It's Time to Bail Out the Seattle Times

The Seattle Times is looking for spare change between the sofa cushions, as it begins to sell off real estate assets in order to unburden itself from massive debt obligations, and now may be the time for Seattle's conservative minority to make itself known. 

Bill Richards has been doing great work covering the business side of the Times operations for Crosscut - a well-balanced regional news and opinion web site which I have contributed material to - most recently in his article "Seattle Times Struggles With Debt".

I am not going to go through the long drawn-out case for why Seattle needs a functioning newspaper.  What I will say is that after ten years of abstaining from receiving the Seattle Times at home, last week I subscribed and I would urge you to do the same.  There is only one condition.  You must make sure to write letters to:

Leon Espinoza, Executive News Editor, lespinoza@seattletimes.com

James Vesely, Editorial Page Editor, jvesely@seattletimes.com

Michael Sheehan, Director of Circulation Operations, msheehan@seattletimes.com

All letters can be addressed in care of:

Seattle Times
PO Box 70
Seattle, WA 98111

Inform them that your subscription is a vote of confidence that the paper will begin including more voices from the right, and not on the basis of tokenism.  Inform them also that your subscription you are voting with your dollars and the subscription can be canceled should the voices not begin to appear.

More balance in the newsroom will balance the papers books.  The message is simple and if hundreds or thousands of such letters were to arrive on the desks of these three individuals we can be certain the topic will show up on someone's meeting agenda.

Perhaps we can revive the spirit of dialogue (that is when opposing viewpoints both speak and listen) in our city's newspaper.  Only through effort can we even hope to achieve that noble goal.

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