​The last time I spoke with Kurt Benshoof, we had a polite 20-minute conversation about why he thinks 9/11 was an inside job and why I think he's crazy. Today he's upped the ante.

He's offering me $1,000 to spend 30 minutes debating the World Trade Center's collapse--particularly the infamous "Building 7," which, according to Benshoof and his ilk, could have only fallen because of a "controlled demolition."

But being that I'm not in the habit of accepting money from readers (it's a constant issue I deal with, lemme tell you), I figured I'd put the question to you all. Anyone want to study a copy of Popular Mechanics' thorough debunking of every Truther argument ever and make a quick G?

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​In the newspaper biz, there are two types of editorial writers: those who seek facts and input from folks on both sides of an issue before forming an opinion, and those who phone in columns without ever picking up the phone. Today, The Seattle Times' Lynne Varner joins the shallower ranks.

Because any editorial worth writing is worth writing twice on the same day, apparently, both Varner and The Seattle Times' editorial board have columns which call for Backpage.com (Backpage, an online classifieds service, and Seattle Weekly are both owned by Village Voice Media) and Seattle Weekly to abandon adult-oriented advertising (no mention of our friends at the Stranger and their Naughty Northwest adult classifieds service, curiously enough). Their prohibitionist stance is cloaked behind steroidal numbers surrounding the forced prostitution of minors, numbers which were discredited in a cover story which ran in Seattle Weekly and its sister papers across the country two weeks ago. Seduced via Twitter by Ashton Kutcher and the actor/activist's L.A.-based philanthropic sherpa, Mayor Mike McGinn pulled all city advertising from the pages of Seattle Weekly, a stunt the Times ed. board today applauds.

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​Never mind that its editorial side might actually have to report critically on some of the local luminaries the Times has recruited to appear in its nauseatingly rah-rah house ad campaign, Fairview Fanny is in cahoots with such radiant Seattle personalities as Ciscoe Morris, every last member of the Blethen family and...Don Wakamatsu?!?!

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Tab had a fat chance of winning

​ The sun still rises in the east, Hell remains unfrozen over, and the National Enquirer did not win the Pulitzer Prize. But the Seattle Times did - for its breaking news reporting on the slayings of four Lakewood police officers. In giving the award today for a distinguished example of local reporting with special emphasis on the speed and accuracy of the initial coverage, the Pulitzer judges awarded the honor (and $10,000) to the Times staff "for its comprehensive coverage, in print and online, of the shooting deaths of four police officers in a coffee house and the 40-hour manhunt for the suspect," Maurice Clemmons, later shot dead by a Seattle cop. Thanks to the Times' "flood-the-zone" styled reporting on breaking events, the paper can now claim eight Prizes since Ed Guthman won the paper's first Pulitzer in 1950.

The Puget Sound Business Journal of Seattle was a finalist in the explanatory category for its "meticulous examination of the collapse of Washington Mutual, the biggest bank failure in U.S. history, plumbing causes and raising troubling questions about federal regulation," Pulitzer judges said. "Next to Normal," a musical that got its start at the Village Theater in Issaquah, also won the Pulitzer for drama.

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When one of the mayor's top guys tells a fib big enough to cost him his job, that should be considered news, right?

​If you're at all interested in Seattle politics, the story of the week was that of Chris Bushnell, a top advisor to Mayor Mike McGinn who resigned last night after falsely claimed to have a Ph.D--a story broken by PubliCola.

The one-year-old Web site was the first to raise questions about Bushnell's educational background, and the only one to discover he'd sealed his records. But did PubliCola only get the scoop because The Seattle Times sat on their own version of the story?

That's what I'm wondering after a curious e-mail exchange with Times staff writer Emily Heffter.

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​A year and a month after the Hearst Corp. announced the planned death of its 146-year-old Seattle P-I print edition, the Seattle Times Co. indicates it has successfully fought off its own potential print demise and that "The Seattle Times is here to stay." In a publisher's web site notice short on details, the paper says it has successfully renegotiated its considerable debt and is moving forward. The Blethen family ownership was reportedly $100 million in the hole to its lenders and pension fund. But that's apparently been overcome by refinancing and, earlier this week, an agreement with its union members to extend a freeze on company pension contributions. In return, the company will match half of employee 401(k) contributions, up to 4 percent.

In its announcement signed by four Blethen family members, the Times - now the second largest-circulated newspaper on the West Coast - noted that "A year ago, rumors suggested that our days were numbered. While we continue to navigate through a slow recovery, we felt it important to put these rumors to rest by sharing our good news." They weren't just rumors of course: the Times opened its books to the newspaper guild to show how badly it was hurting financially. And it was Times publisher Frank Blethen who sought a tax exemption from the state, telling lawmakers he and other publishers were "hanging on by our fingers." Looks like he's crawled back off the ledge.

Sure, lots of locals stand ready to invest in this relic.

​We've grown used to the Seattle Times railing against the corporate takeover of media. Being a family-owned paper, the Times naturally views its own model as the superior one.

Now that publisher Frank Blethen's son, Ryan, has taken over the Times' editorial page, the deriding of newspaper consolidation (and the estate tax!) continues. But Blethen the younger has gone so far this morning as to attack even the idea of using banks to bankroll a newspaper.

"Banks do not belong in the newspaper industry," today's unsigned editorial intones. The Times condemns the newly bankrupt Media News Corp. for going "on a spree of buying newspapers with money borrowed from banks." Which is ironic, since the Times itself has been living off bank financing for years.

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"Dude, where's my snow?"

​Seattle is in the midst of an El Niño--read: very mild--winter. Coming on the heels of last year's Snowpocalypse, which froze the city into immobility, this is probably a welcome environment for most Seattleites. But what's warm for Seattle is sending chills down Vancouver, B.C.'s spine.

Why? Vancouver has a Winter Olympics to host in a little under a month, and it's so toasty there right now that they're having to shut down ski slopes in order to "to preserve and protect the integrity of the snowboarding and freestyle-skiing courses." Worse yet, it doesn't look like this tropical front will be returning to the Caribbean anytime soon, predicts the Northwest's (and perhaps the nation's) preeminent weather guru, Cliff Mass.

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Black, one of print's great defenders, makes a virtual splash by partnering with the eP-I.

​The eP-I just bought itself a slew of local bureaus--cheap. How? By announcing a partnership with David Black's Sound Publishing, wherein the online-only daily will link to stories hosted by pnwlocalnews.com, the portal page for SoundPub's 30 community and suburban newspapers. In addition to the link love, the P-I will publish the full text of up to 10 Sound Publishing stores per day.

Sound Publishing has papers in Bainbridge Island, Bremerton, Bellevue, Kingston, Port Orchard, Whidbey Island, the San Juan Islands, Bothell, Enumclaw, Federal Way, Marysville, Issaquah, Kirkland, Mercer Island, Redmond, and Auburn, among other markets. In effect, then, the P-I, which ceased printing earlier this year and is making an online-only go of it with a fraction of its former editorial staff, gains itself a slew of regional offices through the partnership with Black's empire. In return, Black--one of newsprint's last true believers, as Don Ward noted in a lengthy July 2008 profile--gains increased visibility for his chain's stories with a presence on one of the country's more popular news websites.

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As long as Connelly's around, don't expect the Times-P-I rivalry to flatline entirely.

​Ever since the P-I folded its print edition into a wiry web-only operation that is extremely generous about linking to content from other sites (thanks, Casey!), including its once-hated competitor, The Seattle Times, some folks assume that rivalry is in the rearview. But while there's no arguing that it's a shadow of its former self, the presence of vets like Joel Connelly ensure that a jab will still get thrown here and there. In his election recap column today, Connelly, as is his custom, subtly reminds us whose forecasts were the most off-base. Dead-center in his bull's eye: the Times' Metro columnist, Danny Westneat--and for good measure, the Times' editorial board.

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