It might have been a classier move if Cameron had simply driven over to the mayor's office and kicked him in the shins. It also wasn't a bright idea to note that these strike press policies were based on King County Labor Council guidelines. When your biggest media booster calls you a '60s casualty and a wuss, it's hard to envision a bright political future. In the first Sunday paper of the newspaper strike, Seattle Times Executive Editor Mike Fancher wrote his most important column ever. Although there has been no shortage of information about the walkout by 1,000 employees of the Times and Seattle Post-Intelligencer , Fancher's column was the first real try at stating management's side of the labor dispute and an important reminder to readers that the pain caused by a strike isn't felt only on the picket line.
Face time is a big deal during a strike.
It's no accident that P-I sports columnist Art Thiel, who has been the major focus of that newspaper's advertising campaigns, ended up as the public spokesman for the Pacific Northwest Newspaper Guild. Ironically, as strikers were voting to hit the streets, the popular columnist's smiling mug was pasted on P-I machines across the city. The first day's postings on the Union Record Web site included seven pieces by popular columnists, six on strike themes. This is one front where the newspapers can't keep up. This is a result of stories being either written by managers, compiled by more than one person, written before the strike by now-idled staffers, or created by folks who aren't eager to publicly proclaim that they've crossed the picket line.