Tag Archives: media

The Stranger is now an Oregon company — with Capitol Hill roots

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The Stranger, Seattle’s only newspaper and a former Capitol Hill landmark, is now an Oregon concern.

The alternative weekly turned new media survivor has been sold to Portland-registered media company Noisy Creek in a deal reported widely by multiple outlets.

Seattle politician turned publisher Brady Walkinshaw and Rob Crocker, the one-time Portland Mercury publisher who eventually rose to lead the company after the Stranger launched its southern alt-weekly cousin in 2000, formed Noisy Creek in June according to state records. Bend, Oregon-resident Crocker has served as president of Index Newspapers, the Stranger and Mercury’s parent company.

Index and its ownership including Stranger founder Tim Keck and Chicago Reader founder Bob Roth will continue to hold a reported 20% stake in the new Noisy Creek venture and will hold onto the Hump! film festival and Dan Savage’s sex advice media business.

The Stranger once called the neighborhood home and many still associate it with Capitol Hill despite its pre-pandemic exit from dilapidated offices above 11th Ave. Continue reading →

Veteran journalist who covered Capitol Hill Occupied Protest new owner at Seattle Gay News

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(Image: Renee Raketty)

Raketty, center, appeared on a Trans Journalists Association panel at the Society of Professional Journalists regional conference in Seattle earlier this year (Image: Renee Raketty)

Seattle Gay News, one of the oldest queer news publications in the nation, is celebrating its 50th year of bringing LGBTQ+-news to the Pacific Northwest.

While the passing of longtime editor George Bakan in 2020 led to years of change, writer, leader in the trans journalism community, and current editor of SGN Renee Raketty has officially taken ownership.

“There is no doubt that this paper has been a lifeline to the LGBTQIA+ community in Seattle and the Pacific Northwest. I’ve been told we are the nation’s third-oldest LGBTQIA+ newspaper. I’ve dedicated nearly a decade of my life to SGN, but I’m just one of many people who have contributed to the paper over the last 50 years,” Raketty told CHS. “It is truly an honor that Mike has chosen me to lead the paper into the next 50 years.”

Prior to his death, publishers and Capitol Hill character Bakan created arrangements for his family to take over as owner and publisher but SGN was sold last fall to Stratus Group to add to its LGBTQ+ newsmagazine business with publications including Coastal Pride of Ocean Shores, Washington and outlets in Bellingham and Spokane.

But changes in life plans has put the SGN on the move again. Stratus owner Mike Schultz and his husband are moving to California to be closer to family. After being associated with the paper on and off for a decade and a tour of duty as managing editor under the Stratus ownership, Raketty has the opportunity to lead the Seattle queer newspaper into a new era under her ownership.

It comes after Raketty has built a distinguished career in journalism that included work covering the 2020 Black Lives Matter protests and the police clashes around CHOP that took place on her home Seattle turf. Continue reading →

Cascade Public Media, KCTS, and Crosscut are working on a new name — They now have a new home on Broadway

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A rendering of the new reception area (Image: Crosscut)

Cascade Public Media’s new home (Image: Childhaven)

The workers of Seattle public television KCTS and Crosscut are moving onto Broadway.

Cascade Public Media says it is in the process of opening its new First Hill headquarters at 316 Broadway. It acquired the building from Childhaven, a provider of therapeutic services for children who have experience trauma and neglect, for $23 million in 2022, according to King County Records.

The media nonprofit says employees of the public television station and Crosscut are now working in the newly reopened Broadway facility and that the organization is preparing the building’s “several large gathering spaces” to host KCTS and Crosscut events with the “potential to enable new types of community engagement” for the organization.

“The thing this building offers is a chance for us to reimagine the ways in which we interact with the community,” president and CEO Rob Dunlop said in the Crosscut story announcing the opening.

The future could also involve the use of the building for community events and gatherings, Cascade said. Meanwhile, there are other changes afoot including a plan for a massive sign marking the headquarters place in the city’s changing media landscape. That sign will likely help introduce a new brand — Cascade says it is in the midst of an effort to rename itself after decades in the city. Continue reading →

Under new owner, Seattle Gay News now part of statewide queer media group

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The Seattle Gay News, one of the oldest queer news publications in the country and a staple of the clutter of newspapers, zines, and flyers that have pleasantly littered Capitol Hill hangouts for decades, has a new owner and a new, more regional mission.

Stratus Group has acquired SGN to add to its expanding LGBTQ+ newsmagazine business. Publications include Coastal Pride of Ocean Shores, Washington and publications in Bellingham and Spokane.

“In stepping into the pilothouse of the SGN, I do so with stewardship in mind and humility. But I also open this new chapter with an innate and tenacious enthusiasm to further our causes of visibility, equality, and dignity,” Stratus publisher Mike Schultz said in a letter published in the latest edition of SGN. Continue reading →

You’ll find plenty of Capitol Hill history digging through the more than 40 years of Seattle Gay News archives now online from the Washington State Library

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41 years of the Seattle Gay News — including page after page telling the stories of the places and the people of Capitol Hill — have been digitized and are now available online from the Washington State Library.

“Historians, genealogists, students, and anyone who wants to learn more about local perspectives on world events now have greater access to their area’s rich history,” Shawn Schollmeyer, Washington Digital Newspapers coordinator at the Washington State Library, said in the announcement. “We are grateful for our many partnerships with museums, libraries, archives, and publishers statewide that share our commitment to preserving our communities’ cultural heritage.” Continue reading →

Seattle public television KCTS and Crosscut are coming to First Hill — UPDATE

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Behind the scenes at KCTS (Image: KCTS)

It will be quite the pledge break. Cascade Public Media and its Seattle public television station KCTS and online news provider Crosscut are coming to Broadway in a $23 million deal.

The nonprofit media organization is running a $12.5 million capital campaign to help cover the cost of acquiring a 300-block Broadway building from Childhaven, a provider of therapeutic services for children who have experience trauma and neglect. The property’s price tag is $23,000,000 according to King County records.

“Cascade Public Media will move to a pre-existing 44,317 square foot building in Seattle’s First Hill neighborhood,” Cascade’s announcement reads. “The space is well suited for the needs of KCTS 9 and Crosscut and is ideally located within communities we serve and among those with whom we hope to build a deeper connection.”

UPDATE: Cascade president and CEO Rob Dunlop tells CHS the move will put the organization in “a location where we hope to increase our connection to a more diverse collection of neighborhoods such as the International District, the Central District, and Capitol Hill.”

Continue reading →

Capitol Hill Community Post | Tracing The Rocket’s Capitol Hill vapor trails

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By Todd Matthews

The COVID-19 pandemic led many people to take up new hobbies—solving jigsaw puzzles, baking bread, or bingeing Netflix shows—to curb boredom and anxiety. As a longtime journalist and Capitol Hill resident interested in local history, I opted to collect and read old issues of The Rocket, the music and culture magazine launched on Capitol Hill in 1979.

The magazine occupies a special place in local music history. Sub Pop Records’ roots trace back to the label’s co-founder, Bruce Pavitt, and the column he wrote for The Rocket. Before achieving rock stardom with Nirvana, Kurt Cobain picked up The Rocket at a record store in his hometown of Aberdeen, Washington. In the late-1980s, while searching for a drummer, Cobain placed a classified advertisement in The Rocket, and Nirvana scored its first-ever magazine cover with The Rocket‘s December 1989 issue. The band even used the magazine’s typesetting machine to design its iconic logo. The Simpsons creator Matt Groening and MAD magazine’s Don Martin illustrated covers for The Rocket. In addition, The New Yorker staff writer Susan Orlean, best-selling author and National Book Award Finalist Katherine Dunn, and NPR music critic Ann Powers (while she was still in high school) wrote for The Rocket.

The final issue of The Rocket published on October 18, 2000. Flipping through 40-year-old issues with my ink-stained fingers, I felt like I was popping open time capsules and peering inside to learn more about a city and neighborhood that I thought I knew after living here for 30 years. Continue reading →

Seattle Gay News archives its past and looks to the future

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George Bakan’s sudden death last June left a plethora of SGN back issues, over 47 years of Seattle’s LGBTQ history preserved in the weekly paper (Image courtesy Angela Cragin)

Weekly newspaper Seattle Gay News has been reporting on issues within the LGBTQ community in and around Seattle for nearly five decades. Publisher George Bakan was at the helm for more than 30 years, and when he died on June 7, 2020 — in the middle of working on the next week’s paper — the people who love SGN knew just what to do: Preserve the past and move into the future.

SGN is the nation’s third-oldest LGBTQ newspaper, and after Bakan’s death, SGN organized a campaign to help keep the paper afloat during the pandemic. The Seattle Public Library and other organizations took note, and organized an ambitious archiving project that would take about a year to finish. Now nearing completion, 47 years of SGN archives will be available at the Seattle Public Library, University of Washington, and several other libraries across the United States.

The SGN archives document “the history that mainstream media did not cover,” says Bakan’s daughter Angela Cragin. “The paper captured all of that, [including] all the names of victims of the AIDS epidemic and what was happening in the community, a community that was shunned for so long. It truly is important history.”

Cragin lives in the Tri-Cities, and is self-admittedly out of the loop when it comes to Seattle’s LGBTQ communities as well as journalism. Bakan must have had a reason for designating her as the heir of his publisher role with SGN, even if she didn’t understand why at first. “He said to me a number of times, ‘Hey, when I die the paper is yours.’ I don’t know anything about papers, I didn’t, and now I do,” she said. Continue reading →

One-year anniversary of start of Seattle Black Lives Matter protests: Black Wall Street rally in Central District, arrests downtown, Converge Media returns to Capitol Hill

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One year after the police killing of George Floyd in Minnesota and the start of months of protests in the city, Seattle is taking stock of what has changed and marking the days of unrest.

CHS looked back here at the first days of Black Lives Matter protests that began in Seattle in the days after Floyd’s murder, leading to weeks of clashes on Capitol Hill between protesters and police, the abandonment of the East Precinct, and the formation of CHOP.

This week starting Memorial Day, another small but important chronicler of the Capitol Hill protests will be back in the neighborhood as Omari Salisbury and TraeAnna Holiday of Converge Media will return for a week of broadcasts from near 11th and Pine where the Seattle media service captured crucial scenes from unrest including the fateful “pink umbrella incident” still echoing through the ranks of Seattle Police leadership today.

Salisbury tells CHS the live Converge Returns to The Hill shows will focus on honoring the important efforts at change. Continue reading →

Return of the Capitol Hill newsstand: Big Little News planned for Pike/Pine

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It’s been a decade since Capitol Hill last had a newsstand. The news? Well, it’s changed a bit in the meantime but the appetite for newspapers and magazines has somehow survived the explosive growth of online information and smartphones.

CHS has learned a new project coming to Pike/Pine from some familiar faces in the neighborhood will celebrate that appetite for the printed page — and the bottleshop. Continue reading →