Seattle's other newspaper war

Two days out, they got wind that something was up. The staff of Seattle Weekly, the city's largest alternative paper, had just assembled the annual dining guide, locking in the major pieces, such as the cover photo.

Nearly the entire staff helped assemble the popular "109 Favorite Restaurants" issue. This is, in part, why isolating the traitor has been a difficult job.

Across town, The Stranger editor Dan Savage and publisher Tim Keck were finalizing an annual guide of their own -- also with the help of a Weekly staffer. A mole had slipped the competition an advance copy of the restaurant guide's cover photo. The result: The Stranger's "101 Favorites: Restroom Guide," complete with a precise parody of the Weekly's Pike Place Market cover shot.


	The Stranger parodied the Seattle Weekly's annual dining guide. The two issues appeared on newsstands at the same time.

"They got us," Weekly editor Knute "Skip" Berger said without a trace of a smile in his Pioneer Square office. "I'd like to find who gave them the photo and give that person the option of working for The Stranger."

In Keck's office in The Stranger's warren in Capitol Hill, Savage cackled at the memory. "Let's just say a person on staff sent it to us," he said. "I'm not saying who. We don't want to get anyone fired. We just wanted to delegitimize '(109) Restaurants.' When you say the best 100 anything, you don't mean best.

"There are not (109) great restaurants in Manhattan."

Welcome to Seattle's pointed, personal, alternative-newspaper war. Although the fight between the Seattle Post-Intelligencer and The Seattle Times has received much of the attention from media, courts and the papers' own pricey attorneys, the city's alternative and the alternative to the alternative wage an endless seven days' war, one that is often far more interesting, dynamic and representative of the city itself.

Want to know about layoffs at the Weekly? Read The Stranger. Want to get the skinny on political activist Savage's lack of voting? The Weekly knows. Think the Weekly's City Hall coverage is slipping? The Stranger says so. Is The Stranger's commitment to accurate reporting more one-night-stand than marriage? Memos at the Weekly claim as much.

"Boring," publisher Keck says of the Weekly.

"Juvenile," editor Berger offers about The Stranger.

And so it goes. But during the past two years, the nature of the battle has entered a critical juncture as the two slowly, subtly become more like each other in an effort to establish dominance in a midsize media market already saturated with television, radio and print.

Sensitive to the notion of its perceived lack of seriousness, The Stranger has bulked up its news gathering, hiring City Hall reporter Erica Barnett (away from the Weekly) and politics reporter Sandeep Kaushik, in addition to expanding the responsibilities of longtime news editor (and frequent provocateur of the Weekly) Josh Feit.

In turn, the Weekly has pushed hard into The Stranger's territory -- popular music reporting -- with the addition of writers who focus on music outside the mainstream and indie rock. Just five years ago, the Weekly didn't have dedicated sections for music, film and books. That changed. Additionally, each section received its own editor.

The reason was clear, particularly with music.

"We had ignored (popular music) for all of those years," Berger said. "We needed to change."

Circulation now is, on average, separated by only 10,000 to 12,000 copies, with the Weekly moving roughly 100,000 copies a week and The Stranger approaching 90,000. The Weekly's numbers show that The Stranger's upward march to equality has stalled. The Stranger's numbers predict it pulling even with the Weekly within a few years.

Whom to believe? Both, actually. Or neither.

With the blizzard of numbers used to assess circulation, readership and demographics -- data that determine how much companies will pay for ads -- publishers at both papers cite audits that show them doing well. The Weekly trumpets figures showing an increase in the number of 18-year-olds reading the paper (a perceived strength of The Stranger).

The Stranger, citing average number of pages per issue and advertising lineage, says it now is producing a larger, more lucrative paper (historically a Weekly strength) while closing the circulation gap. Doug Cavarocchi, a marketing director with Seattle's One Reel, which produces Bumbershoot and Teatro ZinZanni, advertises with both papers. He noted that The Stranger has become a legitimate newspaper as the Weekly has become more hip.

"(The Stranger) came out very much like a slam book," he said, "but they have matured. When we poll our audiences you never so strongly see one paper over the other. The relationship is complicated and symbiotic in many ways, closer together all of the time."

Chris Beno, owner of the Graceland nightclub at the base of Capitol Hill, said while the papers have drifted together in some ways, the differences remain striking.

Beno, who has owned nightclubs in Seattle for 15 years, including the now-closed Colorbox in Pioneer Square, said he sticks with The Stranger to reach the punk and metal fans who pack Graceland. But for his personal life, that of a 40-something who lives with his family on Bainbridge Island, "the Weekly probably more speaks to me."

In this, the numbers are clear and not in dispute. The average age of a Weekly reader is 41. The Stranger's are a decade younger. Representatives with both papers say this isn't deliberate, that the papers are not slaves to demographics.

Instead, it's a natural outgrowth of reader age and desires, editors and writers for both say. Younger readers naturally drift to The Stranger and its edgy, funny, sometimes profane view of Seattle and the world. Dan Savage, perhaps the city's best-read advice columnist, says with some justification that his paper is a "performance, with acts and an ending."

He wants his paper to reflect Jon Stewart's clever "The Daily Show" more than another newspaper.

Much of the reporting is conversational and deeply personal. (The running joke at the Weekly is that if the "I" on Stranger keyboards broke, they'd be unable to publish.)

The Weekly -- so old-school Jet City that its editor's column is titled "Mossback" -- represents NPR-listening, Subaru-driving, REI-fleecy Seattle liberals. Founded in 1978 by David Brewster, the paper's gene pool comes from the old Seattle Magazine of the 1970s, which was closer to the award-winning Texas Monthly than the current magazine of the same name. Its stories are long, informed and serious.

And unlike The Stranger, the Weekly doesn't consider a strong bias a virtue.

Brewster liked The New Yorker, Harpers and opera. So did the money behind the paper, which included investors such as Bagley Wright. The Weekly's editorial decisions reflected Brewster's likes, with informed coverage of fine arts and his distaste for popular music.

It's become local legend that in the late 1980s and early 1990s, the Weekly's writers shared elevators with the musicians and producers streaming in and out of Sub Pop records -- where Nirvana got its break -- and still managed to be the last paper to cover the grunge explosion. (It's a running joke at The Stranger that the Weekly is "Kirkland's best newspaper.")

Both sides agree that The Stranger often is more humorous, more sensational, more scurrilous. "It is funny sometimes, I'll give them that," said Philip Dawdy, a news writer for the Weekly. He even concedes that the competition has improved its news coverage "slightly," adding that a June 2003 Eli Sanders piece on HIV's spread in King County was "brilliant."

"I'll tip my hat to that," Dawdy said.

Likewise, Kaushik, The Stranger's politics reporter who scooped all of Seattle's media with coverage of the attempted dissolution of the dailies' Joint Operating Agreement, gives occasional credit to the Weekly's penchant for in-depth reporting, such as Nina Shapiro's coverage of serious financial problems at KCTS.

"That was a story I wish we had," he said.

Then, just as quick, both return to their respective bunkers, firing away.

Dawdy: "I mean they finally do something good, then they have to talk about themselves. The HIV crisis is not about you guys," adding that Stranger reporters are less journalists than "advocates."

Contends Kaushik: "Most of the Weekly reporting is dull. It is an example of the conventional alternative weekly and that's what no longer works."

Managing editor Chuck Taylor, a well-regarded Seattle Times veteran hired to pump up the Weekly's news coverage after the paper's perceived editorial drift of the late 1990s, said his editorial goal is clear: "It's the paper that anyone with a brain will want to read."

The Stranger, at times, aims a bit lower.

Since it first hit the newsstands in September of 1991, the driving forces behind The Stranger have been both Keck, who helped establish The Onion in Madison, Wis., and Savage, whose "Savage Love" column likely is the most popular feature among both papers and is syndicated in 50 alternative weeklies. (Even "Love" has matured, however, with Savage long ago dropping the "Hey Faggot," salutation on letters from readers.)

The Stranger, with its relentless barbs at the Weekly -- a situation Berger compared to being "stalked" -- and its darkly funny and sometimes salacious "I anonymous" and "End of Days" features, matches the sensibilities of Seattle liberals too, but those with more pink, ink, piercings, black clothes and fewer mortgage payments.

Savage says he didn't target these readers. Rather, they appreciate "the paper we want to read. That's all we do. Put out the paper we want to read."

Charles Cross, the former editor and publisher of The Rocket, Seattle's leading music bi-weekly publication of the 1980s and 1990s, said he regards the Weekly as "boring" but more "responsible." The Stranger, he said, is "funnier," but "erratic."

"The real issue," he said, "is who is going to dominate the market? Personally, I'd rather read the Weekly, but at this point I don't see either establishing themselves as dominant."

Whether either can remains the long-term question. Whether either really wants to is another. To expand, the Weekly's editors know they likely must become more like The Stranger to court younger readers. "The fact that you are assumed to be a better paper for going for 18-year-olds is idiotic," Weekly writer Shapiro said.

And The Stranger would have to consider what an unpierced, untattooed heterosexual soccer mom might want to read about -- a scenario Keck likens to "death."

For his part, Berger said he'd like to see both papers stay -- even though he doesn't much care for his current competition. And Keck asserted that "90,000 is a good number and I wouldn't mind leaving it at that."

Then, both are back at it.

"We don't think The Stranger has a great audience and that we want to go after that audience. We have a loyal following."

And the Weekly can have them, Keck said. His worry is that The Stranger someday will have to end the parodies of the Weekly that his staff so enjoys because, "we'll be bigger, and then that will be bullying."

P-I reporter Mike Lewis can be reached at 206-448-8140 or mikelewis@seattlepi.com

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