Seattle Magazine was started in 1963 by Stimson Bullitt as part of the KING-TV media group. The magazine never became profitable, but KING continued to subsidize it until it folded in 1970. Relatively free of financial pressure, it was free to print what publisher Peter Bunzel wanted. Corporate Seattle never supported the venture, with Frederick & Nelson and Boeing advertising notably absent. The publication was significant partly because it was a glossy magazine which penetrated to the professional and managing elites, and provided well-written and provocative articles which helped define what people would talk about. Articles in Seattle could not be as easily ignored as articles in the hippie Helix.

For example, Ruth Wolf's article "Getting There Could Be Half The Battle" presents Seattle's transportation options circa 1970. The main alternative to freeway gridlock, then as now, was light rail. There was public pressure for light rail, and federal dollars were available through the Forward Thrust program. In fact, Forward Thrust would have provided $1.115 billion, if matched by $385 million in local funds, unadjusted for inflation and cost overruns.

One reason given for waiting was that light rail works only in densely populated "old model" centralized cities. Seattle was sparsely populated, and was decentralizing rapidly. The direction of future growth was unclear. Further, the promise of miracle techno-fixes such as steam powered computer-guided vehicles, perhaps riding on a cushion of air, was reinforced with the threat that rail would be "obsolete" before it was built. Who knew? Uncertainty gave cover for doing nothing, or rather doing more of what already wasn't working, namely cars and freeways and sprawl. So instead of mass transit, we got more buses.

As fine as Wolf's article is, with hindsight we notice that although vertical take-off and landing aircraft and hovercraft are seriously considered, bicycles are not even mentioned. No reference was made to the political embarrassment of laying light rail onto fresh asphalt that had only recently covered over trolley tracks. Wolf also failed to explain that settlement usually follows transportation, not the other way around. Lastly, people use a mix of what is available, so providing overlapping transportation modes is crucial. The systems theory term is "building redudancy into the system." Still, Wolf's 26-year old article holds up well.

In "New Blight On Our Skyline," Jim Halpin and Charles Michener draw attention to the ugly buildings going up in Seattle. The "eyesores" are named and critiqued, and contrasted with better new buildings. The owners and designers are named in all cases, which is the sort of involuntary accountability that might make someone rethink a bad project. Identifying responsible parties with a junky development sits them firmly on the public relations dunking stool.

The ugly buildings article features the Denny Building in the Regrade, and includes the Municipal Building, the Tropics Motel and the triangular parking garage in Pioneer Square. Halpin and Michener point out that the parking garage was built by Mandeville and Berge, and that Mandeville was on the planning commission when it was built. God only knows how much advertising revenue that naming and shaming those developers cost the magazine. However, for this article a local commercial real estate appraiser, with a degree in urban planning, confirmed Halpin and Michener's analysis of these buildings strengths, weaknesses and mixed blessings.

Seattle Magazine was an intelligent, well-written general interest magazine. The parent company hoped the magazine would bring prestige and cross-pollinate information and personnel with KING-TV. As a historical document, it shows how dreams such as Gasworks Park and the Burke Gilman Trail became realities. It also shows how nightmares such as rush hour gridlock became equally real. And it reminds us of a few nightmares that were not allowed to become concrete, ideas so bad you never heard of them, such as the R.H. Thompson Expressway. KING got their money's worth with Seattle Magazine.

- Bo Richardson

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Radio Waves at KCMU

The momentum in the battle to bring back the KCMU News Hour seems to have shifted to the side of News Hour supporters.

On August 15, speakers including respected civil-rights attorney Len Schroeter and author Paul Loeb blasted the decision to yank the News Hour during an impassioned presentation before the KUOW Advisory Board. Schroeter warned that UW officials may find themselves in another First Amendment nightmare similar to the C.U.R.S.E. flap of 1993, declaring that pulling the News Hour "had the effect of suppressing free speech." He hinted that a lawsuit against the school, which owns and operates KCMU, may be in the offing.

The KUOW Advisory Board, which technically has jurisdiction over KCMU because the stations merged last year, was not consulted before General Manager Wayne Roth pulled the News Hour in June. "I find all of this very troubling," Board member Larry Fehr said. Some board members complained that they learned about the decision in local newspapers. Roth's boss, University Relations Vice President Bob Edie, fidgeted uncomfortably during the meeting.

The board made no decision but promised to continue to look into the matter. Meanwhile, Community Powered Radio, the group advocating on behalf of the News Hour, continues to hold strategy meetings every Thursday at 7:30 p.m. at the Black Cat Cafe, 4110 Roosevelt Way NE. For information on the effort, call 782-8292.

For more information on the KCMU situation, please see last issue's article "Curses Again".

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New Ink

Aorta is Reflex reborn. After a nine-year run, Reflex gave up covering the Northwest arts scene in March, a victim of cutbacks in art funding, and apathy amongst board members and well-heeled arts patrons. But editor and publisher Jim Demetre hopes to keep Northwest art crit alive with reviews and essays on the role of art in society. Aorta is off to a promising, if uneven, start. Best is Cydney Gillis' sly and cynical look at the Seattle Art Museum's "studio tour" in May, wherein rich art mavens deigned to rub shoulders with real, live (and poor) artists. The $35,000 raked in went towards an exhibit of Japanese textiles owned by Virginia and Bagley Wright, "millionaires who were gracious enough to build an entire museum so that poor artists could foot the bill." Gillis noted how the tour guides shunned the studios of abstract painters in favor of decorative products and home furnishings. But David Berger could have beefed up his piece which argues for saving the Elwa Dam as a historical and architectural landmark. Sure, dams are art, the Elwa was built in 1913... but go tell it to the fish.

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Dead Ink

Once again, it is our somber duty to report that a number of publications have moved on to the great print run in the sky.

Locally, Frank Haulgren, who put out the Bellingham-based Radio Resisters Bulletin, decided to call it quits in June, citing limited time and resources. Haulgren put out 14 issues of the bulletin, which covered community radio and its struggle to maintain independence in the face of Federal Communications Commission restrictions and the increasingly corporate tilt of the Public Broadcasting System. Of particular interest were reports in the Bulletin about the politics of radio, from Pacifica Radio's recent drift towards the mainstream to the phenomenon of "micro radio," which broadcasts on a clandestine basis without an FCC-approved license or frequency. Good work, Frank! Back issues are available via e-mail, write: haulgren@well.com.

Moving down the coast to the Bay Area, News For A People's World published its final issue early this summer. Founded by veteran progs, this new effort managed to blend progressive politics, multicultural issues and social commentary in a professional and well-packaged paper. The fourth and last issue in June featured a particularly incisive piece by Conn Hallinan about skull-duggery at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, where sick scientists continue to invent new ways to finish off the planet despite an ostensible end to the arms race. (Several of us at the Free Press cut our baby hack teeth with Hallinan, who teaches journalism at UC Santa Cruz.)

Lastly, and also from San Francisco, comes confirmation of what some of us suspected - Processed World is no more. This slick mag with lots of graphics and irreverent "Tales of Toil" by disaffected temp workers and counter-culture pranksters went 32 issues, much of which is collected in their anthology, Bad Attitude, Verso, 1990.

To all, may your ink run once again!

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Contents on this page were published in the September/October, 1996 edition of the Washington Free Press.
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Copyright © 1996 WFP Collective, Inc.