Seattle

On the Dilbert blog, Scott Adams has been suggesting ways that Scott Meyer's comic "Basic Instructions" might be made ripe for daily-newspaper syndication, Seattle Weekly reports. The strip currently runs only in the Weekly and on Meyer's website. The readers of Adam's blog have been serving as the focus group as Meyer has tried the various tweaks proposed. "I'm keeping an open mind and giving a shot to anything he suggests," Meyer tells the Weekly.

Earlier this month, Aaron Silverberg, the self-proclaimed "Buddhist tennis coach," was the subject of a Seattle Weekly profile highlighting his flute playing and his reading of sensual poetry to the girls he coached at Ballard High School. Last week, Silverberg was fired, according to the Weekly. He says the school's principal told him that "no matter what, when someone sees something with young girls referring to sex, it puts me in a gray area." For its part, the Weekly wonders why it took them to bring this to the light. "Where was the oversight from Ballard administrators? Why did it take a newspaper story to make them aware of Silverberg's supposed improprieties?"

KOMO-TV says it "has received several viewer e-mails" complaining about this week's Seattle Weekly cover (pictured), which features an illustration of a kid wearing a T-shirt that reads "Fuck School." The TV station assumes "the paper made the bold move to make people pick up the paper," and talks to a few angry Seattle residents, but finds others who certainly don't seem to mind. Managing editor Mike Seely explains the decision to KOMO, saying "I took a look at the guy on the cover and I thought, 'what is this guy thinking?' And it was crystal clear." On the Weekly's blog, editor-in-chief Mark Fefer writes that the paper didn't go with the cover "just to get attention or stoke controversy." He adds: "I take no pleasure whatsoever from knowing that many people -- mostly (I think) people who aren't the paper's readers -- took offense."

Knute Berger says over the last few years he was at the Weekly, a stalker constantly harrassed him with letters and packages containing threats, hypodermic needles, and, once, even a bullet. Most of the packages came to the Weekly's office, but some were delivered to his home as well. He says the stalker also sent mail threatening to blow up places like Starbucks, with Berger's name on the return address. Eventually, after he left the Weekly, Seattle police apprehended a suspect, who is being charged with one count of stalking. "People in journalism are used to getting angry calls and nasty letters and e-mails," but this campaign clearly went beyond that, Berger says. "My writing was putting my family at risk."