Bye Bye Seattle P-I

I've been listening to this series on KPLU (the NPR station at Pacific Lutheran U) on the last days of the Seattle Post Intelligencer, and our last days as a 2-daily-newspaper city. (http://www.publicbroadcasting.net/kplu/news.newsmain?action=article&ARTICLE_ID=1478803) The broadcast yesterday focused on investigative journalism asking who would be our watchdog if newspapers couldn't anymore.

They had a blogger named Scott St. Clair who posited that the blogosphere (a loathed word) fills this function and there is no need for professional journalists. He spoke of the inanity of 'professional' journalism with such derision that it caught my attention and I started rolling his name around in my mind. And when he talked of representing the Evergreen Freedom Foundation I knew exactly who he was.

Whenever the word Freedom is used by an organization, you can bet that 7 times out of 10 it's some rabid right-wing cabal. And this time was no exception. This fool, Scott St. Clair, was one of the major opponents of Tent City, and, no surprise - the Evergreen Freedom Foundation is a conservative think tank.

That the irony escapes Mr. St. Clair is also no surprise; I mean the fact that he is publicly associated with a conservative think tank and yet proposes to fill the role of an unbiased journalist.