I’ve been one poor correspondent, again.

But I had a reason.

I was busy finishing my next book, Walking Seattle.

As of this morning, it’s off to the publisher.

(The last thing I did for it was to snap a pic of the restored Hat n’ Boots in Georgetown.)

I promise to be more present at this site in upcoming days.

(I know, I’ve made such promises before. This time I mean it for sure.)

We haven’t discussed this topic since before the Xmas advertising season, during which the SeaTimes looked almost like a profitable venture again.

Then came the post-holiday letdown. SeaTimes ad volume dropped back toward their mid-’09 nadir. Skimpy 26-page Mon.-Wed. papers were the norm again.

The local news content of these editions also steadily shrank, particularly once the mayoral election was done. A typical day’s story lineup would consist of little more than a couple of politician press conferences, some new rant against the Seattle School District by an irate parent, a few crimes and fires, a couple of human-interest photos, and at least one long obituary.

Which brings us to this Sunday’s paper.

We get a reprise of the paper’s big shocking story from last December, that most Olympics tickets went to the rich and the well-connected (gasp!).

We get the 100th anniversary of the 1910 Stevens Pass avalanche, which killed more people than any other natural disaster of its specific type.

And, in the editorializing-disguised-as-coverage department, we get an upbeat, spin-ful ode to  a far-right political rally outside Northgate Mall. The story gleefully depicted the anti-choice, anti-health-reform gang as daring rebels against the “liberal establishment.”

A couple weeks ago, the SeaTimes only gave a couple paragraphs to a much larger anti-budget-cut rally in Olympia, and only referred to it in passing as a counter-demonstration to an anti-tax-cut rally held the same day.

At least today we get columnist Danny Westneat, respectfully calling his paper’s editorial page to task for deliberately misinterpreting opinion polls about health reform. Citizens in the poll said they thought the current national health reform scheme doesn’t go far enough; the SeaTimes editorialized that that meant “the people” don’t want any reform at all.

That’s nice on Westneat’s part, but it isn’t enough.

And neither is this.

We need more than some online media sites that take the conservative paper to task for its failings.

We need a real “mainstream” news source that depicts our city and region as they really are.

This site is still going strong, but still at the interim URL.

I wanted to re-establish it at the server provider I’ve used lo these past 14 years. It turns out that to host a WordPress-powered site over there, I need access to a SQL database. For that, they want me to pay them more.

I did that.

I then tried to launch a WP site there. It seemed to work initially. But it wouldn’t import my interim site’s posts. I only got an error message saying I didn’t have permission to create a new content directory.

Tech support suggested I change the config.php file to note a different directory path for new files and directories to go into. That doesn’t seem to work either.

I might have to delete whatever files WP has already created in my SQL database. To do that, I may need to configure and upload something else called “PhpMyAdmin.” Like WordPress itself, this isn’t an application but a stack of database scripts. The instructions for uploading and starting PhpMyAdmin are written in total unforgiving geekspeak. I have no idea what to do to make it work.

Alternately, I could try to move my domain name and associated files to this server.

After two years of sitting on my metaphorical petard promising to do it, and after one month of intense (yet satisfying) tedium reformatting almost 4,000 old entries, I’m proud to announce version 4.0 of MISCmedia! It’s a completely WordPress-powered site, with real RSS feeds and comment threads and everything!

(In case you’re keeping track, which I know you’re not, the previous incarnations were a simple shovelware posting of my old print columns (1995), a weekly (later daily) original online column (1998), and a Blogger.com-powered blog (2001).)

While I’m waiting to get the URL transferred to a new server, please view the new site at its interim address, miscmedia.netarcadia.com.

See ya there! (And bring a housewarming gift only if you want to.)

I already told you I’m bringing my old book Loser: The Real Seattle Music Story back into print next year.

Now, I’ve signed contracts for an all-new book.

It’s Walking Seattle. It’s a book of walking tours, part of a series by the Calif.-based Wilderness Press.

You can help me put this book together. Tell me what routes and destinations should be in it (especially if they’re not in previous books or flash-card sets with the same topic).

…today. Thanks to all of you kind readers who wrote in asking. I went to an MD today about this seasonal crud I’ve had for the past month. I came back with nothing but a flu-shotted arm. (The clinic techs know me well enough by now to give me the Bugs Bunny Band-Aids without asking.)

I’m only coughing occasionally now. At times circa Halloween, I was violently hacking to the point of momentary breathlessness.

Between that and my last, now-completed, temp gig, I’ve hardly touched my graphic novel script lately. I really need to get some more progress on it before I can announce it officially.

What I can announce are two new Vanishing Seattle products, just in time for your downscaled holiday giving plans.

First, may I suggest the Vanishing Seattle calendar? Thank you; I shall. It’s big, it’s bold, and it’s full of “future” dates and “past” pictures. Plan your ought-nine tomorrows while remembering the Jet City’s funky yesterdays.

Then, for the snail-mail correspondin’ holdouts among you, there’s also the Vanishing Seattle postcard set. You get fifteen (count ’em!) separate views of Seatown past, each on a separate cardboard rectangle and all handily combined within a carrying case of clear, rugged-yet-pliable plastic.

Both are now at finer book and gift shops and via the above online links. Why not get both today?

I’M THINKING OF TURNING the print version of MISCmedia into something closer to a slick magazine, with prettier paper and a real cover and everything.

Three things are keeping me from making the jump:

1. The startup costs.

2. The time commitment involved (which is really an excuse for the emotional commitment involved).

3. The iffy current state of the magazine biz.

Specifically, there’s a glut of newsstand magazines out there. Publishers have tried to seek out every potentially lucrative demographic niche market, and have accordingly shipped hundreds of new titles in recent years.

We’ve previously mentioned such hi-profile attempts as Talk, George, Brill’s Content, O: The Oprah Magazine, those British-inspired “bloke” magazines such as Maxim, those corporate-warrior business magazines such as Fast Company, and those Helvetica-typefaced home-design magazines such as Wallpaper.

But that all’s just the proverbial flower of the weed.

The shelves of Steve’s Broadway News and the big-box bookstores are verily flooded with unauthorized Pokemon collector mags, kids’ versions of Sports Illustrated and Cosmopolitan, Internet magazines forever searching for excuses to put movie stars on the cover (“This celebrity has never actually used a computer, but somebody’s put up an unofficial fan site about her”), superstar-based music magazines, genre-based music magazines, fashion-lifestyle magazines, ethnic-lifestyle magazines, and “ground level” magazines a step or two up from zinehood (Rockrgrl, No Depression).

(Then there are all the ever-more-specialized sex mags, from Barely Legal to Over 50.)

In all, there are now over 5,200 newsstand-distributed titles big enough to be tracked by trade associations. (That figure doesn’t include many ground-level titles. It also doesn’t include most comic-book titles, which these days are sold in specialty stores with their own distribution networks. It does include many regional and city magazines that don’t try to be sold everywhere.)

The good news about this is that it proves folks are indeed reading these days, no matter what the elitist pundits rant about our supposed post-literate society. Or, at least, that the media conglomerates are willing to place big investment bets that folks are still reading.

And it means a lot of writers and editors (even mediocre ones) have gotten work.

The bad news is it can’t last. Literally, there’s no place to put them all. Not even in the big-box stores.

Even the ones that make it into enough outlets can’t all attract attention through the clutter. Some big wholesalers now find only 33 to 36 percent of the copies they ship out actually sell through to consumers. The rest are shipped back to warehouses, stripped of their covers (which go back to the publishers for accounting purposes), and either recycled or incinerated.

One industry analyst estimates more than half the newsstand mags out there now will be gone within a year.

Granted, there are still enough startups in the pipeline that the net reduction will likely be smaller than that.

And many, many of these threatened titles won’t be missed much, maybe not even by those who work on them. (Though I could be wrong; perhaps in 2002 there will be eBay auctions for scarce old copies of Joe or Women’s Sports & Fitness).

So where will all the thousands of potentially soon-to-be-jobless word and image manipulators go?

Barring a sudden revival of commercial “content” websites (now intensely disliked by investors), a lot of them might end up trolling the streets of New York and other cities, trying to round up nickel-and-dime investments from pals to start up their own publishing ventures.

Just like me.

TOMORROW: Men’s designer fashions become just as silly as women’s.

ELSEWHERE:

• “Things My Girlfriend and I Have Argued About”….
• Can the lowly banner ad be raised to the status of an art form? Should it?…

…couple-O-daze for yr. o’b’d’n’t web-scribe. I did a marathon temp gig in exotic Renton. (It’s now ended.) I was there, methodically shoving pieces of paper through a machine, when my Evening Magazine segment aired. (They’d promised they’d tell me when it would run; damn.) You may be able to see it at this link.

Other things have happened as well.

• Wednesday started locally with P-I political writer Joel Connelly grousing that John McCain’s been getting a free ride from the mainstream media. The day ended with the NY Times regurgitating rumors that McCain allegedly had an affair, eight years ago, with a woman far younger than he, who worked as a lobbyist for telecom firms and broadcasters—including for Bud Paxson, of the “family friendly” Pax (now Ion) network. (Pax, you may recall, in 2004 was the chief TV conduit for the “Swift Boat Veterans for Truth,” the guys who were paid big bucks to tell lies about John Kerry’s Vietnam service.)Personally, I don’t care about his past affairs, just as I didn’t care about those of Bill Clinton (whose impeachment McCain supported). But I do care about the other half of the NYT allegations, that he’d bestowed legislative favors upon Paxson and other friends-of-friends whilst promoting himself as Mr. Let’s-Clean-Up-Government.
• In good, potentially great news, the Seattle Landmark Preservation Board decided to pursue saving Ballard’s beloved Manning’s/Denny’s building! And somebody’s already proposed a scheme to save the building, as a restaurant, while building complementary-looking housing on its parking lot.
• Discover U, the longstanding for-profit offerer of reasonably priced self-help classes and group events, has suddenly shut its doors. Now, where will Seattleites learn how to cleanse their colons, find love at any age, or start an eBay business?
• HD DVD, RIP.

…for Evening Magazine went lovely yesterday morning. We shot at a variety of locations, including the freshly re-closed (alas) Andy’s Diner and the under-destruction Rainier Cold Storage building.

Elsewhere in recent days:

• Blood bank bias. Say that five times fast.
• The next local company to potentially get bought out: Getty Images.
• Today’s AT&T: Wannabe Internet censors.
• Washington Mutual used to call itself “The Friend of the Family.” We didn’t know “the family” meant its own top execs.
• Seahawks coach Mike Holmgren: One more year, then it’s quits.
• With all the hoopla concerning oil spills and sludge, one can forget that diesel watercraft pollute the air too.
• This is the dawning of the age of asparagus.
• More Catholic boy-abuse claims are made, this time dating back to the 1950s.
• A research study by two “nonprofit journailsm organizations” concludes: Bush lied. A lot.

…local news of note the past couple of days, except for one item of great importance. Yr. o’b’d’n’t web-scribe will tape a segment for KING-TV’s Evening Magazine this Tuesday. No word yet when it will air. Stay tuned for further details.

…to the 27 people who attended my li’l book event at the Form/Space Atelier gallery. If I’d known I’d have had a mike and a stage and a desk, I’d have scripted something.

IN SATURDAY’S NOOZE:

• Declared too damaged to be preserved, the City’s allowed developer David Sabey to demolish the Stock House at theold Georgetown brewery complex on Airport Way, the pre-Prohibition home of Rainier Beer.
• A marriage made in heck: Wife runs a street ministry to drug addicts in Tacoma, hubby sells crack in Seattle.
• Sonic Boom Records is leaving Fremont, in another instance of the arty and funky disappearing from neighborhoods that have been sold to home buyers on the basis of their artiness and funkiness.
• BankAmericrap is bailing out Countrywide Financial, onetime big blowers of the housing bubble.
• Wash. state challenges the Bushies on draconian anti-privacy regulations.
• The ferry system doesn’t know where to put all its out-of-commission boats.
• What? You mean to tell me old pier pilings are bad for the water?
• Pat Cashman has a 30-year-old son, who won some online joke-telling contest. In other passage-of-time news, Madonna will be eligible to join AARP this year.
• And in case you haven’t heard, the Seahawks play an extremely important playoff game this afternoon.

…a nice hearty recommendation for my book event tomorrow (Friday) at Form/Space Atelier, 2407 First Ave.

However, I must disagree with the blurb writer, one Brian Miller, when he characterizes me as “a condo-hating anti-growthnik with strongly nostalgic feelings towards his home turf.”

I don’t hate condos. I lived in one (a high-rise, even!) for nearly five years. I like urbanity. I like excitement. I like density. I like walkable neighborhoods full of attractions. I like prosperity.

It’s just that I also like small businesses, DIY arts, indie music, affordable homes, all-nite diners, and public displays of whimsey.

I say we can grow WITH all these things intact, not as preserved memories but as living, breathing parts of our daily life.

Does anybody really enjoy the lifestyle of stolid, joyless “luxury” touted in all the condo ads as late as last year? Anybody at all? I’d like to meet ’em if they exist.

Otherwise, let’s instead have buildings that look good, are well built, and offer value (even “added value”) for their prices.

Let’s have more living-wage jobs and homes, here and in the nation at large.

Let’s have more fun, dammit.

And, in the immortal words of L. Barry, Keep It Funky God.

Jim Demetre has a response to Charles Mudede’s review of Seattle’s Belltown.

…in I don’t know how long, my work is the subject of serious criticism. My erstwhile Stranger colleague Charles Mudede has written a nuanced, lucid review of Seattle’s Belltown.

Essentially, Mudede seems to like the book for what it is, but wishes it had more. That, I’ve learned, is a common response to Arcadia Publishing’s slim photo-history tomes. Arcadia’s formula of many pictures and few words has proven very commercially successful, here and around the country. But many aspects of any place’s story will necessarily get left out by this broad-strokes approach. Some readers would like more oral-history material. Some would like more human-interest anecdotes. Some would like longer passages about specific people and places of interest to them.

Mudede specifically wishes Seattle’s Belltown included more emotional, human history. He’d have liked more of “a sense of horror or sadness or wonder at the great and rapid sequence of events that shaped Belltown.”

And he’d like the book to have a stronger sense of advocacy. After all, he notes, the neighborhood’s an “explosive battleground of competing land use and architectural ideas, of private and cultural capital, and a variety of class issues. Even in a book as small as this, one wants the writer to take a stronger position on these pressing matters, presenting not only conclusions but also solutions.”

These are all good things to yearn for, and not just in books.

It’s a level of discourse beyond Arcadia’s format. (They are trying to move units through Costco and Walgreen’s.)

But it’s certainly something I can work harder at in my other forums, including the Belltown Messenger and this site.

Have I got answers to the ongoing disappearance of living-wage jobs, affordable housing, artist spaces, and the Crocodile? No, at least not any good ones, at least not tonight.

But let’s keep talking about it.

…to purchase a freshly autographed copy of Seattle’s Belltown or Vanishing Seattle will occur this Friday solstice evening, 6:30-8:30 p.m., in the exotic Wallingford district at Not A Number Cards and Gifts. Can you say “last minute gift ideas for the impossible-to-please”? I knew you could.