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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Ah, Farrah Fawcett. That smile, that kick-butt role in "Charlie's Angels," that tragic love life.
That hair. If you were a girl or young woman in the '70s, you wanted Farrah Fawcett hair. Future editorial writers were no exception.
At left is Cheryl Tucker, circa 1977. And on the right is my belated attempt to get in on the fad in 1980.
Want to share yours? Upload it at www.thenewstribune.com/community. (You'll be asked to pick a "genre." Select "Happy" – because who wasn't happy when they finally mastered the Farrah flip?)
Jenny Sanford should stop while she's ahead.
Up until now, the first lady of South Carolina has been a model jilted wife. This former Wall Street executive didn't stand by her man as he gave a rambling account of his six days AWOL in Argentina and pathetically copped to adultery. Neither did she go into hiding.
Instead, she did what many a self-respecting cuckolded wife would love to do, given the temperamental wherewithal and a public stage: She cast herself as a loving, forgiving spouse who will accept Gov. Mark Sanford back but is not about to put up with any crap.
Jenny's statement to the press was a case study in effective public relations. She emerged looking dignified, resolute and adult. (Some have said she also sent all the right signals to the fundamentalist faithful.)
South Carolinians have certainly known that side of Jenny Sanford, but for the rest of the country, it has been a grand introduction.
That acquaintance made, now's the time to draw the curtains and say "no comment." Do we need to know how the first lady discovered her husband was stepping out on her? Or that she warned her husband not to go to Argentina after she kicked him out of the house? It's all so tawdry, and we've already had plenty of that from her mooning husband.
Jenny Sanford doesn't need to say another word to secure the moral high ground, and she shouldn't.
In reviewing the Tacoma school board members' evaluations of Superintendent Art Jarvis, I was struck not by what they contained, but by what they didn't.
The "teaching/learning" category listed three "essential functions and goals" on which the board judged Jarvis. Not one of them mentioned student achievement. Rather, the school board considered whether teachers and students were assigned to schools and classes on time, and whether the district had a plan to provide sufficient curriculum resources, especially in math.
That's all important stuff, but as we said in today's editorial, all is for naught if kids aren't learning.
The school board has set rather ambitious goals for the district as a whole; reducing the dropout rate and increasing student achievement by 10 percent a year are among them. Jarvis should be evaluated, at least in part, on how whether the district achieves those goals.
I wrote board president Kim Golding to ask her if the board had a reason for not wanting to tie the superintendent's evaluation explicitly to student performance. Here's her response:
