Final P-I grace notes

I'm still making my way through Tuesday's final print edition of the Seattle P-I, and there's some great fine-print stuff hidden in there among the big-headline commemorative features I highlighted last week.

Buried on Page A32 with the rest of the obits -- between "PETERSON: Susan A." and "RASKOV: Marcia C." -- is this two-line listing under "King County Deaths": "POST-INTELLIGENCER: Seattle, 146, of Seattle, March 17.

And then my favorite, in the Sports section's agate-type transactions column -- where, for example, you might normally learn which spring-training baseball players were cut from their major-league rosters -- the Monday transactions include "Seattle Post-Intelligencer Sports Department." Listed there are the "released" sports editor Nick Rousso, who joined us for Friday's M&M poker game, and baseball reporter David Andriessen who, in the jargon of the form, is said to be "placed on irrevocable waivers for the purposes of granting him his unconditional release."

Everyone in the sports department is given a similar send-off. Funny, sad, classic gallows-humor stuff.

The best transaction report, though, is the final entry, which doubles as a parting shot at the new, skeleton-crew online P-I:

"Optioned Gerald Spratt (night editor) and Greg Johns (reporter) to their minor-league camp."

Spratt and Johns are staying on at SeattlePI.com.

Jefferson, improvised

Now that I have received permission from Flickr user little.brain (Paul Fankhauser, until this week a P-I tech expert), here is the photo I mentioned yesterday of Thomas Jefferson's famous quote about newspapers. The quote, painted in a P-I newsroom stairway, was modified by a commenter apparently unhappy with the paper's online future.

By the way, there was some speculation online that this is a Photoshopped picture, with the snarky amendment to Jefferson added digitally. Paul assures me the sign was real, that it was still taped to the wall late Monday night but was gone when he arrived at work on Tuesday.

The P-I, going and coming

From my old office at the Seattle P-I you could see the reflection of our iconic P-I Globe overhead in the windows of a building across the courtyard. We used to joke about checking to make sure the world was still turning, figuring that’s how we’d find out if they decided to shut the paper down.

Now that the print version of the P-I really has closed, it’s meager comfort I suppose that the red neon “It’s in the P-I” still spins around the neon globe. Coverage of today’s final edition was at once mournful and celebratory, appropriately, with highlights being Carol Smith’s excellent obit of the paper and Lewis Kamb’s fine “tick-tock” accounting of the final day in the newsroom, along with Curt Milton’s terrific video capturing staffers’ final thoughts, and a couple of nice photo galleries at both the P-I and Seattle Times sites.



Last night Michelle and I went to the paper’s unofficial bar in lower Queen Anne, Buckley’s, for a fun, drunken wake that was primed by loose change in the newsroom’s “Flower Fund” and replenished for hours, incredibly, by people around the country who heard about the party on Facebook or Twitter and phoned donations directly to the bartender. A couple hundred dollars worth, I heard.

Newspapers may die, the economy may tank, but generosity abounds ... or at least appreciation of a good excuse to throw a few back.

There was an undercurrent of tension at Buckley’s last night as, I understand, there has been at the P-I these past couple of weeks. Not just the bad feelings about the paper’s demise, I mean, but mixed feelings about its future. The P-I is not going away completely. As widely reported -- even in the lead spot on the New York Times site last night -- a small, online-only operation will survive, led by Michelle. That’s good for us personally (it’s nice to have one income between us) and for the couple dozen people who will join her in the new venture. I also believe it’s good for journalism. As newspapers struggle to stay afloat and new news models pop up, all eyes will be on SeattlePI.com to see if it can figure out how to commit journalism and make money at the same time.

But there’s a palpable backwash of resentment too among those 150 or so P-I journalists not staying on board for the next phase. Some of the online staffers, already suffering survivor’s guilt, told me they’ve been guilt-tripped further by former colleagues for accepting less pay to remain with the new venture while others were passed over. “I got the full ‘Norma Rae’ treatment,” one said.

A friend of ours, political reporter Angela Galloway, was quoted this morning describing the feeling last week when online execs trolled through the newsroom asking to speak to certain staffers about joining the new crew.

"Waiting for them to come out and pull in their latest hire was like sitting through a game of Duck, Duck, Goose," Angela said.

I saw a photo online this morning that also suggested some doubts about an online-only model: Thomas Jefferson’s famous quote about newspapers, as painted on a P-I newsroom wall, with a little jab at the new model tacked on.

"Were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers, or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter," Jefferson said. Added, on printer paper: "Or at least on online version with a greatly reduced staff and lots of links."

Isolated misgivings notwithstanding, I think most of the old P-I gang wishes the new venture well. Even some who are talking about starting a news site of their own -- which they initially viewed as competition for the P-I -- are now coming around to the smart (I think) realization that two (or more) sites could complement and help one another.

Meanwhile, it’s been kind of fun for me to watch Michelle become an online news rock star. She was all over the Internet yesterday and in publications from The Stranger to the New York Times. One Twitterer, relaying a link to her description of the new online P-I, referred to “Nicolosi’s St. Crispin’s Day speech.” As a fan of Henry V -- the play, not necessarily the king -- I thought that was cool.

I feel bad for all my friends at the P-I, and for the loss of the paper itself. I loved working there and made many enduring friendships. I’m forever indebted to the now former managing editor, David McCumber, who has become a good friend and who wrote this sweetly sentimental departing column, for taking a chance and hiring me and Michelle five years ago, getting us back to Seattle from Los Angeles. He made a tremendous difference in my life.

Given the scrappy and positive outlook of my colleagues at the paper I have every confidence they’ll emerge from this sad day with exciting new professional or personal ventures.

There’s a lot of good will in this town just waiting for them. Last night, after the Buckley’s fest, I dropped Michelle off at the P-I to pick up her car. We were accosted at the garage by a middle-aged couple who said they just stopped by -- this was 11 o’clock -- to pay their respects.

They left this little shrine to the P-I.




Here are a couple more links from today's coverage:

Seattle P-I through the years (Seattle Times photo gallery)
Vintage covers from the Seattle Post-Intelligencer (Seattle Times photo gallery)
Under the Needle: P-I had a cast of characters, with storied histories, by Mike Lewis
Last day at the P-I (P-I gallery)

Photo credit: Spinning globe, top, by Flickr user Helpcraft
Franny and Gina from another era, 2005, in my P-I office.

No news, which is bad news

This is one of a series of posts by Chuck Taylor and me about the decline of the newspaper business and what that means for Seattle journalism. Chuck last posted at his Seattle Post-Times blog, and I wrote previously here.

While I admire the hard work and can-do sense of optimism that have gone into events like Thursday night’s “No News Is Bad News” panel, the recent spate of discussions on Seattle’s journalism future have left me frustrated, and a bit winded.

For all the motion I don’t sense much movement. The conversations, though pinging among smart, involved people, tend to be circular -- and repetitive from event to event. Yes, it’s a drag that newspapers are dying; and yes, it’s important for society to save, replicate or replace the vital reporting function that metro dailies have provided lo these many years.

But listening in the other night to a live-stream of the NNBN event (video here) I found myself wishing we could stipulate those and a few other points:

* Newspapers have brought some of this shit on themselves, through arrogance, laziness, fear of technology and collective head-in-sand disease.

* “Newspapers” do not equal "news"; nor for that matter does “mainstream media” equal “journalism.”

* Bloggers are people too. Blogging is a platform, not a (lacking) style of reporting or writing.

* That said, not all bloggers or citizen journalists practice the kind of fact-checking that distinguishes the best of legacy professional journalism.

* Whatever comes next, a viable business model is key.

OK. So now what do you want to talk about?

For a few minutes the other night the discussion did swing around toward business models for news outlets -- panelist Art Thiel’s pitch for a Green Bay Packers-style community ownership plan, for example. Somebody else ignored an official admonition and uttered the word micropayments. But none of that talk got too far, nor was there much exploration of what readers actually want to see in their newsiness publication, whatever form it may take.

At one point I tried to interject via Twitter. “Question for #nnbn: Moving on, what will/should local newscape look like post-PI, or post-newspaper?” And I was pleasantly surprised that emcee Dave Ross picked up my question and repeated it to the panel. Alas it didn’t really go anywhere.

Now, I understand, the NNBN folks are talking about putting together a second event to continue the discussion, this one focused more on business considerations. That may prove helpful, but -- I’m sorry -- I’m dubious. And Chuck, I see that you’ve launched a nifty wiki to take on some of the same questions. That strikes me as a cool tool, essentially an extension of the public-meeting discussions, but from the comfort of our homes and with no closing gavel. Personally I’ve never felt comfortable contributing to wikis, but I like the concept and I’m sure some good thinking will surface there. I’ll be watching for sure.

Like the old-school, curmudgeonly dinosaurs lamented in these recent panels, I find myself naysaying a lot of stuff without offering any genius ideas of my own. One difference, maybe: I welcome the new. In fact I launched my own online news digest site 10 years ago, worked for MSNBC.com at startup three years before that, and have been a big advocate for Web-first, blog-centric and Twitterific reporting ever since.

But where does all that leave us? I still worry that whatever emerges from the ashes of dailies like the P-I will need some time to get its act completely together.

For instance, as much as I read and admire West Seattle Blog -- Tracy Record’s work ethic shames nearly every newspaper reporter I’ve ever known -- I got in WSB's virtual face a couple of weeks ago regarding a crime report that I thought was irresponsible in its description of a suspect. As much as I respect Cory Bergman, of MyBallard fame, I disagree with his premise -- noted in a comment on your recent post, Chuck, -- that what’s needed is a breach of the “Great Wall” between journalism and the business side of news operations. Actually, disagree is the wrong word. I’m not even sure what he means. But I know I believe in that wall.

This week, Eli Sanders at The Stranger speculated a bit about what the next, online-only P-I might look like: a lot of aggregation, he supposed, including links to formerly competing publications including the Seattle Times. That seems logical and even smart to me, although I know there’s a lot of angst about it among soon-to-be-former P-I staffers.

What do you think, Chuck? And what’s your take on the emerging news sites taking off around town -- PubliCola, Seattle Courant and the various neighborhood blogs? I have some thoughts on those, but I’m looking forward to hearing your thoughts, and those of our readers, first.

News news, news talk

With the Seattle Post-Intelligencer on the brink of folding and several local groups meeting to discuss the future of news in Seattle, Chuck Taylor and I are joining the fray here and at Chuck's site Seattle Post-Times.

Periodically -- we haven't set deadlines or a time frame for this series -- we'll both post on both blogs our thoughts about the city's changing newscape and about the discussion tracking it. Chuck and I are friends, longtime former colleagues at the Seattle Times and parallel but unconnected travelers in the world of online news. We're also simultaneously (temporarily?) unemployed journalists.

Although there's nothing new about blogged conversations, this format is new for both M&M and Seattle Post-Times. Please feel free to join in with comments at either or both sites, and let us know how we could improve the format.

Thanks for joining us. -- Mark Matassa


Chuck,

Ever since Hearst announced last month that it would likely close the Seattle P-I in mid-March, Seattle journalists, bloggers and even public officials have been abuzz with concern and -- in some quarters, I suspect -- excitement: What if the Seattle Times closes too? We could go from a two-newspaper to a no-newspaper town inside of one year!

To buck each other up, rally the troops or maybe just find a shared room to stew in their shock and sadness, several groups have organized public forms on the future of the Seattle news business. There’s one tonight at the University of Washington, in fact, sponsored by the Online News Association, with a nice mix of panelists from print, online and radio.

Tomorrow night, Thursday, an ad hoc group of mostly bloggers is putting on an event titled “No News Is Bad News” at City Hall, promising to address the rather unfocused question “Seattle as a No-Newspaper Town?”

A couple of weeks ago City Councilman Nick Licata convened a hearing on the same subject, with some of the same folks involved. You not only attended that one, Chuck, but covered it live on Twitter and later posted about it on your Seattle Post-Times blog. Last week was yet another forum, this one by CityClub.

All well and good. And this subject of the changing news landscape has gripped the national media and blogosphere as well. The discussion as I’ve been following it seems to break into a couple of branches: wailing and navel-gazing by old-school newspaper loyalists who complain about short-cutting bloggers and who bemoan their own companies’ failure to stave off death; righteous attacks on those head-in-the-sand “curmudgeons”; and sometimes hopeful, sometimes heated arguments about which financial models might or might not save the news biz.

So, as a means of kicking off our own conversation, let me ask you:

Will you be attending this week’s events? And does tomorrow’s group even have the title right? That is, assuming the P-I does in fact close (and even if the Times follows suit), will that constitute “no news”? If so, would that be bad news?

I’m looking forward to hearing your thoughts.
Mark

First ladies (and other first residents)

With a new First Family headed for the White House it's important to put the moment in context.

Take Michelle Obama's election-night dress. A forum on its stylishness or suckishness was the most read item at the Seattle P-I for a day-plus. But how did all those other first ladies look? Fortunately here comes Us Magazine with a "First Ladies Through the Years" photo gallery, including President William Henry Harrison's wife Anna, above.

And what kind of puppy will those Obama girls get? NPR noted today that dogs have been regular White House residents, and it's got its own photo spread to prove it: "Presidential Dogs through History." Here are the Kennedys and their brood, two- and four-legged.


So now a dog, two kids and a stylish (or not) first lady, how will the Obamas get around? The LA Times comes through with photos of all the First Rides -- "Presidential cars then and now." Here's Warren Harding, the first president who knew how to drive before he entered office, and his Packard Twin Six.

Newspapers Win!

A funny thing happened on the way to newspapers' funeral: A bunch of news broke out, in the form of yesterday's historic election, and people decided they wanted a paper. Not just the paper's "content" -- usually available free on their websites -- but the actual, old-school newspaper.

My friend and former colleague James Grimaldi posted on his Facebook page this morning that he noticed a long line of people outside his Washington Post office waiting to buy a paper. Then he updated his post, with vintage Grimaldi salesmanship: "(I) just spoke w/ some of the hundreds waiting to buy a copy of today's paper and told them we would have happily delivered one to their home this a.m."

The Post must have gotten the word. It soon announced it would print a special edition of today's paper -- an "Extra!" like in the old days. And a bunch of other papers followed suit: The Chicago Tribune, New York Times and LA Times were among those printing more copies, according to this Top of the Ticket report.

With a nod to this cool post (Google Reader-noted by both Michelle and Kaye) capturing last night's "historic home pages," I flipped through the Newseum's roundup of today's newspaper fronts. It's pretty cool to see all 714 of them in one spot.

Some trends emerge. A lot of straightforward "Obama wins" headlines, and more of the New York Times' simple and dramatic "Obama" heds than I would have expected. Also many versions of the "Change has come to America" speech snippet that both Seattle papers used, and quite a few of the reversed-out image scheme that the P-I employed.


I'm no designer, but one of the most arresting pages, I thought, was the full-page, sepia-toned "Mr. President" image of the Chicago Sun-Times.

And I got a kick out of the New York Daily News, which must not have gotten the memo. It stuck with its apparent mission: "Sports and crime, all the time."


(Great post on this subject over at VisualEditors.com. I just noticed it, thanks to Michelle's Reads.)

'We all rise'

Among the many celebrations today and the abundant fine news coverage, this CBS News Early Show piece stands out, with 50-plus years of historical context and an excellent brief interview with the poet Maya Angelou. Good get, as they say in the TV biz.

Hat tip to the LA Times' Top of the Ticket blog for pointing me to this.


Watch CBS Videos Online

148 years of Times endorsements

At a time when many newspapers are debating whether they should make election endorsements, the New York Times not only presents its strong case for Barack Obama today, but also puts up a nifty online feature with every presidential endorsement going back to Lincoln's first, in 1860.

The page, "New York Times Endorsements Through the Ages," offers a timeline of those 38 elections, with color-coded squares indicating which party got the nod (and which was elected), a photo of the endorsed nominee, an excerpt from the endorsement and -- here's the real treat -- a link to the original editorial, usually in the .pdf format.

It's fun to look back and see where the Times was in sync with the electorate and where it wasn't -- no fan of Teddy Roosevelt, these guys.

Scanning through big batches of them you can see when the editors really believed in their pick (on Lincoln, "we shall have honesty and manliness instead of meanness and corruption in the Executive Branch"), and when, as with John Kerry in 2004, they were clearly holding their noses and making the best of a bad choice.

(The above photo, lifted from Wikipedia, is of John M. Palmer, the National Democratic Party nominee in 1896 whose candidacy wasn't helped by the Times endorsement. He lost to Republican William McKinley ... and Democrat William Jennings Bryan.)

Not for the first time ...

As regular M&M readers know, "unprecedented" is one of those words that drives me crazy. I've managed to read right over it nearly every day for the past year or so, since I last registered my gripe, without complaint.

But my kettle boils over. After finding two instances of "unprecedented" today in the same story -- an otherwise excellent essay by Time's Joe Klein about Barack Obama -- I've decided to start a new M&M category -- unprecedented -- to track appearances of this misused word.

The rules: I won't go looking for "unprecedented" but if I run across it I'll note it here.

That's some stare decisis shit right there, so other writers should get with the program. You might have to go back to Marbury v. Madison to find a decision of such significance.

So with that, I present Exhibit A, from Klein's "Why Obama is Winning":

But the Senator from Illinois had laid down his marker: if elected President, he would be in charge. Unlike George W. Bush, who had given Petraeus complete authority over the war — an unprecedented abdication of presidential responsibility (and unlike John McCain, whose hero worship of Petraeus bordered on the unseemly) — Obama would insist on a rigorous chain of command.

And Exhibit B:

But one of the more remarkable spectacles of the 2008 election — unprecedented in my time as a journalist — was the unanimity among Democrats on matters of policy once the personality clash between Obama and Hillary Clinton was set aside.

Two unprecedenteds in one story. Not unprecedented, but not a good example.

More to come, usage geeks and fellow crabs.

In the pocket

I've never been a big believer in the liberal-media conspiracy.

Despite conservative complaints now as predictable as lousy voter turnout, the vast, vast majority of reporters and editors work hard to keep any kind of bias out of their stories, particularly in election coverage. If anything, liberal bias is more likely to creep into coverage of tangentially political topics, like environmental reporting.

I say that even though I do believe that most reporters and editors, in their hearts, lean to the left, and I think that many influential editorial boards are liberal, even if their mega-corporation publishers are not. Same goes for most TV news. But political reporters are equal-opportunity skewerers. The bigger problems among this lot are pack mentality and conventional-wisdom-itis.

And yet. Sometimes I'll see something in the paper that makes even me slap my forehead. Something I know will give the media-bashers some well-braised lib loin for their conspiracy stew.

Take today's Seattle Times. Given the placement, the headlines and the lead paragraphs of all the A-section stories about the presidential race, I don't see how a John McCain supporter could help thinking the paper was in the pocket of Barack Obama.

On the front page is a top-of-the-fold story headlined, "U.S. tax formula already spreads wealth." Here's the lede: "John McCain's condemnation of Barack Obama's call for shifting more wealth from richer Americans to poorer ones wins applause at campaign events, but it ignores the nation's long tradition of redistributing huge amounts of wealth through tax and spending policies."

That Associated Press story jumps to A3, which also features a large "CloseUp" centerpiece takeout story by McClatchy Newspapers under the hed, "Socialism: It's part of America's fabric." The top of this story: "'Make no mistake,' Republican activist John Hancock told a John McCain rally in this St. Louis suburb, 'this campaign is a referendum on socialism.' Republicans have been pounding that theme in recent days, even though Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama hardly fits the classic definition of a socialist."

A boldface pullout quote in the middle of the page underscores the point: "The answer is clearly no, Senator Obama is not a socialist."

Turn the page for more election news on A6, a feature about Obama's sick grandmother, "Toot," as she's called in the headline. "Barack Obama's mother was an adventurous woman who took her son around the globe," says the lede. "His grandmother was a rock of stability, giving him the American roots that would ground his teenage years as well as his career in politics."

Finally, on A7, some news about the Republicans. Two stories in fact. "McCain's Pennsylvania push not paying off." And, "Alaska paid for travel of Palin kids."

And that's it, the sum of the day's presidential election coverage for Seattle Times readers. Now, I know that news decisions like where to play a story and what hed to give it depend on a lot of factors, like the timeliness of a folo or the availability of a comebacker on other campaign developments, and that the stories themselves, in this case, are all written or compiled by wire services rather than local reporters. And sometimes the news is the news and the chips fall as they fall.

Still, wire editors here can change, rearrange or accetuate with some care, and with more in mind than the one specific story on the screen in front of them. In this case, the A1 and A3 CloseUp stories seem redundant to me, and the "Toot" story could have been dialed way, way down.

I see why conservative readers might smell a rat.

In today's New York Times, two front-page stories offer a different but equally (at least) troubling injection of bias. In these stories the problem is reaching too far to convey significance.

The Times' lead story, about how consumers appear to be taking less prescription medication as a way to save money (interesting!), isn't satisfied to leave it there. Here's the reach: "The trend, if it continues, could have potentially profound implications. If enough people try to save money by forgoing drugs, controllable conditions could escalate into major medical problems. That could eventually raise the nation's total health care bill and lower the nation's standard of living."

Wow! From -- we learn later -- a less than 1 percent downturn in the use of prescription meds during the third quarter, our entire standard of living is at risk. Note to NYT: Yeah, it is anyway.

In the off-lede story, about a big investor selling off a large stake in Ford, there's a similar overreach: "The falure of General Motors, Ford and Chrysler would have far-reaching economic and social consequences. Together, the automakers employ more than 200,000 workers in the United States and provide health care and pensions to more than a million Americans. In addition, their operations are lifelines to 20,000 auto dealers and countless suppliers, and the source of major tax revenue to states and local governments."

Double-wow. Putting aside the fact that the story doesn't persuasively make the case that Kirk Kerkorian's divestment will kill Ford, let alone the other automakers, it feels like a pretty long stretch to the collapse of my local city hall.

This kind of stuff bugs me, and it would no matter whose political party or economic interest were getting gored or whored.

It's a tough time for newspapers and the news business, as we know. Readers are dropping by the hundred thousands. Untold news meeting hours are wasted counting clicks and tweetering twits in a vain attempt to win them back.

My idea for a simple (and inexpensive) way to earn back some trust: Tell the news straight. Leave the overanalysis and the overwriting for the doofuses on the editorial page.

The debate, you betcha!

We could go round and round on last night's VP debate -- as Kaye, Val, Michelle and I did last night over our conversation enhancers of choice -- but hell, this flow chart is so much better.

Thank you to Jason for passing it along.

Martha Stewart living

The comedian Rob Becker used to have this bit about coming home from work one day to find his roommate scrubbing the bathroom. "What," Becker would say with concern, "we're moving?"

That comes to mind because I'm suspending the morning news meeting to spend a few minutes picking up crap and, if I get really ambitious, maybe break out a broom. No, we're not moving, but we've lived here for more than four years now so it's about time to tidy up.

Besides, our friends Kaye and Val are arriving tonight, part of the awesome Big Graze road trip they've been chronicling over at The Night Note. These guys, real foodies and high-life appreciators, could have their own show. They know how to travel.

The other night Kaye sent a note suggesting that Val, a tremendous cook, fix us dinner here at our house on Thursday. What, I said in my best Rob Becker imitation, you don't like Raisin Bran?

Stories and photos of their visit to come. First I have a few hundred newspapers to put in the recycling ...

Behind the meltdown

Total collapse. Complete loss of confidence. Little faith in even the idea of a bailout.

No, for a minute, we're not talking about the economy and the mess in Washington and Wall Street, but that other horrific collapse: the Seattle Mariners baseball team.

Upon revival of the M&M morning news meeting last week, regular commenter Jason assigned a story in a comment thread: "I'd like a column on how to save the Mariners and where they rank against some of the other pathetic MLB franchises."

Excellent idea, and I've been watching the local papers with an eye out for just such an analysis. No luck.

First, if you haven't followed Seattle's dismal baseball season, the Mariners set a new record for futility: Their 101 losses weren't the most ever -- the not-yet-lovable Mets of 1962 still hold that honor, with 120 -- but the M's were the first team to lose in the triple digits while also paying their players at least $100 million. Do that for 7,000 straight years and you could pay for the Wall Street bailout, but I digress.

Anyway, last week the Seattle Times seemed to promise the kind of takeout Jason suggested with a five-part series, "Rebuilding the Mariners." But what a disappointment. (The P-I, which seems to have given up on baseball coverage, didn't even attempt a meaningful season wrap-up. And U.S.S. Mariner, a blog with the best local baseball coverage, hasn't taken a comprehensive stab either.)

In the Times, instead of doing what the series title implies, breaking down the team's strengths and weaknesses and mapping some sort of route out of the woods, writer Geoff Baker burns through many expensive pages of newsprint to make some obvious points: Big contracts will make it tough to reshape the team; the Mariners don't have enough good hitters; they do have a couple of promising pitchers; the ownership group hasn't been brilliant, but it isn't going anywhere; the field manager, promoted at midseason, brought a little old-school discipline but no more success than the guy he replaced.

OK, fine. Anyone who has spent more than three innings at Safeco Field or tuned into FSN this year knows all that already. So now what? Baker doesn't get much beyond noting that that will be a big challenge for the next general manager, to be hired soon.

Baker also ruined much of his credibility as a reporter, at least in my eyes, by writing last week that the Mariners' franchise player, Ichiro Suzuki, is so disliked in the clubhouse that team meetings were convened and at least one player had to be held back from fighting him. Trouble is, Baker attributes all this to one unnamed "clubhouse insider." When the story was predictably denied Baker offered the lamest defense: "You'll just have to trust me on the anonymous source."

Trust me: Anonymous sourcing is weak, in sports no less than in politics, and hanging a story -- especially one this explosive -- on just one unnamed "insider" is unacceptable. Go back and watch "All the President's Men":

Ben Bradlee: Bernstein, are you sure on this story?
Carl Bernstein: Absolutely.
Ben Bradlee: Woodward?
Carl Bernstein: I'm sure.
Ben Bradlee: I'm not. It still seems thin.
Howard Simons: Get another source.

But back to baseball. Anybody who has seen my fantasy-team moves up close, and that includes at least three of our regular readers, knows that I'm no more qualified for drafting a Mariners blueprint than Bill Bavasi, the moronic general manager they just fired.

But I'm no less qualified either. So here's my prescription.

When faced with a massively bad team like this one, there are three basic options: Blow the team up and start over, which usually means a long, slow painful "youth movement"; try to win right away, usually by hiring a couple of genius free agents to fill holes and turn things around; try for some modified, middle-course rebuilding program.

Baseball's full of success stories employing all three strategies. I'd go here for Option 3, mostly because the M's have too many overpriced and under-contract players to pull off a full-blown, Florida Marlins-style nuke job.

My basic principles would be that, with a few exceptions, no player is off limits if a decent trade becomes possible; no jobs are guaranteed; and the rebuilding plan should emphasize pitching and defense first. I'd look to dump salary where I could, and not mislead fans with happy talk about being "competitive" this coming season.

Given that, the untouchable players on my Mariners would be promising young pitchers Felix Hernandez, Brandon Morrow and Ryan Rowland-Smith, along with Ichiro. Whatever Geoff Baker says about him, Ichiro is one of the few Mariners who can put fans in the seats, and at 200 hits and 100 runs scored a year for eight years (the only other player to do that was Lou Gehrig) he's no slouch on the field.

Elsewise, around the horn, I'd try to make the best of a bad situation at catcher, where the Japanese ownership insisted on a three-year, $24-million contract for the inept Kenji Johjima, by making Johjima the backup to up-and-comer Rob Johnson. Move another catcher, Jeff Clement, to first base, giving up on midseason call-up Bryan LaHair (who was an improvement over the hated Richie Sexson). Keep Jose Lopez at second and Yunieski Betancourt at shortstop, with the option of moving either of them if needed, and hang on to Adrian Beltre at third base. Expensive he may be, and somewhat disappointing at the plate, but he's a rock defensively, never misses a game and remains one of the few power threats in the lineup.

In the outfield, look to trade left fielder Raul Ibanez, even though he's the team's most productive hitter. He's got value on the trade market, which is rare on this team, and he'll be too old to be useful by the time the team is good enough to win. Move Ichiro to center, whether he likes it or not. Give Wlademir Balentien a chance to win the right field job, with Jeremy Reed, Mike Morse or open tryouts all available as backup options.

Build the rotation around Felix, Morrow and Rowland-Smith, with the other spots an open competition among Erik Bedard and Carlos Silva, the disappointing acquisitions from last winter, along with Ryan Feierabend, Jarrod Washburn, R.A. Dickey and whoever else shows up next spring with a pair of cleats and a jar of Ben-Gay. The bullpen can sort itself out from the dregs and the hungry prospects in camp.

Will the team win? No. It's pretty much the same gang of losers who have been out there all season, with the subtraction of a couple of lameos already discarded and, one would hope, the motivation that no job is safe.

As for the second part of Jason's assignment, comparing the Mariners' prospects to those of baseball's other bad teams, I presume he means his hometown nine, the Washington Nationals. I don't know much about the Nats, except that Michelle and I saw them play this year at their new stadium, along with Jason and his girlfriend. Not a great-looking team.

I do know that even in their ineptitude the Mariners are inept: Incredibly, they won the last three games of the year to finish a game and a half better than the Nationals and thus not quite the worst team in the majors. Meaning Washington and not Seattle will be rewarded with first pick in the upcoming amateur draft.

So, with the second pick, some patience and maybe a giant rescue plan from Congress, I suppose it's possible the Seattle sports pages will be worth reading again in a couple of years.

In the meantime, a final suggestion for the Mariners: Keep the hot dogs. They're pretty good.

That's a lot of zeroes

As we speak the House just rejected the big bailout plan and congressional leaders are trying to line up a second vote. I'm no economist but I'm sure not convinced that this plan is a good idea, and I still haven't seen anyone attempt the story I suggested last week, explaining in simple terms what would happen if we taxpayers don't give these well-dressed thieves $700 billion or more of our money.

There were a couple of smart op-ed columns in the New York Times last week at least raising questions about all of this.

Thomas Friedman made the good point that one of things weakening the U.S. economy is that it's built on fluff, not stuff:

We need to get back to making stuff, based on real engineering not just financial engineering. We need to get back to a world where people are able to realize the American Dream — a house with a yard — because they have built something with their hands, not because they got a “liar loan” from an underregulated bank with no money down and nothing to pay for two years. The American Dream is an aspiration, not an entitlement.

And Maureen Dowd had a smart observation: "Who would have dreamed that when socialism finally came to the U.S.A. it would be brought not by Bolsheviks in blue jeans but Wall Street bankers in Gucci loafers?"

What I do know is that $700 billion is a lot of money. That's $700,000,000,000. A 7 with 11 zeroes. Yike. Here in Seattle, where officials and voters have been wringing their hands for years about how to replace the crumbling highway on the downtown waterfront, you could buy 300 new viadcuts for $700 billion.

As Jon Stewart famously put it last week (mocking a real TV news report, actually), that figure amounts to 2,000 McDonald's apple pies for every man, woman and child in the United States. Michelle and I don't eat at Mickey D's, but putting it in terms that matter to the M&M economy, our "apple pie" share of the bailout equals 10 buy-ins to our regular poker game, 10 bottles of Bombay Sapphire (the good shit, in the big bottle), 50 pounds of Starbucks French Roast and one iPhone for good measure. Each.

So, like, a couple of weeks of fun.

I know the world financial markets may hang in the balance, but I'm not sure it's a good trade.

In case you missed it, here's Stewart's riff from last week:




Update: Oh my god, I watched this and found myself agreeing with George Will. "We're getting dangerously close to the truth," he said in this panel discussion, "which is that the sainted American people are the problem here."

Will mentions the 105 billion credit cards held by Americans, the self-reported credit card debt of $12,000 per household, and the fact that total household debt is 139 percent of household income.

"The refusal to defer gratification is a fundamental attribute of childishness," he said.

This show, "This Week with George Stephanopoulos," was pretty good show all around. More clips here. I wonder whether now that Russert's gone Stephanopoulos will take over as the must-see Sunday morning news show.

Sunday news meeting, comedy edition

For the second week in a row, the opening of "Saturday Night Live" last night was an all-time keeper featuring Tina Fey's dead-on impression of Sarah Palin. This one, recreating Palin's interview last week with Katie Couric, is funny not just for the impersonation and the jokes, but also because, if you saw the Couric interview, it's only barely an exaggeration.

Pretty good trick when you can make the news funny without even changing anything. Check them both out here.





We also watched Chris Rock's new HBO special last night, "Kill the Messenger." Rock's in-your-face, politically incorrect and often X-rated humor might not be for everybody, but he totally cracks me up. In this concert film, culled from appearances in New York, London and Johannesburg, Rock hits a lot of his favorite topics -- racism, relationships, politics, music -- always with sharp points that everyone else somehow seems to have missed.

Barack Obama, he said, "is so calm and cool sometimes I think he doesn't even realize he's the black candidate. Like he thinks he's gonna win this thing fair and square! Like he thinks having the most votes is gonna mean something!"

And: "Is America ready for a black president? We should be. We just had a retarded one."

Rock snuck in a bit of his concert material last week on David Letterman's show, when he followed an appearance by Bill Clinton and hilariously made the point that many others have noticed: Clinton's support for Obama seems pretty soft.

Check that out here.

All in all, a good week for political comedy. The late-night shows had a field day, with highlights captured here on Huffington Post.

A cool hand

Presidential debates come and go, but there will be only one Paul Newman. I find his death to be far bigger news today than the snoozefest that was last night's McCain-Obama matchup or (espeically) any of the post-debate analysis.

There are a lot of good Newman remembrances out there already. I especially like Manohla Dargis' slide show at the New York Times, and I'll point you also to my friend Jason Bellamy's nice look back at The Cooler.

As long as the spirit of debate is still in the air: What is your favorite Newman film, or what do you consider his best role? I hope you'll answer in the comments, M&M'ers. Here's Newman's IMDb page for reference.

Jason's already on record at his site with "Hud," from 1963. A good one, for sure. I noticed an online poll at the L.A. Times that, when I last saw the results, had "Too many good choices to pick one" with a sizable lead over "Cool Hand Luke" and "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid." (The above picture is from a scene in "The Sting.")

I like all of those, but I think Michelle and I will probably kick off our Newman retrospective film festival tonight with "Cool Hand Luke," which we happen to own on DVD. "Butch Cassidy" is also queued up on the Tivo so that will get a viewing soon too. And I'm always ready to pair up "The Hustler" and "The Color of Money." But what I'm really looking forward to is going back to see three of his middle-to-late period movies again that are among my favorites. I really appreciate Newman from about the late 1970s on, because his looks have faded from godlike to merely extraordinarily handsome, and so he's forced to rely a bit more on his great charm and intelligence and other skills. I can relate.

And so, in this period I recommend "The Verdict" (1982), his incredible portrayal of a washed-up lawyer hoping to salvage some self-respect; "Absence of Malice" (1981), one of the better newspaper movies and maybe the only one that can make me root against the reporter (Sally Field); and "Nobody's Fool" (1994), which might be Newman's most subtle, affecting performance as an actor.

As for a verdict in the presidential debate, most of the commentary last night and this morning ran along predictable lines, with conservatives praising McCain's toughness and confidence on foreign policy, and liberals touting Obama's cool presidentialness and relaxed intelligence. Fine, but to declare a "winner" in a tit-for-tat talking points exchange seems silly to me.

Going by Judd Legum's guide to scoring the debate, which I linked to yesterday, it's hard to claim the meter moved toward either candidate. Call this one a draw and get back to me, candidates, when you've got an idea about fixing the economy.

Brain cancer in the news

Kathi Goertzen, from komonews.com

On the off chance that your giant headache today isn't caused by the economic meltdown or presidential politics -- more about both in a minute -- I want to pause briefly to consider brain cancer in the news.

I always flinch when I see stories on this topic. Too much of it is the maudlin, over-the-top "Gloria"-style coverage I can't stand. But even when it's straight-ahead, brain cancer news feels like it's hitting too close for comfort. A couple of months ago, when conservative pundit Robert Novak announced that he had a brain tumor -- and said it explained why he ran over a pedestrian the week before -- a friend wrote to me, full of outrage on my behalf: Doesn't it piss you off that this idiot gets all this coverage and you get nothing, my friend said.

Well, no, not really, but I do get tired of seeing brain cancer everywhere. Is it just me, or is this disease more in the news than it used to be? And often with a kicker that makes me feel bad, one way or the other.

First there was the University of Washington football player who was diagnosed about the same time I was. That killed his football career, but by the following spring, hey, he had recovered and made the UW baseball team! The M&M Pie in the Sky tour hit the East Coast about the same time Sen. Ted Kennedy was found to have a brain tumor, and that news was inescapable for a few days, along with opinions of his "grim prognosis." At Barnes & Noble one day I noticed that Bobby Murcer, the longtime Yankee player and broadcaster, had written a book and I couldn't help rolling my eyes as I read about his brain cancer being a blessing in disguise, or the best thing that could have happened, or some such nonsense. He died in July.

Anyway, this week, the popular Seattle news anchor Kathi Goertzen, pictured above, underwent her fourth (!) brain surgery in the past decade, partially resecting, again, a tumor that keeps growing back. This P-I report says the surgery lasted eight hours. God. For some reason, though, this ongoing story hasn't make me wince like cancer coverage usually does. Maybe it's that I've met Goertzen several times and like her. It's true what they've been saying in the local reports about her warmth and dedication to her craft. She strikes me as a good and brave person, and I'm wishing her well. That's all.

In economic cancer news, I loved these two news-ish takes on the Wall Street meltdown.

First, with typical editing aplomb Jon Stewart compared President Bush's speech on the economy the other night with his strikingly similar warnings years ago about terrorist attacks.



Then, CNN's Campbell Brown dropped all pretense of objectivity in ripping Bush and Treasury Secretary Paulson a new one. Again, the juxtaposition of old and new clips is what makes the case.




Planning to watch the big debate tonight? Now that John McCain has backed back in everyone's back to preparing their debate preview pieces. I've scanned a few of them, and for my money the best guide is this piece by Judd Legum at Huffington Post.

Legum, whose old job was monitoring post-debate punditry for Hillary Clinton's campaign, said the main thing he learned was that pundits are full of it (duh). Turn off the post-game analysis, he advises, and figure it out for yourself. He offers a few useful rules for doing so, with examples from previous debates.

Finally, could any morning news meeting be complete without a little dig at one or the other of my former local employers?

Try this local-front taste test and tell me which lede makes you want to read the story.

Newspaper A:

BLAINE -- The second gubernatorial debate of the Gregoire-Rossi rematch proved to be another bare-knuckles slug fest, this time before a pro-business crowd that gave Republican challenger Dino Rossi a home field advantage.

But while several of Gov. Chris Gregoire's positions received icy receptions -- her support of Washington's estate tax, for example -- she touted her accomplishments with optimism and confidence.

Newspaper B:

BLAINE — Gov. Christine Gregoire and challenger Dino Rossi both pledged Thursday not to raises taxes to make up for the state's projected $3.2 billion budget shortfall.

But even on that point of apparent agreement, the rivals found plenty of room for dispute during a heated hourlong debate sponsored by a business group.

To my eye, the second story, by the Times, gets quicker to the point -- breaking some news with the tax pledge -- and tells what happened instead of characterizing it, as the P-I does with its it cliched "slug fest" take.

My lesson here: Write the news plain, people.

Even blessed with a brain tumor, I can see that much.

Return of the morning news meeting

Flipping through the M&M archives I noticed it was one year ago today that we posted our first morning news meeting, a little pre-workday back-and-forth between Michelle and me about the Seattle papers' front pages: on that day, coverage of the new "Halo" video game, a rant about the Seattle Times' ongoing disease-of-the-week barf-fest and a tandem head-scratch about the P-I's lame centerpiece feature.

Actually, we had dabbled with a morning news meeting precursor a couple of other times. But it was on this date last year that we gave the feature its name, and it was something I kept going pretty religiously for a long time. Eventually, I guess, it began to feel like an obligation and I gave up doing it regularly.

Lately I haven't been doing much blogging at all. I haven't felt well and I just haven't been into it. But in honor of the M&M MNM-iversary, and with all the news out there right now, I decided to cast my grumpy eye on the day's headlines.

Predictably, the local papers and big sites are all leading with some combination of the Wall Street bailout and the McCain debate pullout. As they should. But so far I haven't seen the story I'd like to see someone tackle: What, exactly, would happen if Congress doesn't approve this $700 billion, kingmaking, unreviewable checkbook for Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson? Yes, I heard President Bush say last night that "our entire economy is in danger" without the public money. But how? What does that mean? What are the steps of the implied collapse? I imagine trouble for the last standing investment banks and for big institutional investors. But then what? Do local banks go down, small businesses close, people lose their jobs? Why? How? When? I'm surprised I haven't seen anyone try to run these questions down yet. About the closest thing I've seen is today's New York Times op-ed column by my friend Tim Egan, who does it by implication, retelling some tales from the Great Depression.

When the stock market crashed in 1929, losing 40 percent of its value over a brutal autumn, barely 2 percent of Americans owned stocks. People asked, sensibly: how could this affect me? ... Banks were largely unregulated then, free to gamble people’s savings on stock market long-shots. When the market collapsed, the uninsured deposits went with it. By the end of 1932, one fourth of all banks were shuttered, and 9 million people lost their savings.

While we're assigning stories this morning, how about a piece honestly assessing blame for this mess? And by that I mean not just the piggishness of Wall Street and the blindness of the politicians and bureaucrats who are supposed to be watching it (that's been noted, and rightly so), but also the stupid, irresponsible and unquenchable desire of everyday Americans, millions and millions of them, to have everything they want, right now. Yes, part of that was their easily exploited wish to buy more house than they could afford, to believe that real estate prices would rise endlessly, virtually erasing the risk of both mortgage borrower and maker, or so they thought. But there is also the pull of "the porn," as we call the weekly Best Buy circular around here. There's that gleaming 50-inch 1080p plasma LG staring you in the face -- no payments until 2010! -- but do you really need another TV, on credit? How does the consumer spending binge figure into all this? When the president told us months ago that it was our patriotic duty to buy stuff to help the economy, was that really right?

I mean, I love the porn too. I'm typing this on my trusty MacBook Pro, and I'm sure I'll reread it later on my swank iPhone. But come on, people. If everyone forgoes a purchase or two, is that going to hurt the economy, or help it? I'd buy a newspaper that attempted to answer that question.

In local news, Michelle and I were at the Mariners' historic game last night. It was their 100th defeat of the season (we were also on hand for loss No. 1, on the season's second day), but what made it historic was the fact that the M's are the first team ever to lose at least 100 games while also spending at least $100 million on its players' salaries. That should have been on A1 today. Next year, with Richie Sexson gone and with the ability to fire another overpriced loser or two, it's possible the Mariners could dip below the $100 million payroll mark. I wouldn't bet on the team losing any fewer games though.

Finally, a couple of misanthropic notes in my pet-peevey tightass copy editor mode:

The Seattle Times has a front-page headline today, over a story about a new charitable foundation started by a retired baseball player, that says, "One teacher can impact so many kids." Argh! I know this is a quote and everything, but surely someone on the desk knows that impact is not properly a verb in this sense. Jeez. One dumb headline can impact so many kids. Well, not really, since kids don't read the paper. But still. Shape up, people.

The P-I's Robert Jamieson writes today about crime in Seattle's Belltown neighborhood, and I was with him until I got to this sentence: "Nearby street hustlers howled right along with sartorially attired patrons who'd just left Viceroy, an upscale bar." Um, sartorially attired? Doesn't that just mean they were attired in ... clothes?

Lesson for writers: Don't use ten-dollar words when a two-bit one will do, especially when you don't know what the spendier word means. You can't afford it, vocabularywise. Didn't you hear? Our entire economy is in danger.

Correction o' the week

One of the all-time greats, from today's Seattle Times:

Business: The name of dictionary publisher Merriam-Webster was misspelled in a Wednesday story about Microsoft's spell-checker.