TWN0913 - The Washington Newspaper September 2013

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THE WASHINGTON NEWSPAPER Vol. 98, No. 9 September 2013

Journal of the Washington Newspaper Publishers Association and Allied Daily Newspapers of Washington • www.wnpa.com

Excitement ahead at 126th convention

Information sessions, awards, new officers await us in Olympia

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ashington Newspaper Publishers Association’s 126th Annual Convention, packed with timely sessions and exciting awards presentations, is just weeks away.

Read full information about each presenter and session in the convention brochure, online at wnpa.com/events and mailed to members early last month.

Publishers will gather from 5-7 p.m. Thursday, Oct. 3, for the opening reception at Waterstreet Café in downtown Olympia. Plan to meet and mingle with colleagues, life members and convention sponsors, including leaders from the Olympian, our reception sponsor.

Members will elect new

WNPA trustees during Friday’s annual membership breakfast at the Red Lion Hotel. Executive Director Bill Will and President Bill Forhan, publisher at NCW Media in Leavenworth, will review WNPA’s year and Scott Wilson, president of the WNPA Foundation and publisher of the Port Townsend Leader, will discuss the Foundation’s programs.

Officer Installation, Awards

Friday’s awards luncheon, sponsored by the Washington Potato Commission, will open with a welcome and song by the Nisqually Canoe Family.

Following the welcome, new officers will be installed and Forhan will moderate the presentation by Will of the Freedom’s Light Award and the Community Service Awards.

During the WNPA officer installation, Forhan will become past president and Keven Graves will advance to the presidential

office.

Forhan’s company, NCW Media, publishes the Lake Chelan Mirror, Cashmere Valley Record, Leavenworth Echo, Quad City Herald in Brewster and the Wenatchee Business Journal.

Graves has been a WNPA trustee since 2006 and a WNPA Foundation board member since 2007.

He is executive editor and publisher for Sound Publishing’s Whidbey News Group, which includes the weekly Whidbey Examiner in Coupeville and two twice-weeklies, the South Whidbey Record in Langley and the Whidbey News-Times in Oak Harbor.

Before he moved to Whidbey this past February, Graves was with Nisqually Valley News in Yelm for 13 years. He was hired in 1999 as editor and general manager by Lafromboise

See WNPA, page 10

Bill Keven Jana Lori Bill Forhan Graves Stoner Maxim Will

Convention Deadlines: Sept. 5:

Early bird registration closes

Sept. 12:

Hotel reservation* deadline

Sept. 19:

Final registration deadline

Sept. 27:

Opening reception registration due

Sept 30:

Deadline to reserve time with ONAC

Oct. 3-5:

126th Annual WNPA Convention

Registration details at www.wnpa.com/events * — 1(800) Red-Lion, (360) 943-4000 or redlion.com, group code, WANE1002

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Foundation auction highlights convention

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ome lucky bidder at the 2013 WNPA Foundation auction will enjoy a full weekend in South Cle Elum, with two nights’ stay in a Caboose Car Suite and a new local history book, “Another Story,” to read over breakfast for two at the Iron Horse Bed and Breakfast.

The book, published by the local historical society this year, features columns by Pete Fassero (1905-191) published in the Northern Kittitas County Tribune, Cle Elum.

A railroad-themed T-shirt and mug will remind the bidder of a relaxing weekend that also helped launch the career of a young journalist.

Jana Stoner, publisher of the Northern Kittitas County Tribune, is the generous donor of the weekend.

The auction typically features two to three dozen items ranging from wine and chocolate See AUCTION, page 5

Damian Mulinix/Chinook Observer, Long Beach

Damian Mulinix and the Chinook Observer took home first place in the Best Sports Action Photograph category, Circulation Group II, in the 2012 Washington Better Newspaper Contest. ‘Sharp and unique,’ judges said. ‘This photo captured a dramatic moment like no other entry.’

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Convention a time to redefine WNPA’s future

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hat is clear from the last decade of technological change is the newspaper business needs to adapt. It’s not the first time the industry has faced intense competition from new players.

The good news is the newest challengers actually offer us new tools that make our products more valuable. And few of our competitors are positioned to offer the depth and quality of the information we routinely gather in our local communities. In fact Patch, the most serious threat to our local franchises, just recently announced it was laying off half of its staff. The business model just isn’t working for them.

The future is in our hands, and that future looks very bright! By now we all know about the Internet’s ability to give community papers like ours the opportunity to post important breaking news on our web sites, giving us new immediacy. We know about how our websites give us the opportunity to publish material we don’t have

Officers: President: Bill Forhan, NCW Media, Leavenworth l First Vice President: Keven Graves, Whidbey News Group, Coupeville l Second Vice President: Lori Maxim, Sound Publishing l Past President: Jana Stoner, Northern Kittitas County Tribune, Cle Elum l Secretary: Bill Will, WNPA, Seattle Trustees: Josh Johnson, Liberty Lake Splash, Liberty Lake l Eric LaFontaine, Othello Outlook l Imbert Matthee, Waitsburg Times l Don Nelson, Methow Valley News, Twisp l Stephen McFadden, Ritzville-Adams County Journal l Fred Obee, Port Townsend Leader Staff: Executive Director: Bill Will l Editor/Manager of Member Services: Mae Waldron

Officers:

President: Rob Blethen, Walla Walla Union-Bulletin Treasurer: Christine Fossett, Chronicle, Centralia

room for in the paper edition.

We know how the Internet gives us new tools, including video and audio, for telling important local stories.

Bill What we don’t Forhan know is how NCW Media, Leavenworth to make all WNPA President that technology help us increase our profitability.

When faced with challenges in the past, our industry has come together to discuss the challenges and help each other find solutions. Together we have worked to try new approaches and help our fellow publishers improve the quality and indispensability of our products.

Often those new approaches came from networking at local and regional conferences.

The WNPA Convention Committee under the leadership

of Lori Maxim has put together an outstanding program that addresses technology, advertising, editorial, reporting, ethics and building stronger teams. Their work sets us up with quality presentations that will stimulate important discussions about the real challenges we collectively face.

Personally, I am anxious to hear Patrick Sullivan’s panel discussion on how the Internet is changing newspapers and Peter Conti’s presentation on how newspapers can capitalize on our opportunity to lead technical innovation in our communities.

Both promise to help us address the new opportunities we face.

Looking at the Washington Department of Revenue numbers on retail sales over the last few years, it is striking that with all of the hype about the commercial power of the Internet, less than 2 percent of retail sales come through the Internet.

Ninety-eight percent still comes through traditional brick-andmortar stores.

Internet proponents like to promote how Internet sales are growing exponentially, but even with the recession, traditional retailers have managed to grow their revenues near the rate of inflation. This indicates that many of our traditional customers are continuing to grow despite claims from Internet evangelists that it won’t be long before brick-and-mortar stores are a thing of the past.

Have your advertising revenues kept pace with the growth in retail sales in your market? There are also signs that the economy is coming back to life. Are you prepared to take advantage of the growing enthusiasm from local retailers?

If not, this year’s program offers several exciting sessions to help grow advertising revenue and reenergize your staff.

In the past decade we have allowed the “gee-whiz” attraction of technology to draw our most reliable customers into a trap. We have allowed Internet evangelists to sell our customers

on the need for using their limited advertising budgets to build ever more elaborate but often useless websites that get few hits and require a huge investment of time and capital to maintain.

The Internet depends on a strong and reliable news media.

Internet search engines can be a valuable resource but are a huge waste of a reader’s time. Our time-tested focus on reliable, accurate and locally focused information will continue to be our strongest asset and a service with growing market value. We can turn that to our advantage by building our local newspapers into the information centers of the communities we serve. After all, no one knows those communities as well as those of us who live there.

So, let’s all gather in Olympia next month and celebrate our challenging but exciting future.

Don’t hesitate. Send in your registration for the WNPA convention – today! It’s the best investment you can make in the future of your business.

Records become a public battleground

by Jerry Cornfield

Bellevue Reporter Columnist

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hose looking for a more transparent government are increasingly relying on public records to make it happen.They hope the more documents they obtain the clearer their view of what’s really going on behind closed doors in school districts, city halls and county buildings.

But there are those throughout the public sector convinced some of these Washingtonians are abusing the Public Records Act. An alliance of government forces — whose members often are the targets of the records — tried unsuccessfully earlier this year to rewrite the act to make it easier to repel requesters whose motives they question.

With the help of Republican and Democratic lawmakers, they pushed a bill to make it easier for public agencies to block requests and to limit the time spent compiling records.

Though the bill died in the legislative process, the matter reappeared in the state budget

in the form of a provision to spend $25,000 contemplating ways to help governments deal with records requests they consider harassing.

Lawmakers tapped the Ruckelshaus Center, a joint venture of the University of Washington and Washington State University, to facilitate a conversation between those in the alliance and those who viewed the failed bill as an unprecedented attack on citizens’ right to petition their government. By Dec. 15, the center is supposed to put forth recommendations.

Michael Kern, the center director, said this week the time frame is too tight to pull the parties together for fruitful face-to-face sessions. The game plan is to speak with 20 to 30 people who’ve been visible and vocal in the legislative conflict then prepare an assessment of the situation based on what center staff hears in the interviews.

“We’ll report what the diverse interests say,” he said. “It will not include our opinions because we don’t have

opinions. We are a neutral third party.”

That’s not quite what Democratic Rep. Dean Takko of Longview envisioned when he helped persuade leaders of his party to put the proviso in the budget. Takko, who sponsored the failed bill, hoped the skilled forces at the center could blaze a trail lawmakers could not.

“Myself and quite a number of other people think there’s something we need to address,” said Takko,.

Now, he’ll take whatever they provide this winter as a possible starting point for legislation in 2014.

“In all honesty, we probably will not be a whole lot further than when the session ended,” he said. “It’s a big enough issue that we have to take some baby steps forward.”

Another person interested in talking with Kern’s team is Jason Mercier, an analyst with the Washington Policy Center and member of the Washington Coalition for Open Government. The coalition strongly opposed Takko’s bill.

He sees no reason to change the Public Records Act. The problem isn’t he law, he said, but officials understanding of it.

Many do not realize what tools are already available to them when someone submits one of those so-called burdensome requests.

He suggested lawmakers asked the wrong question with the budget proviso. Leaders in local governments say hefty requests can chew up staff time and taxpayer dollars, but there’s no data on how much time and money is wasted to back up their claims, he said. Getting the answer would really inform the discussion, he said.

Sounds like something a public records request, or two, could clear up.

Reprinted with permission Jerry Cornfield is a political reporter who covers Olympia for the Daily Herald in Everett, which is among the Washington state newspapers in the Sound Publishing group. He can be contacted at jcornfield@ heraldnet.com.

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THE WASHINGTON NEWSPAPER is the official publication of the Washington Newspaper Publishers Association. It is published monthly

by WNPA, 12354 30th Ave NE, Seattle WA 98125, phone (206) 6343838. Email: mwaldron@wnpa.com; URL: www.wnpa.com, in conjunction with Allied Daily Newspapers of Washington, P.O. Box 29, Olympia, WA 98507, (360) 943-9960. Email: anewspaper@aol.com.

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SEPTEMBER 2013

OPEN ACCESS & LEGAL ISSUES

AG’s records ombudsman steps down Some renew call for return of post to full-time status

The Olympian

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he job in Washington that is supposed to keep a watchful eye on government — from within government — is vacant.

Open-government ombudsman Tim Ford left the state attorney general’s office last month to take a job in the state Senate.

Ford’s former supervisor is handling the duties for now. But Attorney General Bob Ferguson says he will replace Ford and might even restore the ombudsman to a full-time job, as it was before it fell victim to budget cuts.

“There’s no question the position will be filled,” Ferguson said in an interview.

“I’m determined to maintain it at a minimum of a half-time position, simply because of the unique role the position offers in

Bainbridge, two on council face emails lawsuits

Bainbridge Island Review

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wo “good government” advocates on Bainbridge Island have filed a lawsuit against the city of Bainbridge Island and council members Steve Bonkowski, David Ward and Debbi Lester, claiming the council members have been conducting city business from their personal email accounts.

Althea Paulson, a Bainbridge Island blogger who writes about city politics, and Bob Fortner, a leader in the successful 2009 campaign to change the city’s form of government, filed the Public Records Act lawsuit Aug. 20 in Kitsap County Superior Court.

The pair said they both filed a public records requests with the city to gain access to council members’ emails on the council’s recent dealings with the city’s utilities, but only one council member — Councilwoman Sarah Blossom — provided emails in response to the requests.

Paulson and Fortner said Blossom’s emails made it clear that Blossom, Bonkowski, Ward and Lester have been conducting city business by using their See EMAILS, page 6

promoting transparency in government.

“I’m reasonably hopeful we can make it a full-time Tim Ford position, even with the budget restrictions that we have.”

The job is funded out of an account that has 3 percent less money under the current state budget than it did in the last one.

Ferguson said that’s a factor as his staff makes the decision, which he hopes will come by the end of September. A search for a new employee would follow that choice.

Ferguson’s predecessor, Rob McKenna, created the job of ombudsman in 2005 and named Ford to the job in 2007. Before long, though, McKenna assigned him to split time between that job and legal work that could be billed to the state Liquor Control

Board.

Both Ford and Ferguson said Ford left voluntarily. A former legal counsel to the Building Industry Association of Washington and deputy solicitor general, Ford said he had been looking to move to the Senate.

In August he started a job on the nonpartisan Senate staff as counsel to the Law and Justice Committee.

Ford said Democrat Ferguson, who took office in January, wants to build upon Republican McKenna’s work on open government. Ford is convinced having an ombudsman to answer questions and advocate on behalf of transparency has had an effect on the culture of government.

The change has come in the form of a series of small moves, he said. For example, a city agreed to reduce its 50-centsa-page charge for records to 15 cents a page after Ford wrote a letter.

“It’s very rewarding when members of the public call you

up as a government employee and say, ‘Thank you for your help,’” Ford said.

While advising the public and reporters, and at times advocating on their behalf, Ford also provided training and informal consultation to state and local officials on open records and open meetings.

The position should be restored to full-time, even if it requires legislation, said Sen. Pam Roach, an Auburn Republican who worked with Ford as a member of the Public Records Exemptions Accountability Committee, also known as the Sunshine Committee. The position shouldn’t have been cut, she said.

“Any time we do that, we reduce the amount of oversight the citizens have on their government,” Roach said. “To have an ombudsman’s office is really aimed at allowing the people to have information about their government (from) behind the agency lines.”

Cable’s cash still off the air Tacoma says ruling protects amount city pays companies The News Tribune, Tacoma

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ach month, the city of Tacoma writes checks to broadcast companies for the right to carry their programming on the city’s cable network.

Those checks, like other expenditures by government agencies, are public records — public, that is, unless you want to know the amounts.

Click Cable TV, in response to a request from the News Tribune, said the public is barred from knowing how much the city pays local broadcasters.

Tacoma Public Utilities, which operates Click, recently released images of the checks it issued to five broadcast companies between 2007 and 2013 with the amounts blacked out, saying that a March court ruling protecting the broadcasters’ contracts with Click also extends to payments made to the broadcasters.

Kathy George, chairwoman of the legal committee for the Washington Coalition for Open Government, said withholding such information is unusual for a government agency. Government invoices

and checks are typically accessible to the public because “they involve the spending of taxpayer money, which is a public concern,” she said.

“In general, how the public’s money is spent is absolutely a matter of public record,” George said. “It goes to the heart of what Washington’s open-government laws are all about.”

This isn’t the first time the News Tribune has clashed with Click and area broadcast companies about access to Click’s records. Earlier this year, the owners of several Seattle-area television stations went to court to stop Click from releasing its contracts with the broadcasters to the News Tribune.

Fisher Communications, Belo Management Services, KIRO-TV, Tribune Broadcasting, and CBS Corp. argued that their retransmission consent agreements with Click are trade secrets and should be protected. The agreements detail how much the companies charge Click to air broadcast signals for the channels KING, KOMO, KIRO, KCPQ and KSTW. After a Pierce County Superior Court judge granted the broadcasters’ request to block the release of the contracts, The News Tribune requested copies of checks

Click has written to the five broadcasting companies.

Click redacted the payment amounts on the checks issued to the broadcasters at the broadcasters’ request.

In letters to Click, attorneys for the broadcasters cited Pierce County Superior Court Judge Ronald Culpepper’s March ruling as a justification.

Karen Peterson, executive editor of the News Tribune, said the decision to keep Click’s payment information secret limits the public’s ability to keep watch over the government agency.

“It seems ridiculous to us that taxpayers can’t know how much this public agency is paying the broadcasters and doubly ridiculous that Click is letting broadcasters decide what to keep secret,” Peterson said.

“If allowed, it sets a dangerous precedent against the public’s right to know how the government is spending its money.”

The newspaper originally requested copies of Click’s retransmission consent agreements with the broadcast companies after negotiations broke down between Click and Fisher, the corporate owner of KOMO, earlier this year.

The stalled negotiations caused Fisher to pull six chanSee CLICK, page 4

Court says business license records public Inmate’s information request wrongfully denied, judge says The Olympian

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he state Court of Appeals has ruled that the state Department of Licensing wrongfully withheld records from a prison inmate in 2009 and should pay penalties to

the man for its violation of the Public Records Act. At issue was Derek Gronquist’s request under the Public Records Act for the business license application filed for Maureen’s House Cleaning, a business. Gronquist was held at the prison in Monroe at the time of his July 2009 records request.

In the decision authored by newly retired Judge Marywave

Van Deren, the court on July 30 ordered the case back to Thurston County Superior Court for imposition of unspecified fines of $5 to $100 per day (the penalties in law at the time of the withholding). State law gives an agency five days to respond to a records request and the agency took eight days on this one – not counting the additional months days that its wrongful

redaction of information caused details sought by Gronquist to be withheld.

DOL’s response was weak in many ways. As outlined

by Judge Van Deren’s ruling, Licensing first failed to respond within five days of the request.

Then it blacked out information from documents it did release, even though none of it was See LICENSE, page 4

Reporter files complaints, claims threats

Incident sparked by photos on street The Seattle Times

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reporter for an alternative weekly newspaper in Seattle says he was intimidated and threatened when he stopped to take photos of police officers and a sheriff’s sergeant questioning a man on a Seattle street.

It was a relatively minor incident but totally unnecessary, said Dominic Holden, who is the news editor at the Stranger. He filed complaints with police and the King County sheriff’s office.

“This is the type of comparatively low-level interaction that I believe ultimately deteriorates trust in our law enforcement,” Holden said.

Taking photos of police activity on public property is legal. The August incident with Holden came just days after a similar case, when a plainclothes federal agent reportedly seized the camera of a Seattle privacy activist, who had been taking pictures near the downtown federal building, and deleted at least one photo.

“As long as they are not directly interfering with an investigation, they have a right to stand there and videotape or take photos,” said sheriff’s office spokeswoman Cindi West.

Sheriff John Urquhart put Sgt. Casey Saulet on leave following the latest incident.

Seattle police referred the complaint against Officer John Marion to the Office of Professional Accountability.

Acting Chief Jim Pugel said the allegation does not match what the department teaches and he assured Holden they would get to the truth.

Holden said he was just doing his job when he stopped to take pictures of officers as they questioned a man in the International District but that Saulet didn’t want him there.

“Sgt. Saulet then said that I needed to leave the entire block or I would be arrested,” Holden said.

Other people were even closer to the officers, who by then had released the man they were questioning, Holden said, but Saulet still ordered him to cross the street.

After Holden crossed the street he asked for the commanding officer’s name and Marion approached.

“At that point the officer asked where I worked, and when I told him he threatened to come bother me at the Stranger. And this is a needless escalation,” Holden said.

Holden hopes his complaints are taken seriously.

“The question is whether their good intentions for following up actually result in any sort of discipline for the officers,” he said.

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LICENSE

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legally exempt from disclosure; the agency also failed to cite a legal basis for those redactions, which is a second cause for imposing penalties, the judge said.

Judge Paula Casey, who since retired from the Thurston County court, then failed to let Gronquist file three depositions with the court that he’d taken to support his case. Casey also

CLICK

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reviewed the redacted information and decided that DOL had not improperly withheld records.

The appellate ruling makes allowance for Gronquist to ask the lower court to have those depositions added to the file.

Since the legal case began, the business-license records in question are now kept by another agency, Department of

Revenue.

Licensing also has changed its procedures, according to Licensing spokeswoman Christine Anthony.

“We work very hard to balance the public’s access to our records with protecting our licensee’s right to privacy. We will continue to work with our attorneys to resolve this case,”

protect.

“The check amounts, coupled with the invoices, would clearly enable someone to determine the trade secret fee amounts in the retransmission agreements,” Gleason wrote in an email to the News Tribune.

Gleason said Click is complying with Culpepper’s order by letting the broadcasters decide which parts of the documents should be redacted.

“In this situation, specifically,

we are under a court order that prohibits the city from releasing any records relating to the retransmission consent agreements without the prior consent of the affected plaintiff,” Gleason wrote.

“The plaintiffs have consented to release of some of the responsive records only if in redacted form.”

The News Tribune is in the process of appealing Culpepper’s decision. The newspaper has asked the state Supreme Court to review the case.

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nels off Click during the month of January, which affected Click’s roughly 22,000 subscribers.

Click and Fisher settled a new three-year deal in February, restoring the lost stations, but neither Click nor KOMO provided details about the newly negotiated fees.

However, Click General Manager Tenzin Gyaltsen complained in a Feb. 8 email to Fisher that the company had strong-armed Click to agree to “unreasonable terms” in order to get the channels back on the air.

In his March ruling, Culpepper said he worried that revealing Click’s contracts with broadcasters could have “the potential to damage Click.” The judge said he also had concerns that releasing the pricing information could have a “potential ripple effect” on programming fees elsewhere.

TPU spokeswoman Chris Gleason said that if Click provided the News Tribune with unedited copies of Click’s checks to the broadcasters, it would reveal the very information that Culpepper’s ruling aimed to

Anthony said in a written response to a query from The Olympian. “Since this case was filed, we have centralized our public disclosure staff and processes to ensure experts are managing all public disclosure requests.”

Although those changes were made after Gronquist’s lawsuit, they were not spurred by it.

Anthony said the changes were

part of “a larger reorganization of agency to better serve the public and increase efficiency.’’

The appellate court is retaining jurisdiction on one element of the case – in order to to decide at a future date how much the state must pay for the inmate’s court costs. Also signing the decision were Division II Judges Lisa Worswick and Christine Quinn-Brintnall.

WCOG advocates for the people’s right to access government information.

Madison/Andersen Awards Breakfast Friday, September 13, 2013 Washington Athletic Club 1325 Sixth Avenue, Seattle, WA 7:00 AM - Breakfast Registration 7:30 AM - 9:00 AM - Awards Breakfast

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Published as a community service by The Washington Newspaper

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SEPTEMBER 2013

Suits seek to conceal low-level sex offender information Yakima Herald-Republic

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t least two lawsuits were expected to be filed in August on behalf of several Benton County sex offenders to try to stop the release of their personal information, their attorneys told the Yakima Herald Aug. 15.

The lawsuits would put on hold the release of the names, addresses, birthdates and phone numbers of Benton County’s 420 lowest-level sex offenders.

The two lawsuits are to be filed in Benton County Superior Court, according to the offenders’ attorneys.

A Level 1 sex offender is the lowest rating in a three-level system that ranks an offender’s likelihood of reoffending.

The offenders claim the release of the information could result in “irreparable harm” and could cause them to lose their jobs, say the attorneys.

Offenders fear the information also could put themselves and their families in danger.

“In most cases my clients’ offenses were over 20 years ago,” said John Ziobro of Richland, who is representing at least 10 offenders. “They don’t want

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their families to know. They don’t want their employers to know.”

The pending lawsuits are the result of a records request by former Mesa Mayor Donna Zink.

Zink filed a Public Records Act request last month in Benton and Franklin counties for all the sex offender registration information for all Level 1 offenders. Franklin County already has given Zink its Level 1 offender information, and Benton County officials have said they are ready to release theirs to her.

“We are taking the position that the documents should be released,” said Benton County Deputy Prosecutor Ryan Lukson. “We are prepared to release the documents.”

The same information is available online for all Level 2 and 3 sex offenders in both counties because they are considered more likely to reoffend.

Personal information on Level 1 sex offenders is a public record and can be released under the state Public Records Act, according to the Office of the Attorney General.

On Thursday, Benton County

Superior Court Judge Carrie Runge refused to sign an order blocking the release of some of the documents, including the release of some offenders’ names.

Kennewick attorney John Bolliger told the Herald that Runge said the issue could be reconsidered if a lawsuit is filed.

Bolliger said his firm’s client is reluctant to sue because he doesn’t want his name made public.

“The Catch-22 is that our client wants to keep his name out of the public domain,” Bolliger said. “The only way the Superior Court provides an avenue to continue this is to have his name on a lawsuit.

Our client feels like he is stuck between a rock and a hard place.”

Two other Tri-City attorneys said their clients are prepared to challenge Zink’s request by filing suit.

Zink could not be reached by the Herald about her request.

However, she sent an email to Ziobro in response to his lawsuit.

“I think it would be nice to know if someone molested

or raped a child before I drop them off to be babysat, leave them with the priest at a church or at the local youth club,” she wrote Aug. 14. “Or are you going to try to prove it is so dangerous to the level one offenders and embarrassing to the families?”

She noted that the convictions are public and their registration information should be, too.

She told Ziobro that she will continue to seek the information despite the lawsuits.

“Yes, let’s make this as public as possible and get this all ironed out so the public knows what info we can and can’t have about sexual predators,” she wrote. “I look forward to the appeal.”

Michael F. Henry, a certified sex offender treatment counselor in Richland, said Level 1 sex offenders go through extensive treatment and only about 10 percent nationally will commit a new offense. A majority of Level 1 offenders are related to their victims.

“With Level 1 offenders the risk to re-offend is low,” Henry said. “They are law-abiding citizens like me. I know many

Level 1 (offenders) who live in the community and are very productive.”

One offender — who was convicted of a sex crime 17 years ago and served six months in jail — believes the release of his information could have serious consequences.

“I am a single father putting my daughter through college. It would be terribly embarrassing to be the subject of a publication involving my name ...,” the man said in the motion filed Thursday. “This matter could very easily result in loss of income from my job. I believe this would substantially damage me ...”

Henry — who has been working with sex offenders for more than 20 years — also believes releasing the information could open old wounds for victims.

“To out someone and bring their families and victims shame is counterproductive,” he said. “Many victims share the same last name (as their offender) and can be stigmatized.

It’s not doing any good to protect the community in the long run.”

Washington students.

Sometimes an internship launches a career, as Sarah Radmer, a 2013 University of Washington graduate, discovered when she was hired by Pacific Publishing Company after completing the 2013 Verizon Internship Scholarship she received from the Foundation

this year.

The scholarships are funded by the auction proceeds and commemorative funds established by former publishers and their families: Jim and Kay Flaherty, Bruce and Betty Helberg, Richard W. Gay, and Bruce A. Wilson and Henry Gay. The auction is conducted

during the annual convention of Washington Newspaper Publishers Association.

To include your donation in the auction catalog distributed at the 126th annual WNPA convention, email your plans to Mae Waldron, mwaldron@wnpa.com.

Bring items to be auctioned with you to Olympia.

from page 1

to weekend outings similar to Stoner’s South Cle Elum package.

Auction Chair Josh O’Connor, a Foundation board member, has set a fundraising goal of $7,500 for this year. He is vice president of East Sound operations and publisher of the Herald in Everett at Sound Publishing Inc

More than 100 journalism students have received WNPA Foundation Internship Scholarships since the first was given in 1989.

Most are served at WNPAmember newspapers, though in 2011 the Foundation also began funding legislative reporting internships for University of

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6

SEPTEMBER 2013

EMAILS

from page 3

personal email accounts.

Paulson and Fortner said it was there was no indication that the other three council members, Anne Blair, Kirsten Hytopoulos and Bob Scales, have used their personal accounts for city business.

Council members have official email accounts set up by the city, and city policy dictates that council members use only their city accounts for city business.

Emails recently released by the city show that council members Bonkowski, Ward, Lester and Blossom have long been using their private email accounts to correspond with the public and get advice on issues before the council.

Paulson and Fortner said the state’s open records law requires the city and its council members to publicly release emails that relate to city business.

“The last thing we want to do is sue the city,” said Paulson, the former co-publisher of the Bainbridge Buzz news website.

“But the way the Public Records Act is written, we have to sue the city in order to require rogue officials to obey the law.”

Paulson said she submitted her request for documents two months ago, and while the city FIND YOUR 25-HOUR DAY

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has provided some documents in response, the three council members have not provided their emails.

Paulson recently met with City Manager Doug Schulze and Interim City Attorney Jim Haney in mid-July to resolve the records issue, with no success.

The lawsuit against Bainbridge Island also names Bonkowski, Ward and Lester both personally and in their role as council members.

“These councilpersons have been conducting city business out of public view,” Paulson said.

“They’ve had advice from city attorneys and have received training about their duties as public officials, but they continue to ignore the law. Mr. Bonkowski even admitted in writing that he deleted emails,” she said.

“Now, after two months of not responding, they’re asking for still more time to produce the records. They’ve had plenty of time to respond if they intend to do so,” Paulson added.

The lawsuit includes a complaint for damages, and Paulson and Fortner are being represented by Daniel Mallove, an attorney and Paulson’s husband.

The suit notes that Bonkowski, Ward and Lester are legally obligated to abide by the state’s Public Records Act, but haven’t.

“Defendants Bonkowski, Ward and Lester have failed and refused to perform their legal obligations as publicly elected

members of the Bainbridge Island City Council,” the lawsuit states.

The lawsuit asks the court to order the three council members to either produce all responsive emails or submit their computer hard drives for examination.

It also asks for unspecified damages, costs and attorney fees under the Public Records Act, which provides for fines of up to $100 per day for records that are wrongfully withheld, plus attorney fees and costs.

Paulson noted that Washington has strong open government laws that require governments to do the people’s business in the open, and that the law says public servants don’t have the right to decide what the people should know and what they shouldn’t know.

“These council members have left us no choice but to file suit in order to make sure citizens have access to the information necessary to understand how our government does its business,” she said.

Fortner said attempts to get city council members to abide by the law have not worked.

“As citizens who supported the change of government and who expect governance in accordance with established rules, we find that these behaviors, which violate both our values and legal boundaries, can no longer be tolerated,” he said.

“Previous efforts by citizens to encourage different behavior has proven unsuccessful.

Perhaps the courts will have better effect,” Fortner said.

TWN

Elephant series wins club honor

M

ichael J. Berens and the Seattle Times were honored last month by the National Press Club for the investigative series, “Glamour Beasts.”

The series received the Ann Cottrell Free Animal Reporting Award.

Berens analyzed the deaths of 390 elephants at accredited zoos over the past 50 years, determining that most of the elephants died from disease or injury directly resulting from living in captivity.

Work by photographer Steve Ringman and video editor Danny Gawlowski was part

ON THE WEB

‘Glamour Beasts’: seattletimes.com/elephants of Berens’ series, which can be seen at seatteltimes.com/ elephants.

Zoo officials say that scientific advances that result from the study of captive elephants benefit both wild and captive elephants.

Free’s groundbreaking reporting in the 1950s and 60s resulted in the Humane Slaughter Act and the Animal Welfare Act, among other reforms.

Picture this: PDN plays part in ‘PDQ’ film fest I

n a first-time collaborative effort, the Peninsula Daily News in Port Angeles has partnered with the Port Townsend Film Institute on a three-minute video contest, the 2013 PDN-PDQ Film Competition.

Three winners of the “pretty darn quick” contest will be selected for screening during the festival, which takes place Sept.

20-22 in Port Townsend.

Winners also will be show-

cased on peninsuladailynews. com.

Their makers receive a pass to see four festival films, a oneyear membership in the institute, and a variety of other prizes.

Entries were due Aug. 31 and participation is free, but one team member must be 18 or older.

The videos must be appropriate for family audiences and be made using a video camera or cellphone.

TWN

7

SEPTEMBER 2013

TUMBLING SHOT

Lonnie Archibald/Forks Forum

Lonnie Archibald’s shot of young football players in the Forks and Port Angeles Youth Leagues won second place for the Forks Forum in the 2012 Washington Better Newspaper Contest’s Sports Action category among newspapers in Circulation Group II.

Times takes third NIE honor

F

or the third year running, the Seattle Times received first place in the National Newspaper Association’s annual Newspapers and Education Contest in the division A, traditional Newspaper In Education stories and curriculum, daily division. The award will be presented Sept. 14 at NNA’s 127th annual conference in Phoenix.

The Seattle Times entry, an educational insert called “Take Winter By Storm,” was part of a public-private educational awareness campaign spanning Western Washington.

Collaborative parters were the cities of Seattle and Bellevue, Puget Sound Energy,

Seattle City Light, Snohomish PUD, State Farm, NOAA’s National Weather Service, American Red Cross, and Bartell Drugs.

The multi-media public awareness campaign was an effort to raise community awareness of hazardous weather and to encourage behaviors that help protect lives and property.

Contest judges cited the project as, “an outstanding example of a project done correctly: solid information, well presented, broad coalition, commercially viable. The commercially viable aspect put this entry on top. Newspapers can do great journalism, and this is one way to help pay for it.”

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SEPTEMBER 2013

TWN

New Yorker and fighter to the end, Everett’s Goffredo passes Award-winning journalist was 55, battled cancer Herald, Everett

S

he was a New Yorker.

Chic, often acerbically witty and always willfully hard-working. Everett Daily Herald reporter Theresa Goffredo died Aug. 15 following a long battle — a fierce fight — with cancer.

While it was obvious that this petite, dark-haired ItalianAmerican woman wasn’t a Left Coast native, Everett clearly was her chosen hometown. Goffredo, 55, loved Everett.

As a news reporter and later as an arts reporter, she covered the city of Everett. She volunteered as a master gardener docent at the city arboretum, she advocated for programs at the downtown YMCA, and she served on the PTA board at Jackson Elementary School, where her son Dashiell, 9, is a student.

Like the New Yorker she was, Goffredo walked. Everywhere.

A perfect day included a stroll from her home near Jackson Elementary down Marine View Drive to the Fresh Paint festival or the Sunday Farmers Market on the waterfront with her “boys” in tow, husband Peter Verhey, son Dash and a dog — first with the corgi, Angus, and later with the schnauzer, Baxter.

An award-winning journalist,

Goffredo is perhaps best known for her very personal, firstperson series of stories on infertility, which she wrote with courage and honesty. It had a happy ending, the birth of Dashiell.

Her longtime friend and fellow journalist Marina Parr praised Goffredo and Verhey for their loving devotion to their bright, creative son.

“One time a teacher told Theresa and Pete that Dash was doing so well in school. The teacher said, ‘Dashiell is the whole enchilada,’“ Parr said. “I think that meant more to Theresa than any journalism award she ever won.”

Theresa Anne Goffredo was born to Ralph and Marie Goffredo on Oct. 29, 1957, on Long Island, N.Y., and grew up with brother Ralph Jr. and sister Roseanne. She graduated in 1975 from Long Island Lutheran High School in Brookville, N.Y. “Theresa was a tough cookie from a middle-class background.

At one point, she was even a bike messenger in Manhattan,” Parr said. “She was a self-made woman who decided young that she would go West to start her life.”

She earned a bachelor of arts degree in journalism in 1983 from San Francisco State University.

“I take some pride in luring Theresa into daily journalism,” said Herald executive editor Neal Pattison, who was then working at the Spokesman-

our

Review. “I offered her the police beat in Spokane. She drove up from San Francisco where, I believe, she had worked as a bike messenger and a restaurant reviewer for local weeklies.

“She had everything she owned crammed into her car; she hadn’t found a place to live.

I offered to let her get settled and start a few days later. No way. She wanted to start right away. Boy, she was strongwilled.”

After her stint at the Spokesman-Review, Goffredo worked at the Idaho Statesman in Boise, the East Oregonian in Pendleton, Ore., and in the TriCity Herald’s Hermiston, Ore., bureau.

Goffredo was a tough reporter, and the New York sensibility helped.

“Theresa asked the tough questions,” Parr said. “She wanted people to know the truth.”

Goffredo briefly considered a career change and in 1994 earned a bachelor of science degree in fish biology at the University of Washington. It was after earning her degree that she met her husband, Peter Verhey, a Royal City farm boy and now a longtime biologist with the state Department of Fish and Wildlife. Goffredo was close to her husband’s family and enjoyed helping with the peach harvest on the family farm.

But the call of newspapering was too strong. Goffredo took a job as a reporter at the Skagit

Valley Herald in Mount Vernon.

Scott Terrell, the chief photographer there, remembers her work.

“Theresa expected the best of herself and of others. She brought a lot of heart and passion to the job, her life and family,” Terrell said. “Her writing while at the Skagit Valley Herald reflected her professionalism and devotion to getting the story right. The world lost a wonderful woman and a great journalist.”

If all this wasn’t enough, Goffredo still cycled. She road the Seattle-to-Portland endurance ride in 2009. And she woke up, even in the midst of a chemotherapy series, to attend the 5 a.m. Tuesday “spinning” class at the YMCA. Her instructors, Gael Thomson and Dr. Art Grossman, kept the class going, even when it was just them and Goffredo on the stationary bikes.

“That’s how important she was to us,” Thomson said. “And just by living her life, she had a great impact on people at the Y and other people fighting cancer.”

Everett Mayor Ray Stephanson and city economic development director Lanie McMullin said Goffredo’s death is a great loss to the Everett community.

“She was an incredible human being and will be deeply missed. I am sorry for all of us,” Stephanson said.

Goffredo was civic-minded,

fair and ethical, McMullin said.

“Theresa understood what a city needed to do to grow from a livable city to a memorable city.

She herself often contributed ideas, and she was one of the people who first approached me with the idea of doing Street Tunes here in Everett.”

Goffredo’s editor Melanie Munk remembers that one of her most popular stories was about George Perez, Goffredo’s checker at the 41st Street Safeway.

“Who knew before Theresa’s story in our Vitality magazine that Perez was ‘The Flash,’ a boxer in his youth, as well as a busy volunteer at his church and an usher at the Silvertips games?” Munk said. “Theresa loved to talk with people.”

Many observations have been made about Goffredo’s determination, her strength and her resolve, Munk said.

“She fought her illness with every weapon in her arsenal, and she grieved as the cancer progressed. But she never lost her sense of humor. She always referred to her hospital visits as spa days.

“Every night, she would come to my office for a little chat before she left for the day. She had gotten a little wobbly and a little weak, but when it was time to get up and go, she would announce her progress: ‘She’s up!

No, she’s down again! And she’s up!’ And off she’d go, with a farewell smile that would break your heart.”

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TWN

9

SEPTEMBER 2013

CAREER MOVES n After more than a decade as the editorial page editor at the Columbian in Vancouver, John Laird retired last month.

The newspaper conducted a national search to find him. He relocated from Texas to accept the position and fell in love with the Pacific Northwest. Laird’s departure opened the way to new opportunities for three staff members. Sports Editor Greg Jayne, who on occasionally filled in for Laird on the editorial page, has succeeded him in that role. Succeeding Jayne as sports editor is Micah Rice, news editor for the past five years and the Columbian’s high school sports coordinator years ago.

Assistant News Editor Merridee Hanson succeeds Rice as news editor. She’s been with the Columbian for 10 years. n Michelle Beahm, 21, has been a summer intern at Sound Publishing newspapers near her home communities of Bremerton and Port Orchard. She wrote for the Bremerton Patriot, Port Orchard Independent and the Central Kitsap Reporter in Silverdale. Beahm is working on a journalism degree at the University of Montana. She holds an associate degree from Olympic College in Bremerton. n Jim Henderson, longtime coordinator of Newspapers in Education at the News Tribune in Tacoma retired in July. For the last dozen of his 17 years with the paper, he ran the NIE program, providing about 250 teachers with educational guides that helped them integrate the paper into lesson plans and delivering 1.2 million copies of the paper (mostly electronically) to classrooms. Brett Wifall has assumed responsibility for the program. n Pilar Linares has been named advertising director of the Herald in Everett, where she starts work on Sept. 9. Linares served as the advertising manager for Hearst Newspaper’s Beaumont (Texas) Enterprise since 2010, and joined the Enterprise after a six-year stint as director of marketing and advertising for the Newspaper Association of America (NAA).

Prior to joining the NAA, she worked for Hearst at the Houston Chronicle for 13 years. In 2001, Linares was recognized as a Presstime magazine “20 under 40” recipient. She graduated in advertising from the University of Texas at Austin and also attended the University of Salamanca, Spain. n The Columbia Basin Herald in Moses Lake hired Shawn Cardwell to manage the newspaper’s social media. Her background includes working as a community outreach specialist for AmeriCorps in Newport, Ore., where she helped special needs children; teaching in Guatemala; and opening a clothing consignment business in Moses Lake. She graduated in cultural anthropology and political science from Western Washington University. Cardwell grew up in Ephrata, where as a high school senior she was editor-in-chief of the school newspaper. n Sound Publishing Vice President Lori Maxim announced expanded leadership roles at the Peninsula Daily News (Port Angeles), Sequim Gazette and Forks Forum. Most current PDN department heads became responsible for the same function at the weeklies. John Brewer, editor and publisher of the PDN, is group publisher for all three newspapers as well as their websites and social media. Steve Perry, PDN’s director of advertising, oversees advertising and production staffs, though Sue Stoneman continues at PDN as manager of advertising operations. PDN Circulation Director Michelle Lynn is responsible for all subscriptions and singlecopy sales and works with Bob Morris, who handles those functions for the Gazette and Forum. Sequim Gazette Creative Services Manager Denise Westmoreland is the new composing manager overseeing the artists at the three newspapers. Debi Lahmeyer continues as general manager of the Gazette and Forum. Mike Dashiell continues as Gazette editor, and Joe Smillie, the PDN’s Sequim Dungeness Valley editor, is interim editor at the Forum.

Richard Burger/Grandview Herald:

Kaden Bradshaw, left, and Aiden Gonzalez prepare to deliver copies of the Grandview Herald’s souvenir issue to crowds lining the Grandview Community Parade route on Aug. 8. Behind is Editor Richard Burger’s 1946 Chevrolet pickup, which carried their supply of souvenir issues.

Herald marches to different drum

T

he staff at the Grandview Herald looks for ways to differentiate their paper from the two Heralds that bookend them at either end of the Yakima Valley, the Yakima Herald-Republic and the Tri-City Herald in Kennewick, as well as from the Daily Sun-News in Sunnyside, just up the road from Grandview.

To promote the paper in the Grandview Community Parade, held in August in conjunction with the Yakima Valley Fair and Rodeo, for the past three years Editor Richard Burger has put the Grandview Herald’s flag on the side of his ‘46 Chevy pickup and driven the truck as the paper’s parade entry.

This year, at the suggestion of a Chamber of Commerce friend, Burger made a couple of changes.

The paper made the paper’s Aug.7 issue a souvenir issue and recruited

Great �lassi�eds are

Closer than you think

two newspaper boys, dressed as oldtime paper boys, to travel with the pickup and hand deliver complimentary souvenir issues along the parade route.

Though Burger wanted to have the boys toss the papers, like the old days, that was against the parade rules.

Instead, he walked along with the truck and kept the boys supplied with papers to hand out, and his wife, Frances, drove the truck.

“The boys had a blast and so did we, and the crowd along the parade route seemed to love getting the paper. As icing on the cake, our entry took first prize in the Commercial Division!” Burger wrote in an email.

Burger posted photos of the boys and his wife on the Herald’s Facebook page, which also got lots of attention.

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SEPTEMBER 2013

TWN

Advertising expert available for members at convention

W

NPA publishers and ad managers are invited to meet with Patricia Murphy of Oregon Newspaper Advertising Company on Friday, Oct. 4, during the WNPA convention in Olympia.

Murphy will be available to discuss your newspaper’s advertising advantages, circulation, rates and other details.

To request an appointment, go to wnpa.com/events and in the convention information look for the ONAC meeting section. Click the online

WNPA

registration link.

Members can select up to three appointment times and will receive notification of their exact meeting time in an email on Oct. 1.

Please address any Patricia questions to Mae Murphy Waldron, mwaldrong@wnpa.com or (206) 634-3838 ext. 2.

from page 1

Communications, owners of the Chronicle in Centralia and the Battle Ground Reflector.

Graves was promoted to publisher in 2006.

The General Excellence awards the paper received in 2003, 2004, 2006 and 2008 illustrate his success fostering teamwork among his editorial and advertising staff members and building connections with community members.

Graves has a son who starts college this fall.

Sound Publishing’s Lori Maxim, who joined the board in 2009, will ascend to first vice president of WNPA. She is vice president of West Sound newspaper operations, responsible for Sound’s newspapers in the San Juan Islands, Vashon Island, Whidbey Island and in Kitsap and Jefferson counties.

Previously she was the director of marketing and national sales manager, overseeing the national sales team and in charge of training for all sales staff at Sound, and served as regional publisher for five community newspapers in Kitsap County. She joined the company in 1988 as advertising director.

Maxim and her husband live in Poulsbo. She has a grown son in Bremerton.

Outgoing WNPA Past President Jana Stoner of the Northern Kittitas County Tribune, Cle Elum, will join the WNPA Foundation board for a three-year term.

Stoner joined the WNPA board in 2009 and has been active on WNPA committees, presented webinars for WNPA members, and last year, produced WNPA’s 125th anniversary publication.

Stoner’s family purchased the Tribune in 1999 and she was named publisher in 2002.

Printed tab distributed at dinner

Winners of more than 500 awards in the Washington Better Newspaper Contest will be announced at the BNC Awards Dinner.

The Wenatchee World will provide all dinner attendees with a copy of the

2013 Washington Better Newspaper Contest tab, paginated and printed by the World as its sponsorship of the convention. The World is parent company to two WNPA-member newspapers, the Quincy Valley Post-Register and the Douglas County Empire Press in East Wenatchee.

Adpay and Sound Publishing are new dinner co-sponsors, and SmallTownPapers will be recognized for its sixth year of sponsoring WNPA’s use of the Betterbnc.com site.

Will is taking a new team approach to awards presentation, sharing the announcements with Better Newspaper Contest Committee Chair Patrick Sullivan, new media director at the Port Townsend Leader.

B

2

1

3

Should I reduce Do I need more Will red wine improve my fiber in my my body fat? health? diet?

Maybe. Probably. How should we know?

Again, we really can’t A more important question: help you figure this one out.

Do you know the WNPA Foundation relies on an annual auction to support its scholarship fund? The auction will be part of WNPA’s convention, Oct. 3-5 in Olympia.

But we can tell you that every cent raised at the WNPA Foundation auction goes directly toward providing internships for top college students at quality community newspapers.

OK, we’ll take a stab ...

It’s probably worth a try.

But here’s something that will really make you feel good: Donate items for the auction and help us reach this year’s fundraising goal of $7,500.

Registration details

Schedule, registration and hotel information are online at www.wnpa. com/events.

Don’t miss the Sept. 12 deadline for room reservations at the Red Lion.

Ask for the WNPA group rate of $109 single/double. If you register online, use our Group Code WANE1002.

Early bird registration rates are the same as the past two years, $255 for the first full registrant and $220 for additional attendees from the same newspaper. (The late rate is $290 for the first full registrant and $265 for additional attendees.)

A la carte options include a Friday package ($200 for sessions, lunch and dinner), all convention workshops ($200), Saturday workshops ($50), and Better Newspaper Contest Dinner ($60).

WNPA will celebrate its 127th anniversary on Oct. 2-4, 2014, in Chelan at Campbell’s Resort.

Questions? Contact Mae Waldron, mwaldron@wnpa.com or (206) 6343838 ext. 2.

Sound to add Nickel to delivery eginning this month, Sound Publishing will combine the strength of its community newspaper readership and home delivery with the respected classified content and brand recognition of its Little Nickel products. Little Nickel’s advertising will be delivered within the pages of the community newspaper products.

“Our Nickel advertising clients will certainly see benefit of having their advertising message delivered directly to homes. And our readers will no longer have to remember to pick up a Little Nickel at a rack. This change just makes sense,” said Gloria Fletcher, Sound Publishing President. Little Nickel rack

3 Vital Questions Editors and Publishers Need to Answer

distribution will be eliminated.

Sound Publishing has established five zones in King, Snohomish and Kitsap counties to give people a wide range of options for their advertising. Each zone has a circulation between 50,000 and 80,000. Advertisers will be able to place ads in any or all zones and/or in individual Sound Publishing newspapers.

As part of the business change, the Little Nickel offices in Everett, Tacoma and Portland will be closed. Many Little Nickel employees will be retained and will move into other Sound Publishing offices throughout the Puget Sound area.

Popular items for donation include: • Sporting event tickets • Cultural and arts tickets • Getaways/Travel • Golf, jewelry, wine, etc.

• Dining certificates • Regional food items • Gift cards for retail outlets • Technology ndustry-related services • Industry-related • Gifts/Collectibles • Music

Your . .. choice be e! creativ

Donations are tax deductible. Email or call Josh O’Connor, publisher@heraldnet.com, (425) 339-3007, or Mae Waldron, mwaldron@wnpa.com, (206) 634-3838 ext 2, with details of your gift by August. 30.

And plan to participate by bidding generously.