First, a look at the over-hyped:
Amanda Knox: If ever there were a case of misplaced sympathy for a hometown girl, here it is. Knox, in the unlikely case you missed it, is the party girl accused of helping rape and butcher her roommate at a foreign student program in Italy. The unusually gruesome murder earned Knox nicknames in the Italian press like "La Luciferina." Here, the coverage, dripping with sympathy, is about a scared local girl in a foreign prison. I've yet to see a profi le of the British victim. This is a double winner: both over-hyped and, in the dominant local story angle, truly morally repellant.
The Oklahoma City Sonics. Car crashes, fires, violent crimes, sports, big (and not-so-big) weather "events," heartwarming stories of photogenic, plucky survivors (preferably kids) overcoming adversity, and every other staple of Chuckle-Buddy News. School Board bashing: It's over now. Really. Because it worked. All year, the daily papers foamed at the mouth about how irresponsible and bad the Seattle School Board was. Sure enough, none of the four reform candidates elected four years ago are still on the board after November's election, which was exactly the point of this coverage. The reform board actually did a pretty good job with the fi scal disaster they inherited, but they weren't part of the Old Boy/Gal network that previously ran the schools, and that still runs the dailies. That was the board members' biggest sin. After a year of smears, they're out, and the old guard is back in control. Brace yourself.
Housing hype: Seattle media spent the year ostentatiously celebrating the fact that, unlike the rest of the country, our housing prices continued to spiral upwards out of control. And I do mean celebrate: this was uniformly covered as good news, despite its obvious impact on the renters and wouldbe home buyers that are a majority of Seattle's population. The editors who assign these stories showed a singular lack of understanding (or concern) as to how the rest of us outside their social circle live.
Now, the Emerald City'sunderreported stories:
Condo conversions and the loss of affordable housing: Even as the local housing market has (fi nally) collapsed, rental prices are actually still going up. Why? Supply and demand. So many apartments were turned into condos by speculating owners this year, a record number, that there's very few affordable choices left for renters in Seattle. Why hasn't this been a huge story? Well, refer back to the over-hyped.
South Lake Union development gifts: From dedicated utilities to a doubling of height limits to the recently opened SLUT (South Lake Union Transit, a.k.a. A Streetcar Named Desire), it was a banner year for gifts to Paul Allen from our development-happy mayor and city council. I hope Allen was gracious enough to send a bottle of something nice to City Hall this holiday season. He can afford it.
Darcy Burner's Internet fundraising: There were two people running to oppose Dave Reichert in 2008's Eastside congressional race. Then George Bush came for a Reichert fundraiser in August and Burner used the occasion to raise over $125,000 in one weekend on the Internet, all from small donors. She actually out-raised Bush's visit for Reichert, once expenses were deducted. A few days later, her primary opponent dropped out and endorsed her. It was a nationally unprecedented display of the grassroots potential of the Internet for raising money and wielding power, and in local political circles it was an earthquake. In local media? Barely a ripple.
World Trade Organization protesters get $1 million in damages from city: Why? Because police beat and arrested them without justifi cation. This is the exact opposite of what local media told us in 1999, which is perhaps why they didn't much dwell on it in 2007.
Joint Operating Agreement holds: The Seattle Times went to court a few years ago to force the Seattle Post-Intelligencer out of business. Last spring, they got their briefs handed to them. Big story, right? Not in the dailies, which can't write about themselves quite so honestly, and not in radio or TV, which didn't want to acknowledge competitors. You had to go to the Stranger or the blogosphere to know why one of Seattle's major civic institutions was sticking around, or that Times owner Frank Blethen, after years of bellowing about family ownership and the need to protect media diversity, had his attempt at a local monopoly smacked down hard.
Sleaze at the Port of Seattle. A perennial. Likely to get worse in 2008 with Alec Fisken voted off the Port Commission due to a challenger heavily financed by business interests cozy with the Port. There's more, of course. There always is. Read carefully in 2008, and rely on multiple sources. You'll come away knowing a lot more about how our city works - and what you can do to change things in 2008.
Check out my national/globallist at www.eatthestate.org!
Seattle writer and community activist Geov Parrish may be reached via editor@sdistrictjournal.com.
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