Media in Seattle
Media in Seattle includes long-established newspapers, television and radio stations, and an evolving panoply of smaller, local art, culture, neighborhood and political publications, filmmaking and, most recently, Internet media. The Seattle–Tacoma Designated Market Area, as defined by Nielsen Media Research, includes most of Western Washington and the Wenatchee metropolitan area., it is the 12th largest television market and 11th largest radio market in the United States by population.
Seattle has been at the forefront of new media developments since the 1999 protests of a meeting of the World Trade Organization in Seattle spurred the formation of the city's Independent Media Center, which covered and disseminated the breaking news online to a worldwide audience. The location of Microsoft just outside Seattle in nearby Redmond, and the growth of interactive media companies have made Seattle prominent in new digital media.
Newspapers
Seattle's major daily newspaper is The Seattle Times. The local Blethen family owns 50.5% of the Times, the other 49.5% being owned by the McClatchy Company. The Times holds the largest Sunday circulation in the Pacific Northwest. The Seattle Post-Intelligencer is owned by the Hearst Corporation. The Seattle Daily Journal of Commerce covers economic news, and The Daily of the University of Washington, the University of Washington's school paper, is published five days per week during the school year.The Seattle newspaper landscape changed dramatically in 2009, when the Seattle Post-Intelligencer ceased print publication. Previously, the Post-Intelligencer and The Seattle Times had shared a joint-operating agreement under which the Times handled business operations outside the newsroom for its competitor. When the Post-Intelligencer went online-only as SeattlePI.com, The Seattle Times felt the blow financially but continues to be a profit-earning publication and even increased its print circulation in 2009 by 30 percent. Nonetheless, the P-I's move to online-only resulted in 145 jobs lost at that publication, while The Seattle Times cut 150 editorial positions shortly before that, in December 2008. The Times reaches 7 out of 10 adults in King and Snohomish Counties. With fewer resources, the Times took steps to consolidate some of its news coverage: for example, folding the daily business section into the paper's A section. The Seattle Times has been recognized for its editorial excellence: The newspaper has been the recipient of nine Pulitzer Prizes. In recent years, the Times has begun to partner with other types of media outlets, including collaborations with several local bloggers that are funded by American university's J-Lab: the Institute for Interactive Journalism and the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation.
The most prominent weeklies are the Seattle Weekly and The Stranger. Both consider themselves alternative papers. The Stranger, founded in 1992, is locally owned and has a younger and hipper readership. The Seattle Weekly, founded in 1976, has a longstanding reputation for in-depth coverage of the arts and local politics. It was purchased in 2000 by Village Voice Media, which in turn was acquired in 2005 by New Times Media. New Times Media has decreased the Weekly's emphasis on politics. Other weekly papers are the Seattle Gay News and Real Change, an activist paper sold by homeless and low-income people. The Puget Sound Business Journal covers the local economy. The Rocket, a long-running weekly magazine devoted to the music scene, stopped publishing in 2000.
Seattle is also home to several ethnic newspapers. Among these are the African American papers The Facts and the Seattle Medium; the Asian American papers the Northwest Asian Weekly, Seattle Chinese Post, and the International Examiner; and the JTNews. There are also numerous neighborhood newspapers, such as the Seattle Sun and Star, the West Seattle Herald, the Ballard News-Tribune, and the papers of the Pacific Publishing Company, which include the Queen Anne News, Magnolia News, North Seattle Herald-Outlook, Capitol Hill Times, Beacon Hill News & South District Journal, and the ''Madison Park Times.''
Daily
- Seattle Daily Journal of Commerce
- ''The Seattle Times''
Weekly
- The Catholic NW Progress
- Eat The State
- International Examiner
- Marples Northwest Business Letter
- Nguoi Viet Tay Bac
- North American Post
- Northwest Asian Weekly
- Phuong Dong News
- Puget Sound Business Journal
- Seattle Chinese Post
- Seattle Chinese Times
- Epoch Times Seattle
- Seattle Gay News
- Seattle Jewish Transcript
- Seattle Medium
- Seattle Soy Sauce
- Shoreline/Lake Forest Enterprise
- El Siete Dias
- The Skanner
- ''The Stranger''
Community
- Ballard News-Tribune
- Capitol Hill Times
- The Highline Times
- Madison Park Times
- Shoreline/Lake Forest Enterprise
- Queen Anne & Magnolia News
- ''West Seattle Herald''
College
- The Daily
- The Falcon
- The Sentinel
- SU Spectator
- ''Seattle Central College''
Defunct
- The Argus
- Helix
- North Seattle Journal
- Seattle Post-Intelligencer
- The Seattle Star
- Seattle Star
- Seattle Union Record
- ''Seattle Weekly''
Magazines
Two locally owned magazines for parents, ParentMap Newsmagazine and Seattle's Child, are published monthly. Conscious living magazine Seattle Natural Awakenings is also locally owned and published monthly. The multi-ethnic glossy Colors NW publishes a companion Colors NW video podcast. Seattle Magazine and Seattle Metropolitan, local lifestyle magazines, are published monthly. Northwest Woman Magazine is a regional bimonthly publication for the Northwest woman; it is published in Spokane.
425Business is a monthly Seattle business magazine.
Environmental online magazines Worldchanging and Grist are based in Seattle.
Sound Rider!, an online motorcycling magazine, is also published from Seattle.
OutdoorsNW magazine, published by Price Media, Inc. in Seattle since 1988, serves the active, outdoor recreational enthusiasts.
Satire
Seattle has a long history of hyper-local satire that stretches from the days of a late-night skit show Almost Live!—which launched the careers of Joel McHale and Bill Nye the Science Guy. A modern satire website, The Needling, is described by many as a local version of satire site The Onion.Television
The Seattle television market is the 13th largest in the United States; it includes the adjacent cities of Tacoma, Bellevue, Everett, and Bellingham; and additional viewers from British Columbia, Canada.Seattle is served by numerous television stations. The major network affiliates are KOMO 4, KING 5, KIRO 7, KCTS 9, KCPQ 13 and KUNS 51, which are also seen across Canada via digital cable and satellite providers. Also broadcasting in English are two independent stations, KTBW 20, KZJO 22, KBTC 28, KWPX-TV 33, KFFV 44. Most of these can be seen in Canada via digital cable or satellite. There are also two Spanish-language affiliates: KVOS 12, which is licensed to Bellingham and Telemundo on the fourth subchannel of KIRO-TV.
Seattle's commercial TV stations distinguish themselves from one another in various ways. KING-TV, owned by Tegna Media, has been nominated for 56 Regional Emmy Awards. The station allows viewers to submit their own photo and video content via its website and also highlights the work of average citizens in the community on-air in the recurring feature, "Home Team Heroes." The former parent company of KOMO, Fisher Communications, launched a network of hyperlocal websites in 2009, which include blogs about issues related to community service, news of interest to families, crime news, and news about events occurring around the neighborhood. Finally, KIRO, owned by Cox Enterprises, maintains three reporters in a Washington, DC, bureau to cover news of interest to viewers back in Washington State.
Seattle also has three public television stations. The Seattle Channel, Government-access television run by the city, airs public affairs, community service, and arts programming. The station is funded partly by cable television franchise fees and partly by a $5 million grant from Comcast, which will be paid over 10 years to support arts programming. After first focusing on civic programming, the Seattle Channel has become known for its arts programming. As the station's on-air priorities have begun to emphasize arts programs, it has shifted much of the government accountability-oriented programming to live streaming on the Internet, best accessed by viewers with high-speed Internet access. KCTS-TV is Seattle's PBS member station and operates three feeds: a primary, high-definition, general interest station; KCTS 9 PBS Kids, which features children's programs; and KCTS 9 Create, which features DIY, cooking, arts and crafts, and travel programs. In 2009 KCTS aired 160 episodes in a regularly occurring series on local public affairs, personal finance, economic issues, and business affairs. While KCTS is a popular source for viewing nationally produced PBS shows, it features less programming on local public affairs than the region's other two public TV stations. The third public station, SCAN, is Seattle's public access cable television network. A 5013 nonprofit, it provides equipment, production facilities, and media instruction for residents of Seattle and other King County communities. Although its funding is limited, SCAN often airs more locally produced public affairs programming each week than all the city's broadcast networks combined.
Cable networks based out of the area include Root Sports Northwest, ResearchChannel and UWTV. Seattle cable viewers also receive CBUT-DT 2 from Vancouver, British Columbia, often carried on cable channel 99. The 24-hour Northwest Cable News was available on cable until 2017.