This blog is designed to give readers a glimpse of our editorial-page operation and how we make our decisions. We’ll let you know who we’re meeting with, what they’re telling us, what events and issues we’re looking at. We’ll also pass on information and observations that may not make our print editions. In addition to the editorial board members who post on this blog, the board includes Publisher David Zeeck, Executive Editor Karen Peterson and Managing Editor Dale Phelps.
Editorial board bloggers
Editorial page editor Patrick O’Callahan oversees the online and printed opinion sections of The News Tribune. He came to The News Tribune in 1987 and has worked at Washington newspapers since 1979. E-mail him at patrick.ocallahan@thenewstribune.com
Editorial writer Cheryl Tucker, in addition to writing commentary, manages the daily production of the editorial and op-ed pages and edits letters to the editor. She began her journalism career in 1974 at a Virginia newspaper and came to The News Tribune in 1978. E-mail her at cheryl.tucker@thenewstribune.com.
Editorial writer Kim Bradford manages the online opinion section of The News Tribune and writes commentary. She joined The News Tribune in 2005 after working 11 years at newspapers in Washington and Maryland. E-mail her at kim.bradford@thenewstribune.com.
Guest bloggers
Editor emeritus David Seago retired from The News Tribune in 2008 after 41 years at The News Tribune. E-mail him at sds99@harbornet.com.
Richard Davis’ column on state politics frequently runs in the print edition of The News Tribune. He was president of the Washington Research Council, a statewide think tank, from 1986 through 2006. Currently, as a principal with The Simeon Partnership, Inc. he coordinates the activities of the Washington Alliance for a Competitive Economy, a business coalition founded by the Research Council, the Association of Washington Business and the Washington Roundtable.
Karen Irwin of University Place, a mother of four, has been a frequent contributor to The News Tribune's print editions. She has also written for Seattle's Child, Puget Sound Parent, the Tacoma Weekly, the Fayetteville Observer Times and the political blog Right Meets Left. She graduated from California Lutheran University with a degree in English literature and is currently working toward a history degree.
Michael Allen, professor of history at the University of Washington Tacoma, was born and raised in Ellensburg. He served with the U.S. Marines in Vietnam from 1969-70. He has written five books, including the prize-winning "Patriot's History of the United States: From Columbus' Great Discovery to the War on Terror," "Rodeo Cowboys in the North American Imagination" and "Western Rivermen, 1763-1861: Ohio and Mississippi Boatmen and the Myth of the Alligator Horse." Allen lives in Tacoma and Ellensburg and has three children.
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This editorial will appear in tomorrow's print edition.
At Craigslist, the Wild West days of anonymous sex trafficking are coming to an end.
The company, to its credit, has signed a voluntary agreement with 40 states – including Washington – that will make it easy for police to track the pimps, prostitutes and johns who’ve flocked to the Web advertising service in recent years.
It’s voluntary, because courts have held that Craigslist is comparable to a telephone company – a neutral conduit of information that can’t be held responsible for the content posted on its sites.
But the company is stepping up to the problem of sex trafficking. Under its agreement with the states, anyone advertising in Craigslist’s “erotic services” section will have to provide a working phone number and pay a fee using a traceable credit card number. Police will be able to easily subpoena the information.
A paradox here is that Craigslist has made both prostitution and police sting operations more efficient.
A column by Courtland Milloy of the Washington Post brought back a sad memory for me. He writes that the newspaper in his Louisiana community didn't publish photos of black people back in the 1950s.
I worked at a newspaper in Southeast Virginia in the mid-1970s, and I remember how a young news editor almost got fired for running a photo of a black woman on the front page. The photo went with a story about the exoneration of a black woman for killing a white man she said was attacking her. It was a huge news story in that community, and it would have seemed strange not to run a photo with it.
Apparently the editor wasn't aware that there was an unspoken policy of not running photos of black people on the front page. When the publisher demanded that she be fired, the managing editor said he'd quit, too, if that happened. The publisher backed down.
I was proud of the ME for standing up for his staff, and as I recall, the no-black-faces policy went away after that. It's hard now to believe that people thought that way as late as the mid-'70s.
Here's Milloy's column:
The Faces of Change, on the Front Page
By Courtland Milloy
The Washington Post
WASHINGTON — When I was growing up in Shreveport, La., during the 1950s, the white-owned morning newspaper did not publish photographs of black people. We were invisible. You might have heard about Martin Luther King Jr., but if all you read was the local rag, you’d think he was just a faceless, communist “Negro.”
