Party Penguin by Slightlynorth

Join us at Odd Fellows (1525 10th Ave Capitol Hill) for drinks, discussion, and to hang out. We’re combining tonight’s meeting with a town-hall style discussion on the future of the news in Seattle, emphasis on the sale/closure of the Seattle-PI. We’ll be there from 6:30pm to whenever things wind up. Drop by for a drink, stay for a few hours…anything goes!

* 5:00 PM: Draw-a-Thon and Contest!!! SPL University Branch presents another event in the Comixtravaganza series, celebrating comics, manga, graphic novels, and artists. Local artist Justin Norman will give tips and advice while aspiring artists create their own comic book. Submit your comic for a chance to win a prize. Oooooooh! Ahhhhhh! Ohhhhhh!
[LINK]

* 6:30 PM: Go to SPL Ballard branch to hear local author and adventuress, Helen Thayer, read and discuss Walking the Gobi, the astounding story of how she and her husband walked 1600 miles across the Gobi Desert. She was 63 years old when she made that trek, back in 2001. Can you believe it? Amazing at any age, but hot diggity dog, what a role model! Thayer made history in 1988 by skiing to the North Pole, alone but for her dog, Charlie. That adventure is chronicled in her book Polar Dream. This event is a really good reason to visit Ballard. (Too bad Cafe Besalu isn’t open evenings.)
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* 7:00 PM: East West Bookshop hosts Dr. James Weldon (also known as Rishi Yogadhi Pragya), author of The Secret Journey to the Enlightened Mind, for Creating Sustainable Communities for the 21st Century. Dr. Weldon is founder of Santosha Village, described as “a spiritual eco-community and conference and retreat center” in Colorado, and practices age-management medicine. I have no idea what any of that means. Obviously, I am not enlightened.
[LINK]

* 7:00 PM: Author Jon Raymond will read and sign Livibility: Stories at the U-District UW Bookstore. Raymond is a screenwriter, as well as an author, which explains why stories in this collection have been made into movies: both Old Joy and Wendy and Lucy are based on Raymond’s work. His spare, crisp style seems to translate well to motion pictures.
[LINK]

* 7:30 PM: SPL doesn’t have Pugetopolis in stock, yet, but you can buy a copy and have Knute Berger sign it at Elliott Bay Books, tonight. From the book jacket: “Knute “Skip” Berger is a Northwest original. And he is on constant watch for what’s authentic and what’s fake and foolish in the life of greater Pugetopolis-from cruise ships fouling the waters of Elliott Bay to the myth of Seattle nice to our vanishing sense of regional identity. Berger’s “Mossback” writings, the best of which are gathered in this volume, amply demonstrate that this sharp-tongued curmudgeon with a conscience is required reading for people who call themselves Northwesterners.”
[LINK]

I explained in Part I why the P-I as a print newspaper is dead. But let me rehash some points I and others have already made.

1. The P-I as we knew it is dead, because newspapers are dead. The ink-stained wretches may clutch onto false hope that someone will save it, but it’s over.
2. Journalism is alive and well, though. And I’ve already seen one too many people talk as if losing the paper means losing the only journalistic voice in town. Between radio, TV, and blogs, there’s still plenty of journalism in this town. It’s just going to be… different.
3. Hearst shuttering the P-I only delays the Times’ funeral. Before Friday, the Times wasn’t going to see out the summer. Now, they got, at most, two more years of life. But the Blethens are cash-starved and running out of things to sell. Going non-profit won’t save them from their business model. And they’ve been very, very backwards online, castigating bloggers where the P-I embraced them.
4. This is more about the onerous JOA than Hearst losing money. Apparently, Hearst and the P-I have been pushing hard for a greater online presence, but the Times had to say yes to the initiatives, and they consistently said no. Killing the JOA, even if it means killing the P-I in the process, puts Hearst in control of their own destiny in the Seattle market, rather than still in the hands of the Blethen family.
5. No one has ever done a true, daily, online-only newspaper wholly independent of any other media source or revenue stream. No, really. And before you start saying Crosscut, look at it. It produces one, maybe two articles a day. Add that all together and you get the output of a weekly newspaper, like the Seattle Weekly David Brewster used to run. Every online newspaper up to now has depended on revenue from elsewhere to keep itself, mainly from ads sold in the dead tree version. Yes, that means there’s never been a successful online-only newspaper, but it also says that there really is no business model for an online-only paper. The P-I going wholly online will be a first, and comparing it to other web models pre-supposes a great deal.

It seems like going online-only, in the long term, is a smart business decision. Five years from now, being first-to-market with an online newspaper will give you huge structural advantages over all your competitors. Even if there is no model yet for a wholly online paper, five years from now there probably will be. And right now, the old newspaper model is broken. So, if Hearst or someone else with money is willing to gut it out, they will be positioned to dominate the market when the stars do align.

With that in mind, this is what I’d suggest the P-I’s owners should think about the day the end comes.
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photo by Trevin Chow [flickr] via our group pool [#].

• Your visit to Capitol Hill Seattle is worth six cents. [neighborlogs]
• Now, make them some more money and find out about Cupcake Royale’s move to the hill. [chs]
• Lindy West and Eli Sanders made it into the inaugural ball in Olympia. [slog]
• An interview with Hardly Art confirms that the label is named after a Thermals lyric. [subsonic]
• this weekend, FrankenBOOT celebrates its fourth year of mashing things up at Re-bar. [seattlegayscene]
• Google added some bus information to Maps, but forgot to include route numbers. [dailyweekly]
• Michael Hebberoy has Seattle hip-hop royalty over for dinner. [lineout]
• Monica Guzman visits the P-I globe with its decades-long caretaker Dave DeFrank, where Joshua Trujillo discovers rust under New Zealand. [bigblog]
• OMG. The Crocodile is booking shows!1! [twitter]

* 7:00 PM: UW Bookstore hosts Mark Bittman, author of Food Matters: A Guide to Conscious Eating with More Than 75 Recipes, for a discussion of sustainable, healthy eating, followed by a book signing. Professors Ann Anagnost and Lucy Jarosz will join the discussion. The event will take place in room 120 of UW’s Kane Hall. If you were thinking of checking out Food Matters from SPL, be prepared for a very long wait: there are currently 224 active holds on 30 copies.
[LINK]

* 7:00 PM: Outdoorsy types might want to swing by REI (222 Yale Ave. N., Seattle) to see a presentation by Dan Nelson, writer of Snowshoe Routes: Washington.
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* 7:30 PM: Writer and artist Stephanie Kallos visits Elliott Bay Book Company to read and sign her second novel, Sing Them Home.
[LINK]

Have you wondered what it’s like to be called to jury service? I got a summons last month and today’s the big day. While I obviously won’t be able to tell you about any case that I get assigned to, I don’t think there’s any prohibition on describing the waiting. Liveblog after the jump!

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MoveOn.org is hosting a rally for Obama’s economic recovery plan down at Federal Building today at noon. The goal being to “make clear to Congress and the media that there’s overwhelming public support for investing in green jobs, health care, and clean energy.” After the rally, members of MoveOn will deliver petitions to congress members pleading the case for support.

Well, I’m all about it and am planning to run down there for bit on my lunch break to hear some first person accounts of the economic crisis from fellow Seattle residents and support the event by showing up.

Economic Recovery Congressional Action
When: Wednesday, January 14, 12:00 PM
Where: Federal Building, Seattle
915 2nd Ave
Seattle, WA

Today Gawker brings us [#] the New York Observer’s look inside the world of ‘blogger playboy and must-read linkblogger Rex “fimoculous” Sorgatz and his microcelebrity-climbing conquest of the particular world NYC-style, Tumblette-infused blogdating. They place the blame his Gossip Girl assisted adventures squarely in Seattle’s court:

(1)  Not to mention the blogger scene in Seattle was as sterile as the Microsoft campus where his office had been for two years.

(2) “The difference was that in Seattle there was no scene,” [Sorgatz] said. “Once you met [sex columnist] Dan Savage that was it—there weren’t a lot of people that you wanted to know. [nyo]

Seattle Freeze, there is thy sting! They almost imply that the absence of such a scene is a bad thing. But it’s entirely possible that he was just looking in all the wrong places or before putting in the required time in the city-mandated isolation chamber before jumping into it.

Ferry at Night by Beth Freeman via our group pool [#]

A Bellevue woman who went sailing on the 10:55 p.m. ferry to Bainbridge turned up missing when the ferry docked, according to the AP. (#) Her van was left on the ferry, as were her purse and keys, which were found on an upper deck.

These kinds of stories always leave me with a shiver running down my spine. The Coast Guard has searched Puget Sound for her, and the State Patrol is investigating, but really, it sounds like the beginning of a paperback mystery novel, and I wonder if they’ll ever discover what happened to her. Perhaps she just walked off the ferry in Bainbridge, minus purse, keys and van, and hitched a ride to a nearby farm. Let’s hope for that ending, and nothing more sad or sinister.

Mark your calendars, people. Portland indie pop duo, Blind Pilot, has rescheduled their show after they weren’t able to weather the floods for their previously scheduled show on Jan 8th. They are slated to play at 7:30 pm on Monday, Jan 26th at the Triple Door.

If this eco-minded, toe tappin’, bike tourin’ duo doesn’t do it for you, maybe 3 Leg Torso will. This opener is a five-piece band who has scored for independent filmmakers like Academy Award winning animator Joan Gratz and will be sure to entertain any crowd.
 

A taste: Blind Pilot- “Go on Say it” ; 3 Leg Torso

Tickets are $12 and can be purchased here, or by calling the Triple Door box office: 206 838 4333  

Triple Door // 216 Union st (between 2nd and 3rd) // 26 January // 7:30pm