Newspeak, a Colorado Springs blog with a strong alt-weekly pedigree, says The Stranger's Slog is "one of the best blogs on the internet and you can skip the local crap if it doesn't interest you." In fact, the folks at Newspeak think the Seattle paper is "the only alt-weekly in the country to have figured out why blogging is an alt's best friend and do it with teeth, wit and style." Perhaps they haven't read the Arkansas Times' Arkansas Blog, which John Brummett of The Morning News calls "by far" the best Arkansas political blog.

Continue ReadingAAN Member Blogs Make Year-End Lists

The Stranger's Andrew Bleeker and Seattle Weekly's Gavin Borchert will compete with 10 other finalists in the championship round of the Seattle Spelling Bee on Jan. 8, reports Bleeker in the Stranger. The event is the culmination of six months of alcohol-drenched semi-finals. "Over the course of [the] monthly events, the Seattle Spelling Bee has inspired nerves and drinking in equal measure," writes Bleeker. "This is far from a two-horse race, though -- everyone in the finals has the chops to win. ... Hearts will break, honor will flourish, and at least one person will get spectacularly drunk."

Continue ReadingShowdown: Rival AAN Staff Writers Face-Off in Seattle Spelling Bee

Associate Editor Charles Mudede, who already has one film to his credit, wrote "Zoo," a feature-length documentary about, ahem, bestiality. Mudede tells the Seattle Times that he became fascinated by the notion that sex with animals was legal in the state of Washington until news reports circulated last year about a man who died from a ruptured colon after having sex with a horse. "Zoo" was bought by THINKFilm and is scheduled to premier at the Sundance Film Festival in January.

Continue ReadingMovie Penned by The Stranger’s Mudede Picked Up by Distributor

Dan Savage, editor of Seattle's The Stranger and writer of the syndicated column Savage Love, continues to moonlight as a political activist, according to the Chicago Reader. (See second item.) His current efforts are focused on unseating arch-nemesis Sen. Rick Santorum, R-Penn. But in an interview with Stephen Morse, a reporter for the Daily Pennsylvanian, a University of Pennsylvania student newspaper, Savage reserves much of his invective for Green Party candidate Carl Romanelli, a potential spoiler who could siphon off votes from Democratic candidate Bob Casey Jr. In a video clip of the session, Savage says, among other things, "Carl Romanelli should be dragged behind a pickup truck until there's nothing left but the rope." Savage later apologized for the remark on the Stranger's blog.

Continue ReadingSavage Shreds Green Candidate on Campaign Trail

Following revelations that the alt-weekly's coordinator for club advertising secretly contributed to the Stranger's music blog and newspaper under the pseudonym "Keenan Bowen," both she and the editor who solicited the articles resigned. In an interview with the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, Editor Dan Savage calls Music Editor David Segal's arrangement with staffer Bailee Martin "a lapse in editorial judgment, and a serious one." But Savage also said the potential for conflict appears to have been untapped, and the weekly will repost all of Martin's stories upon review.

Continue ReadingStranger Editor Rues ‘Lapsed Judgment’ of Double-Dipping Staffer

Bailee Martin, club advertising coordinator for the Seattle alternative weekly, served one too many masters. Martin, along with one of those masters, Music Editor Dave Segal, resigned when it was discovered Segal had solicited Martin to contribute music pieces, which she did under the nom de plume "Keenan Bowen." Editor Dan Savage wastes no time posting a full disclosure.

Continue ReadingStaffers Resign Over Pseudonym Flap at The Stranger

"People who relish offensiveness to make a point are all for free speech -- so long as the speech doesn't offend them. This is a liberal hypocrisy," Robert L. Jamieson Jr. writes in his Seattle Post-Intelligencer column today. Jamieson is upset because a local nightclub canceled a show by reggae singer Buju Banton, whose lyrics contain references to killing homosexuals. (He was rescheduled at a different venue.) The outcry was "fueled in part by The Stranger, which loudly sounded the alarm on its blog after other city bloggers began a witch hunt," even though "the alternative weekly touts itself as a champion of free speech and a pusher of artistic envelopes," Jamieson argues. In a post on The Stranger's blog Tuesday, writer Eli Sanders responded to the paper's critics: "The Stranger is not the U.S. Supreme Court or the Seattle Police Department. We don’t interpret the Constitution and we don’t enforce its provisions. ... The First Amendment continues to exist despite Neumo’s cancelling of the Buju Banton show. Neumo’s still has the right to put on offensive shows if it wants to. We still have the right to put up blog posts about Buju Banton if we want to. And Buju Banton himself, if he really still believes in the urgency of an artistic message that includes glorifying anti-gay violence, can stand on the street in front of Neumo’s (or in any other public space) and shout that message as loud as he wants."

Continue ReadingPost-Intelligencer Columnist Accuses The Stranger of Being ‘PC Police’

To make a point about proposed club regulations, The Stranger's editor, Dan Savage, walked into Seattle's City Hall carrying pot cookies and a fake gun. Seattle Weekly Staff Writer Philip Dawdy argues that Savage went too far because he used his press credentials to take the illicit materials into restricted areas of the building. In a post on The Daily Weekly, SW's blog, Dawdy notes that the Seattle press, including The Stranger, has fought to maintain access to offices in City Hall in the past; now, Savage's actions could "make the security folks at City Hall rethink who gets to go where and under what circumstances," he writes.

Continue ReadingSeattle Weekly Writer Objects to Dan Savage’s Gun ‘Experiment’