Reporter Spangenthal-Lee joins PubliCola.

PubliCola has hired Jonah Spangenthal-Lee, the dogged local crime reporter and founder of the scoop-heavy Seattle news site SeattleCrime.com. Starting on September 1, we're folding SeattleCrime.com into the Cola, so in addition to our obsessive politics coverage, PubliCola will also be the go-to site for crime reporting and Seattle Police Department news.

Welcome to all you dedicated SeattleCrime.com readers. We promise Jonah will have a big platform here. To our regular Cola readers, the non-stop local politics coverage will continue apace, and will be featured front and center as always.[pullquote]In addition to our obsessive politics coverage, PubliCola will also be the go-to site for crime reporting and SPD news.[/pullquote]

Before starting SeattleCrime.com in 2009 (and working as the assignments editor at KIRO TV for the past year), Jonah was the cops reporter at The Stranger . I was actually the news editor at the Stranger back then—I hired Jonah straight out of college—and I worked closely with him for a couple of years. I must say, it's a pleasure to be back in the same newsroom with him (and his cop scanner) again. He'll always be a goofy hip-hop kid from Nathan Hale HS, but he's also got the reporting chops of a 1940s newsman with one of those big press cards sticking out of his fedora.

We've wanted to hire Jonah for a couple of years, and it's exciting that we're now in a position to do just that.

Stay tuned tomorrow for a special edition of Morning Fuzz.



UPDATE: An official comment from Jonah:

"The things that the Publicola franchise have done to be able to free up cap space and to be able to put themselves in a position this summer to have all three of us, it was hard to turn down."

Hmmm. So who gets stuck playing the part of Bosh, Erica or me?