A Vancouver, Washington woman is suing 11th and Pine-headquartered The Stranger after she says the alt-weekly included her bare-breasted photograph in its “Drunk of the Week” feature when she was actually celebrating her grandma’s 90th birthday in Pittsburgh.
Ex-Stranger photographer Kelly O’Neil is also named in the defamation suit brought last week on behalf of Tamar Hage against Stranger parent company, Index Newspapers: Continue reading
Those $54 bottles of award ceremony wine aren’t going to buy themselves
Wednesday, District 3 representative Kshama Sawant will present a resolution to a committee of the Seattle City Council recognizing that the local media landscape is all hosed up and confusing:
Public broadcasters have a legal – and moral – responsibility to inform the public in times of emergencies. It is in those times of need that the local community relies on professionals at local news stations like KING 5 and others. Tegna, the company that recently took over operations at several stations such as KING 5, is replacing those professionals with amateur citizen reporting. Local leaders believe that would jeopardize the public safety at a time when professionalism and experience are most critical in maintaining the public trust.
At the heart of this — out of all the things to worry about in the death spiral of legitimate local news — is an app and crowdsourcing effort being rolled out to turn “citizen journalists” into cheap freelancers that has sprawling broadcasting conglomerates salivating. The app and the direction it represents are summed up as the “Uberization” of local news in the announcement of a Wednesday morning press conference featuring Sawant, various Council members, and union representatives.
We’re not expecting a resolution but CHS certainly plays a (puny) role in the changes underway. Continue reading
Seattle Times journalist and longtime Capitol Hill resident Tricia Romano will soon take over as editor of major Capitol Hill media conglomerate The Stranger. Romano talked with CHS about the culture of Capitol Hill, her experience as a journalist, and her plans for the alt-weekly.
“My challenge is to make The Stranger a thing you can read and learn about the city as a whole, not just Capitol Hill,” said Romano. “To be better, it needs to be a city paper.”
Romano started her career at The Stranger, a weekly alternative paper that has become a fixture of Capitol Hill, and will officially take the helm on June 29. In addition to working at The Stranger, Romano has been on the staff The Village Voice and The Seattle Times, and freelanced for The New York Times and The Daily Beast, among others. For the past few years, Romano has written for The Seattle Times. Continue reading
Tim Keck’s future office
Shit’s a landmark
What kind of Lord Baby Jesus takes the Value Village away while allowing alt-weekly The Stranger to stay?
That’s the question nearly most of Capitol Hill is asking itself Monday morning after the Friday-afternoon-before-Halloween news dump in which the longtime Capitol Hill-based media and entertainment services conglomerate quietly announced it has backed off its threats to leave its dilapidated 11th Ave headquarters, signing a new lease that will keep the business in Pike/Pine through 2020.
By then Capitol Hill will have been declared “dead” a record 13 times.
“We were going to leave,” Keck told the Puget Sound Business Journal as it shared the announcement Friday, “but the historical designation … that gave us a chance to re-look at our plans of leaving.”
While re-look is not a real word, the building once home to the White Motor Company during Pike/Pine’s auto row era was, indeed, designated a protected landmark earlier this year — both inside and out — thanks to its place in auto row history and the early days of REI.
In statements likely written while breakfasting, Keck tells CHS: Continue reading
Thursday night, Capitol Hill residents and community members gathered at First Baptist Church for a “Gentrification Conversation” to formally discuss the radical and rapidly occurring changes in the neighborhood.
Organized by the Capitol Hill Community Council, the forum’s panel featured Tricia Romano — a Seattle Times lifestyle writer and author of the recent front page story on the Hill’s gentrification — and a slew of various community members, many of whom were interviewed for her story, including performer Ade Connere, Michael Wells from the Chamber of Commerce, co-owner of the Wildrose bar Shelley Brothers, Diana Adams (owner of the Vermillion bar and gallery), and Branden Born, an associate professor of urban design and planning at the University of Washington and Capitol Hill resident.
With Romano’s nerve-touching article as a springboard, panelists discussed their own experiences with the influx of capital and “bros” on the Hill, neighborhood identity, and public safety amongst increasing incidents of violence and LGBTQ hate crimes in Pike/Pine.
Here are 16 things CHS heard Thursday night:
Seattle Central College’s student news publication changed formats this year from a magazine to a broadsheet, and for good reason: people on campus kept mistaking the old Central Circuit as a promotional brochure.
Editor Mohamed Adan told CHS that making the Central Circuit look more like an obvious news publication was one of his top priorities when he took the helm of the paper in 2014. Only minor editorial changes have been planned as part of the format change, Adan said. The editor is planning to expand circulation into more neighborhood businesses soon.
“People are picking it up and there’s been an uptick in people wanting to contribute to the newspaper,” he said. “The change has been very positive so far.”
Central Circuit editor Mohamed Adan (Photo: CHS)
The Central Circuit, and its predecessor publications, have had a long and contentious relationship with the SCC administration and the college’s publications board. In 2008, the administration shutdown the City Collegian newspaper following the publication of articles that were critical of the college and one editorial that claimed black poverty stemmed from a culture of victimhood.
CHS contributor and Central Circuit alum Casey Jaywork wrote an excellent story on the recent history of SCC student publications — starting with the City Collegian’s shutdown leading to the underground New City Collegian and the rise of the Central Circuit.
Relations between the administration and Central Circuit have cooled recently, but Adan said the newspaper staff will continue pushing the administration to address critical issues on campus. Getting a student representative on the college’s publication board is near the top of that list.
“At the end of the day, this publication is protected by the First Amendment and we have all the same rights as any publication,” Adan said. “Our intention is not to ruffle any feathers, our intention is to report the news.”
After selling off the business in the wake of the economic downturn of the late 2000s, Georgetown-based Pacific Publishing has apparently reacquired the Capitol Hill Times weekly newspaper. On January 1st, the company took over management of the paper from RIM Publications, the publishing wing of a foreclosure services company that took over from Pacific in 2012.
Pacific announced the change in December but didn’t divulge any financial details. The company also will now run the Monroe Monitor and the The Eatonville Dispatch, RIM’s two remaining Washington state publications.
Pacific also publishes the Queen Anne & Magnolia News, the Madison Park Times, and City Living where “local first rate writers give us their take on food, books, people, real estate, home and gardens, life and love, getting out of town or staying put.”
Stacks of the company’s newspapers can be found in some neighborhood businesses and are often left outside bank and public building lobbies.
The Stranger needs new office space — because new office space is coming to 11th and Pine
Keck, at the mic, and his right hand man, Stranger editor in chief Christopher Frizelle, clutching the mic, at the 2014 Stranger Genius Awards (Image: Beth Crook via The Stranger)
Last week, arts editor and food writer Bethany Jean Clement announced she was leaving Capitol Hill’s only newspaper to pick up the food and drink beat at the Seattle Times. It was the latest in a year of big editorial change-ups for The Stranger, which occupies 2.5 floors above Value Village and the Rhino Room at 11th and Pine and is — perhaps — the most well known of all Capitol Hill businesses.
Publisher Tim Keck told CHS the staff changes don’t represent much more than the steady turnovers now commonplace in many newsrooms. Without tying it to specific staff changes, Keck did say The Stranger is trying to chart a course that better balances deeply reported stories with the impassioned and uncompromising voices the paper and its blog, the Slog, are known for.
“Loud, brash opinions are a dime a dozen,” he said. “It’s really important for publications to distinguish ourselves from that.” Continue reading
While there might not be any I-502 pot shops on Capitol Hill proper that doesn’t mean marijuana-related businesses aren’t cropping up around the Hill. One man is even crazy enough to try to make it in the media business! John Tommervik created High Above Seattle to review bud and rate the new stores opening around the city. It launched in March. You can check it out at highaboveseattle.com.
“I looked at applying for marijuana license and all these different things and I just realized that where I would be best at because of being a creative director and a marketer and all that is to develop a website that just focuses on the local Seattle marijuana industry and just cover it,” said Tommervik who runs the site from Capitol Hill and lives in the neighborhood.
He says his home neighborhood is a big influence on HAS and the growing marijuana industry in Seattle. Continue reading
New — much smaller — towers are coming to E Union and 12th Ave (Image: Jeanine Anderson via Flickr)
We’re broadcasting this story via the Internet to tell you that two Capitol Hill area radio stations are making progress toward broadcasting via the air above Capitol Hill and the Central District — and about 3.5 miles in all directions as the crow flies.
Earlier this spring, CHS reported on efforts at Seattle University’s student station KSUB and Central District online broadcaster Hollow Earth Radio to secure low power FM broadcast permission from the FCC and deploy new meatspace broadcasting towers and equipment.
Both Hollow Earth and Seattle U’s station announced this week that they have secured construction permits from the FCC. Continue reading
