Conventional wisdom says these days ain't happy ones for pulp-and-print publications. Circulation's down. Ad revenues are down. Everyone wants to read online. So nearly every newspaper, magazine and television news program has a host of blogs these days, to compete with the millions of self-described experts, autodidacts, conspiracy theorists and Chuck Norris-aficionados who propagate the blogosphere with their own brand of citizen journalism (read: poor spelling and poorer grammar). Indeed, it's hard to get noticed......

One Saturday a few weeks ago, we went to the Rainier Beach library with Little Miss Seattlest. After picking out several books, we were making our way to the circulation desk when one of the librarians behind the public service desk spoke. "Excuse me," she said. "Have you heard about the summer reading program?" We were, of course, familiar with the concept of a summer reading program, but we hadn't really thought about enrolling our......

The Sightline Institute's Cascadia Scorecard was released last week and while British Columbia continues to show us how it's done on almost every environmental front (live longer, less energy use, less sprawl, more Canadian), the news ain't all bad for Washington. Gasoline consumption in our state declined again to 15.3 gallons a person a week, the lowest usage we've seen since 1967. Hybrids haven't really been in wide enough circulation to account for this, particularly......

"Les Schwab, 89, was the sort of bigger-than-life person for whom Oregon is legendary: the independent maverick and unabashed capitalist who insisted on doing business his way, who ignored business trends, treated people with respect — and raked in the profits." So says the Corvallis Gazette-Times. Schwab, who died Friday, was orphaned at 15 and supported himself selling newspapers in Bend. He worked his way up to circulation manager, and married his high school sweetheart......

Pretend for a moment that you work the circulation desk at a Seattle branch library. A patron asks you to change the information on his account. He's moving, so you change the address. And he asks you to change his default pickup branch to a new, rather distant location. From, say, North East to Rainier Beach. While you're doing this, you notice that he's got 18 hold requests already placed in the system. Pop quiz:......

Seattle will continue to have two daily newspapers, at least for the immediate future. It sounds like both papers were unwilling to leave things entirely in the hands of the arbitrator who was set to deliver a binding verdict on the dispute: They settled with each other and the terms include the Times buying the P-I out of JOA stipulation that the smaller paper would continue to receive revenue in the event that that paper......

The Seattle Weekly government in exile launched its website today and has promised to continue posting to it until the people rise up and give them their paper back. Anyone pining for the city's other weekly and its lovable cast of characters circa the Bronze Age through about a year ago should head over to Crosscut immediately. We'll see you back here when you've had your fill. :::Seattlest fumbles with getting our new cell phone......

This past weekend, the Seattle Times ran a piece on a man who is starving himself so he can live a few years longer (we can't seem to find it online, however). The practice is called calorie restriction, and it is based on research suggesting, for reasons still mostly hypothetical, that restricting one's daily diet to at least 2/3 of the recommended calories for your age/weight could lead to an increase in your lifespan. Today......

--You may be surprised to hear that Shaun Alexander's foot isn't completely healed and he won't play next week, but we aren't because we know that foot injuries don't fully heal until your favorite player starts kicking ass in the playoffs for someone else's team. --The Seattle Times proved it doesn't get the story of itself today when it buried this tidbit in an article about its sinking circulation: "But the NAA also said......

In the old days, when men were men and trees fit in the ground, newspapers were no less biased than the average KVI caller. Most were organs of one political party or the other, and as a result were very entertaining. Then some wisenheimer got the idea that newspapers should be unbiased, and as a result you get the awful flabby boring unreadable product that is the modern American daily newspaper, with headlines like......

Mark your calendars: starting November 1, the Seattle Public Library will be extending its DVD checkout period from one week (boo!) to two weeks. The Seattle Public Library will extend its loan period for DVDs from one week to two weeks beginning Wednesday, Nov. 1. The change also applies to DVD sets, such as television series and multi-part travel and history collections. A DVD may be renewed twice if there are no holds on the......

There aren't any pictures of the Wawona that are findable on the web. We looked when we posted something about the boat a few weeks ago. Recent pictures, not some artist's representation of the ship in its prime, carting timber and city forefathers around the Sound. Go ahead. Try to find them. Actually you don't have to because we took some lately and now we can all see why there are so few current......

A while ago we brought up Tuning the Air...um, was it April? Last night, we finally made it out to Ballard to check out the circular guitar ensemble and were not disappointed. This is the second year of Tuning the Air's Monday night performances in the North Annex of Trinity Methodist Church. The 45-minute shows begin at 8pm (doors at 7:45pm), and the suggested donation is $5. You go inside, you go up some......

A Times/P-I telemarketer called last night asking us to renew our subscription. She offered us a hell of a deal--a full week of either paper if we just paid for weekends. When we said no to that, she offered us the Sunday paper for $1/week. One buck? After circulation, marketing, costs, what can they make on that? 10 cents? Less? Why don't they just make the damn thing free? Anyway, we had to break the......

Newspaper circulation numbers for daily newspapers were released recently, and (you may want to sit down for this) circulation is down! We'll give you a moment to clutch at your heart and flop about in your Aeron - Just nod when you're ready for us to go on... Ok, we wouldn't be writing about this if our own hometown two didn't bleed more than the national average. Over the past six months, the average loss......

The e-mail arranging the interview said "call if you have any trouble finding the office," but we really didn't understand what she meant until we found ourselves under the Viaduct, staring into a shady-looking importer's warehouse with their address. Was this really the office of a highbrow and hip foreign policy quarterly aimed at intellectually minded college students? With the sinking suspicion we were trespassing, we climbed a flight of rickety, well-worn wooden stairs and......

According to this USA Today story (hat tip to the Spurge), the Seattle Post-Intelligencer will attempt to reach a younger audience next year by publishing the Lindsay Cibos and Jared Hodges manga Peach Fuzz in their Sunday comics section starting early January. The comic in question (sample here) about a delusional nine year old girl and her pet ferret, was first published earlier this year by Tokyopop after the artists submitted the work to that......

Well, it was nice having the Post Intelligencer around for as long as we did. We're very much in favor of two-paper towns (two dailies, two weeklies, whatever) because we like to think that they keep each other honest. The P-I has been trending a bit to the left lately (is that true?) and it would have been great to see two major papers on opposite ends of the political spectrum in Seattle, but alas.........

What a treat this week's episode was, hmm? Chalk full of little easter eggs for us Pacific Northwesters. Plus, the triumphant return of Joe ! And mocha lattes! Special appearances by Mamas Grey and Yang! Lake Washington aerial view! And, Seattle Grace Hospital continues to single-handedly be responsible for the whole of Seattle Magazine's circulation. The gang kicks off the evening with a little nightcap, courtesy of the Emerald City Bar and its risen-from-the-dead-owner Joe,......

The Oregon state quarter is now in circulation, featuring an engraving of Crater Lake. But we must wait (with Idaho--the indignity!) until 2007 for ours. What will be on Washington's quarter? The U.S. Mint wants design ideas, but, strangely, only in essay form. The Seattle Times asks readers for their ideas. Using the Times' form, the website Fark.com started their own contest, and the far more irreverant designs of their users can be viewed here.......

Whether via tampon purchasing or virtual human neutering, this week's Grey's Anatomy was all about the gentle art of emasculation. Well, emasculation but also half-naked chicks. So it kind of all balanced itself out in the end. Ready to recap? Let's begin. Naturally, the episode begins with more Seattle geography for the insane, and in a nice continuity switch-up, we're also told it's 4:30 am. Not sure why we're suddenly privy to the good doctors'......