Correction: Morning Fizz had the dates wrong. The KING 5 year-in-review segment that I'm on is running on Sunday, January 3.

The Seattle Channel  segment, however, does air tonight. Lots of fun. I say the P-I, on the brink of extinction just a year ago, is a 2010 winner. They're up and running as  viable online news site, the first daily in a major American city to go for it as an online-only publication, which has energized their political coverage. (Their politics blog blows away The Seattle Times' politics blog.)

I also say Mayor Greg Nickels' agenda won the mayor's race. Mike McGinn is Nickels' Frankenstein's monster.

As a neighborhood activist who took Nickels' green urbanism seriously, (and redefined the neighborhood movement for greens, wresting it away from NIMBYs), McGinn and his Seattle Great City Initiative took up Nickels' efforts to build density, decrease parking requirements, and raise heights in the neighborhoods.



Candidate McGinn at the downtown library/photo by ECB.

Shortly after McGinn started  Great City, Nickels moderated his own green vision, backing off a transit oriented development bill, supporting a "transit" initiative that came with 182 miles of roads, softening LEED standards for private development, and of course, advocating for the car-centric tunnel.

It turns out Nickels had originally been moving in the direction Seattle wanted—green-development, green-density, and putting an end to the old "Lesser Seattle" neighborhood movement.

Nickels' catch phrase for all this was "A World Class City," messaging he dropped.

But McGinn got it, and found new messaging ("Great City"), while Nickels got cold feet.

This explains the McGinn-Vulcan connection that many find surprising given McGinn's reputation as an anti-establishment guy. It also explains why McGinn hired Nickels' former righthand man, Marco Lowe, as director of the city's lobbying efforts.

Anyway, that's some of what I say on The Seattle Channel tonight and on KING 5 in two weeks.