; those who can’t, teach; those who can’t even teach, edit.” Editors, I liked to say, were all failed writers, and bitter about it, but that kind of logic produces such similarly flawed thoughts as critics are all failed performers or failed somethings. Having now reached an age of reason, that little lull just before senility, I do feel inclined to apologize for those blanket indictments of all editors.

I do recall sometimes feeling frustrated in my kill-the-editor campaign by the fact that every time I wanted to take a flame thrower to the copy desk, one of its tireless drones would find a hideous error I’d made in a story and save my ass...

Feast your eyes on "12 Shocking Table Corners We Wish We Could Unsee."

North Dakota's newest news anchor stumbles out of the gay fucking gate. (Via Towleroad.)