I am a microscopically-small part of the local media colossus. As I float like a white blood cell through this moribund creature, I find myself in an ideal situation to take the measure of it and discern why it is sickly and sucks so. Tough love is the most generous gift I feel like giving to the fourth estate this holiday season, so I have decided to assign grades to Seattle's news providers, guided only by my cool-headed concern for once-vaunted news institutions, and also guided my mean, crotchety nature. What could be more humiliating to them? Surely they will not want to repeat the experience and will make necessary repairs.

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Seattle's Neighborhood Newspapers.
Grade: B
Hearty shout-outs go to the African-American papers (The Facts, The Skanner, the Seattle Medium), the Asian papers, and the neighborhood weeklies. These publications provide important niche news which is generally ignored by the mainstreamers. The Pacific Publishing chain of papers (our publishing partner) -- which puts out the Queen Anne News and the like -- recently signed on Geov Parrish as a columnist after he resigned as the Seattle Weekly's staff anarchist. A good hire and a courageous decision.

On the matter of corruption, I must disclose here that the Belltown Messenger was in its early days boosterish and thus biased; our first press materials promised to "put a positive spin on our neighborhood." Seattle P-I art critic Regina Hackett feigned offense at this and wrote: "may your paper go the way of all flesh." I called her to ask what kind of arcane biblical curse she had leveled at us, and she told me she objected to my use of the word "spin" in association with journalism. Oh. I reminded her that much of what the dailies write about is inspired by press releases from P.R. firms, to which she muttered "but we decide what to write about."

Three years later the Messenger has gone the way of, if not all flesh, a lot of flesh: we are plumper and more pleasing to the eye. We've grown beyond the admitted payola of our first few issues (thanks to advice from Mike Dillon at Pacific Publishing Company) into a rag I hope our neighborhood can feel proud of.

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Alt-Weeklies.
Grade: C+
Behind the Stranger's useful hooker ads and inspirational booze ads and cheery patina of profanity and porn lies a creepy proclivity to do things the wrong way. Get this: their writers promote their advertisers. In fact, their writers promote each other. Good example: last year Stranger contributor Matthew Stadler wrote a fawning review -- "beautifully filmed, deeply optimistic" -- of the movie Police Beat, which was written by ... Stranger staffer Charles Mudede. No disclosure in the review about the close relationship and bylines that Stadler and Mudede have shared. Interestingly, Mudede wrote Stranger reviews of films shown at the Northwest Film Forum while simultaneously negotiating with them for sponsorship of Police Beat. That is pretty ridiculous; even the Stranger's ombudsman describes the Stranger as "unclean." Read the Stranger for their great porn and comics, but not if you're looking for credibility. (Quick plug: Mudede screenwrote a documentary about homosexual horse-on-human sex which just played at Sundance.)

The Seattle Weekly is owned by out-of-towners (who purchased the paper from other out-of-towners) and warrants no mention here. Thus this paragraph has no purpose and I apologize for causing you to read it.

Real Change deserves an A for credibility, but they are not technically an alt-weekly because of their non-profit status and their strict focus on homeless advocacy. (As a bonus, longtime Belltown Dispatch -- our predecessor here in Belltown -- writer Cyd Gillis is now one of their staffers.)

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The Yuppie Lifestyle Magazines.
Grade C-
Seattle Metropolitan is a new glossy city-mag which sports excellent graphics and a smattering of good stories, along with the usual lists of top dentists and other cater-to-the-Man crud. Their masthead is populated with talented refugees from the Weekly, victims of that rag's latest gory shakeout. Seattle Met is refreshingly unpretentious: they are honestly, openly a magazine for rich, corporate Cosby-sweater-wearing suck-ups and don't pretend to be otherwise. As such, they are shockingly useless to the rest of us.

Their weaker counterpart, Seattle Magazine, is owned by indifferent out-of-town chain Tiger Oak Publications. A recent cover story naming Paul Allen their Man of the Year put a bullet in their half-dead credibility. The opening sentence of the article on Allen was a jaw-dropper, suggesting that Allen is so low key that he doesn't name things after himself. We all love Paul, but the article goes on to talk about the Paul G. Allen Institute for Brain Science, the Paul G. Allen Family Foundation, etc.; we who are not his sycophants notice that Allen is very much a namer-of-things-after-himself. Needless to say, a quick flip through the sheeny mag reveals several advertising pages taken by Paul Allen's Vulcan Corp.

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Various fringe publications.
Grade: D-
The Seattle Sinner is published by people who are contemptuous of the accepted rules of spelling but nevertheless attempt to plagiarize Hunter S. Thompson -- a speller of skill and distinction -- in nearly every article, these of course being about sex, tattoos, body piercing, drugs and all that.

The Seattle Gay News is chronically uninteresting to those outside the gay community (and many of those in it: everyone knows the Stranger is the gay newspaper of record in Seattle), yet they insist on doing drop-offs at just about every spot in town. Gotta admire that, right before being irritated that their stacks cloak and lay athwart the hoodie papers and other more relevant rags. The SGN is a longtime local leader in typographical errors.

Out-of-towner New Age hacks Seattle Conscious Choice (formerly Evergreen Monthly) are still plugging away despite the fact that ad sales for herbal colon therapies are down 60% since 1995. The Washington Free Press, started by yours truly and manic, anti-Boeing crusader Mark Worth in 1993 and since taken over by hippie wankers, exemplifies the "liberals preaching to the converted" approach to leftist journalism. They eschew the use of illustrations or photos, which simply take up space better used for world-changing diatribes and pleas for money.

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The Seattle Times.
Grade: F
Publisher Frank Blethen uses the editorial pages of this highly-profitable behemoth to fight for the "reform" of inheritance taxes, or, as he calls them, "death taxes." Even Bill Gates' father was against this measure, which failed at the ballot box. Can you really trust a man so focused on his personal balance sheet to bring you accurate news?

Hope for the future:
The Seattle Post-Intelligencer will be wiped out just as soon as the Times escapes their joint operating agreement, which is why Paul Allen or some other local billionaire should buy the thing and revolutionize local journalism. The family fortunes of the Allens, Gates, McCaws and a dozen others dwarfs that of the "old money" Blethens, and that cash could be put to good use turning the tables on the hopelessly corrupt Times. Down south, Los Angeles media billionaire David Geffen is looking to buy the L.A. Times because he wants to do something meaningful for his community. Some Seattle bigwig should follow his example and buy out the Hearst Corporation's interest in the P-I and turn it into the best daily newspaper in the country!
- Alex R. Mayer

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The Gray Lady fails you once again
On December 11, the lengthy New York Times story about the death of Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet made no mention of war criminal Henry Kissinger, orchestrator of the U.S.-backed coup that ousted -- and killed -- President Salvador Allende and installed Pinochet. An insulting omission, especially since everyone now has easy access to all the relevant information not filtered by the business interests that control the Times. A quick Google search reveals hundreds of Pinochet obituaries that correctly mention Kissinger, even including the obscure Asian Tribune of Thailand, which notes, "While Pinochet is dead, Kissinger still lives and is liable for criminal prosecution for his role in fomenting a coup that claimed the lives of thousands."

Thank you P-I!
On December 14, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer ran a syndicated piece by Amy Goodman titled "Ask Kissinger about Pinchochet's regime," but there was still no mention of Kissinger to be found up to that date in the New York Times. Goodman is host of Democracy Now, which can be seen locally at 3 a.m. on the cable show Free Speech TV.

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The idiocy of local TV News
Local broadcast media has not a shred of credibility, with the exception of cable's Seattle Channel. Granted, they're an excited enthuser for Mayor Greg Nickels. But hey, you gotta love this mayor: here's a guy you could imagine having six or seven pints of beer with over lunch, along with a large Caesar salad (with anchovies) and a chocolate sundae. He's that likable, despite his unofficial position as head cheerleader for local real estate developers. Outside of that one channel, though, local TV news is an asinine, chattering, babbling group of foofed-up middle-management lackeys with slick haircuts and vacuous stares who could be plopped into any cookie-cutter TV newsroom in the country. They preside over a hugely profitable cacophony of perky traffic and weather chat, concerned blurbs about isolated murders and house fires and other incidents that are depoliticized and sanitized for the common mouth-breather. Watch them for the sports highlights but otherwise, please, ban them from your brain.