Seattle Times

Mondo Times editors    Boulder, Colorado USA

Posted at 3:28pm on Monday, August 10th, 2009

An investigation into the spread of a deadly drug-resistant staph germ at hospitals in Washington state earned The Seattle Times a Public Service Award on August 3, 2009 from the Associated Press Managing Editors Association.

In "Culture of Resistance," the newspaper uncovered 672 deaths from methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, or MRSA, that had been undisclosed to relatives and the public. The report also revealed that the number of patients treated each year for MRSA had increased from 141 to 4,723 in just 10 years.

In uncovering the staph germ epidemic, The Seattle Times had to fight for records and made many of those documents available to readers in a searchable database. By the end of the three-day series, the state said it would require hospitals for the first time to report all cases linked to MRSA. The project also resulted in new state laws requiring hospitals to screen at-risk patients for MRSA and providing for surprise hospital inspections.

"The Seattle Times' reporting will save lives, and that is public-service reporting at its best," the judges said in making the award.

Mondo Times editors    Boulder, Colorado USA

Posted at 11:18pm on Wednesday, July 22nd, 2009

Writing in the Seattle Times on July 4, 2009, Victor Pickard And Joseph Torres share their ideas about how to save "America's democracy-sustaining journalism."

"NEWSPAPERS are in trouble. Big media companies are in bankruptcy, century-old newsrooms have shut their doors, and thousands of journalists have lost their jobs. The day seems imminent when a major American city will wake up without a broadsheet on anyone's doorstep.

The public's changing media habits have eroded the newspaper industry's monopoly on the local ad market. Today, more people get their news online than from newspapers. Fewer people are willing to pay for classified ads and are opting instead to place ads online. This is bad news for an industry that earns 90 percent of its revenue from print ads.

Despite the many shortcomings of newspapers, our democracy requires a free and vibrant press. There's growing debate in Washington, D.C., about how to address the journalism crisis. The big media companies are pressuring Congress to prop up their failed business models by allowing more media consolidation and relaxing antitrust laws so they can collude on new "pay wall" and pricing schemes.

But these shortsighted measures aren't the answer. We must recognize that the current crisis isn't just about the future of newspapers; it's about the survival of democracy-sustaining journalism. We now have a unique and fleeting opportunity to overhaul our media system and advocate for policies that would serve the informational needs of diverse communities."

The full story:
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/opinion/2009414766_guests05freepress.html

A copy of the Free Press report "Saving the News: Toward a National Journalism Strategy" can be downloaded at:

http://www.freepress.net/files/saving_the_news.pdf

Eric Kallgren    Boulder, Colorado USA

Posted at 1:45pm on Monday, March 23rd, 2009

Will Seattle be a newspaper-free town?

On March 14, 2009, the Associated Press posed the question:

"As the Seattle Post-Intelligencer moves toward printing its last edition, it remains unclear whether its bigger rival, The Seattle Times, is far behind -- and whether this famously literate city could soon find itself without a major daily newspaper.

The Times is heavily in debt and struggling to cut expenses, just like many other newspapers across the country. But the Times is different from many large newspapers because it is controlled by the Seattle-area Blethen family and doesn't have deep corporate pockets from which to draw.

"The Seattle P-I may be going out of business, but the Times is an equally troubled company, and possibly even more troubled," said Alan Mutter, a former newspaper editor and Silicon Valley chief executive who writes the Reflections of a Newsosaur blog.

Times Publisher Frank Blethen acknowledged the struggles last month as he appealed to state lawmakers for a tax break for newspapers.

"Some of us, like The Seattle Times, are literally holding on by our fingertips," Blethen said."