Opinion
A Mini-Editorial on Journalism Etiquette
This morning, The Seattle Times picked up
the story Erica broke last week about the unionization effort at Seattle City Light.
That's cool. But at least the PI—which also picked up on Erica's story (last week)—had the courtesy to credit us.
I call The Seattle Times a Bar Mitzvah suit paper. What do I mean by that? I mean this: They have the trappings of being mature—fancy offices, "objective" standards, stodgy tone—but underneath, they're really pretty juvenile.
They did the same thing last week when they went with Erica's excellent scoop about a Bellevue City Council meeting (on the controversial alternative light rail proposal ) that may have violated open meeting laws.
I'm not trying to be churlish, but we work our asses off, and it's not cool when fellow reporters (who work just as hard as we do and know exactly what it's like to bust for a scoop) don't give us props for original reporting.
On that score: I think the Seattle Times is killing it on the medical marijuana story . They've owned it. PubliCola doesn't have the resources to cover big criminal justice stories, and I'm glad the Times is on it.
That's cool. But at least the PI—which also picked up on Erica's story (last week)—had the courtesy to credit us.
I call The Seattle Times a Bar Mitzvah suit paper. What do I mean by that? I mean this: They have the trappings of being mature—fancy offices, "objective" standards, stodgy tone—but underneath, they're really pretty juvenile.
They did the same thing last week when they went with Erica's excellent scoop about a Bellevue City Council meeting (on the controversial alternative light rail proposal ) that may have violated open meeting laws.
I'm not trying to be churlish, but we work our asses off, and it's not cool when fellow reporters (who work just as hard as we do and know exactly what it's like to bust for a scoop) don't give us props for original reporting.
On that score: I think the Seattle Times is killing it on the medical marijuana story . They've owned it. PubliCola doesn't have the resources to cover big criminal justice stories, and I'm glad the Times is on it.
