For the second time in three days, The Wall Street Journal gives prominent play to the Seattle mayoral primary*. To which I have to say: Who cares?
On Tuesday, the paper dropped a piece too long for a news take about the upcoming election but too short to actually tell a real story of interest to anyone outside Puget Sound—on A3, telling readers there were “Clouds Over Seattle Mayor’s Election Bid.”
Okay. Clouds, huh? Maybe there’s some kind of interesting story here worthy of a classic Journal take on some obscure topic you didn’t know you cared about.
Nah. It’s just a straight story telling us the Seattle mayor is in trouble because of a snowstorm, a tunnel, and his image as a bully. Here’s the half-hearted attempt to make it interesting to a Journal reader:
The election comes as Seattle tries to shake off the effects of the weak economy, which has led to job losses and financial strife at the area’s biggest corporate icons, including Microsoft Corp., Starbucks Corp. and Boeing Co.
Today the paper follows with a news story on A5 reporting on the vote counting. Not the official results—the in-process counting of the votes (“more than half”), which has the incumbent running behind 1.6 percentage points.
This is important enough to take Microsoft reporter Nick Wingfield, one of the best-known tech reporters in the business, off his beat for a couple of days?
* clarified. I originally said it was an election, which implies a general election.
Why yes, Ryan, it is. Nichols is a canary in the liberal coal mine. Previously thought to have a lock, he's now seen as vulnerable. If he can become vulnerable any Democrat mayor in the country can be vulnerable. Especially because Seattle is not nearly in as much disrepair and decrepitude as most of the other large Democrat controlled cities.
The larger issue, and one that is even more significant locally and nationally, is the stomping down of the bag tax in Seattle. Nichols was also associated with this.
Nothing's really breaking at Microsoft that is more important than this.
#1 Posted by vanderleun, CJR on Thu 20 Aug 2009 at 10:55 AM
vanderleun,
I'd have more sympathy for that if this were a general election, but it's not, or if the two people beating the incumbent weren't Democrats, but they are.
Or if the WSJ even made your point, which it didn't.
#2 Posted by Ryan Chittum, CJR on Thu 20 Aug 2009 at 02:49 PM