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.
Real-world police work isn’t “CSI,” “The Closer” or Detective Harry Bosch. It’s not even the reality-based “Cold Case Files” most of the time.
But it could have been a lot better than the Puyallup police investigation that followed the disappearance of 14-year-old Misty Copsey during the Puyallup Fair in 1992.
Over the past week, in an online series summarized in today’s newspaper, The News Tribune’s Sean Robinson has documented the twists, turns and outright blunders of that investigation.
The mistakes may not have made any difference to Misty: She was almost certainly murdered, perhaps shortly after her disappearance. The investigation itself is now ancient history, for the most part, and the Puyallup police have since overhauled their “missing person” procedures.
But Robinson’s account does make for a cautionary tale on how not to respond to a child’s likely abduction. Whatever happened to Misty, it’s all too possible the lapses let a homicidal criminal remain at large.
Sorting through some old papers from my father’s house a few days ago, I found a fascinating historical document: “College Scope,” a 1968 pamphlet distributed as “another helpful service of National Bank of Commerce.”
College Scope turned out to contain a summary of tuition and room-and-board expenses at virtually every college in the country (circa 1968).
I looked up what my alma mater, the University of Washington, was charging in the year of Woodstock and the Tet Offensive. Annual tuition: $345. No, I didn’t misplace a decimal.
OK, you’re thinking, but there’s been all that inflation over the last 40 years. So I plugged $345 into the Bureau of Labor Statistics' online inflation calculator. It translated $345 in 1968 dollars to $2,114 in 2009 dollars.
Actual UW undergraduate tuition for a state resident today is $6,250. Thanks to the budget crisis, that will go up $875 next year and $1,000 the year after.
So, UW tuition has risen at roughly three times the rate of inflation over the last 40 years (the same would be true of WSU and the other state universities). And you ain't seen nothing yet.
It never ceases to amaze me how much the World War II generation was willing to pay to provide college opportunity to its children.
