Ballots are arriving in the mail. Vote!
The Seattle Times, The New York Times, KING, Seattle PI, GeekWire, KUOW (here and here), MyNorthwest (here and here), The Stranger, The Daily UW, and Seattle Bike Blog bring us the latest election coverage.
The Seattle Times, Capitol Hill Seattle Blog, KIRO and Erica Barnett cover yesterday Council deliberations over the future of the Navigation Team.
KUOW looks at the push for “mobile pit stops” in Seattle.
The Seattle Times reports that Seattle’s “P Patch” gardens may be in peril.
The Urbanist and West Seattle Blog cover the Council’s upcoming budget discussions on transportation.
The Seattle Times reports that Seattle and King County will stop accepting plastic bags in recycling bins.
Please add the Seattle Channel as a resource. City Inside/Out did a great job interviewing each pair of district candidates for 30 minutes without bias, and you can get ahold of the interviews on itunes as a podcast or in a browser. See here:
https://www.seattlechannel.org/CityInsideOut
I’ll think about it. I love the Seattle Channel, but it is funded by the city, and it could be construed as official government communications. If I include that, then there are all sorts of other city government information sources that I might need to include as well. Quite the slippery slope.
I understand you are concerned about including the Seattle Channel as a source because they are government funded, but they are the only source I have heard that covers the elections without bias. Most of the sources you list are clear advocacy groups, some with very narrow interests like the bike blog. By featuring them you’re amplifying whatever litmus test they want to impose on each candidate.
If your goal is to help people learn and then decide for themselves, I think you should side towards the quality of the coverage and lack of bias, not the funding source.
I hear you. But it’s complicated.
I would disagree that “most of the sources” I list are advocacy groups. I list the Seattle Times, Crosscut, KUOW, KING,KIRO, KOMO, the New York Times, AP, Daily UW, Reuters, Bloomberg, Capitol Hill Seattle Blog, West Seattle Blog, South Seattle Emerald, Erica Barnett… and there are a lot of pieces from the advocacy groups, and for some of the media like MyNorthwest and The Stranger that don’t qualify as news or credible op-ed pieces. They all have viewpoints, and I’m not sure any of them are “unbiased.” I’m certainly not either.
As I said before, I really like the Seattle Channel. But I’m generally of the opinion that the government doesn’t need my help in getting its message out; it has plenty of resources on its own.
Thanks! I see your blog as being really good about reporting the news first and clearly separating out any bias. Maybe I haven’t followed your writing long enough 🙂
The funding of Seattle Channel is more complicated than just being “government funded”. From their “about us” page: Seattle Channel is supported by cable-television franchise fees and is a part of Seattle Information Technology. Programming decisions are based on content and are made independent of the mayor and Seattle City Council.
I disagree with your point that government “doesn’t need my help getting it’s message out”. Certainly the NYT, The Stranger, The Seattle Times, KOMO, and several other news outlets have far more reach than the Seattle Channel does. Whether a news source is government funded, private funded, or a mix is separate from the issues of reach, bias, and quality of news coverage.
Thank you for providing information many don’t typically see. I find the income and tax filing disclosures very interesting. I had no clue how many multimillionaires are in the Seattle City Council and how many have own more than one house.