Sidebar: The Hometown Paper

Off any particular point, except as it relates to the post below: The Stranger is an independent, unabashedly progressive, self-consciously ironic muckraker of a paper, which is just the sort of attitude in print journalism that I can appreciate, for good as well as ill. Creativity may take a back seat to orthodoxy here, but the outcome is often common sense. It isn't afraid to be audacious and honest, maintains a healthy skepticism, and does the only in-depth, in-person investigative journalism in the region. The dinosaurian Times and its defunct repetitor, the Post Intelligencer, run AP copy, have no substantial local reportage, and run continuous lifestyle and fluff pieces that only serve as companions to advertising--hence the heinous concoction, "advertorial.". Heavy on the Arts and the club scene, born of the raucous gay scene on Capitol Hill, and genuinely creative, this paper unequivocally rocks, unless you place the repetition of your ideology in echo chambers above your appreciation for expression. I highly recommend Mr. Charles Mudede's musings on anything at all. He is a poet of journalism and criticism and should not be missed, regardless of individual geography.