Having trouble keeping up with how the staff of the Stranger feels about Atlas’s all-ages venue being shut down by the Fire Department [mb] and people’s angry response to Eric Grandy’s article that tipped off the authorities? After the jump, a handy timeline and recap:

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9 pm Friday: On the night that Atlas was shut down, Ari Spool (web content coordinator) writes, ;The visit was in direct relation to the article Eric Grandy wrote this week about their semi-legal goings on.” [slog]

4 am Saturday: Arts Editor Christopher Frizzelle tells everyone to stop picking on Eric [slog], directing them from the Slog to Lineout where he explains that he and Dan Savage were frustrated by the Stranger’s lack of coverage of Atlas and that they pressured Grandy to write the article. He argues that the venue wasn’t a secret at all because they had a sandwich board in front of the store listing shows. (This sandwich board seems to be the straw that broke the secrecy camel’s back as far as the editors were concerned, moving the venue out of speakeasy 2005 territory [stranger] and into the public domain) [lineout]

Noon Saturday: Eric Grandy (staff writer) didn’t think that his article [#] would result in the place being closed. He defends the piece by saying that it’s o.k. to write about semi-legit places if they’re trying to become legit, but not illegitimate places (like the Egg Room) that are planning to stay that way indefinitely. [slog]

2 pm Saturday: Music Editor Jonathan Zwickel spotted an poster made by someone angry at Eric Grandy [lineout]

3 pm Saturday: Megan Seling (staff writer) further insists that there’s no middle ground between secret and not-secret and encourages the angry mobs to channel their energy into helping put on shows and strengthening the all ages scene. [lineout]

Among the 200+ comments it looks like a healthy balance of finger pointing & support (in both directions), along with that guy who posts a comment on every post to remind us that Dan Savage was in favor of the Iraq War in 2002. Matt Fuller, who organized the shows at Atlas also responds [slog]

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As for the other ‘bloggers:

Seattle Powerpop Blog sort of agrees with the Stranger (under the likely incorrect assumption that Atlas was advertising shows in the paper anyway) [#]

Three Imaginary Girls writer ChrisB doesn’t think the paper did anything wrong, in part because he hadn’t ever been told to keep it quiet. [tig]

For what it’s worth, when I contacted Atlas about a show in February, they wrote that it was fine to write about the bands but politely mentinoed that they were trying to keep the “venue specific” press down, which I thought was pretty reasonable.

Certainly, the owners are ultimately responsible for complying with expensive fire codes; a newspaper’s obligation is to its readers rather than a nascent club, but I don’t buy the assertion that there is only “secret” and “not secret” and nothing in between. Sure, the internet is public, but I see a pretty broad spectrum rather than clear bright lines here. In one case, there’s an intended audience of thousands versus a circulation approaching 100,000 newspapers a week; so a MySpace posting (or flyer or e-mail or even a sandwich board on a sidewalk) is different from a print article pointing out that a venue is operating illegally. The latter is a whole lot more likely to be spotted by the authorities and nearly impossible to ignore.