City Buys The News Tribune

It was the snowflake that broke the camel’s back. After The News Tribune published criticism of how the City handled last week’s city-crippling snowfall, the Council unanimously approved a bid to purchase the paper.

“It’s been a long time coming,” confessed Mayor Bill Baarsma. “They’ve raked us over the coals for years and after this last article, we finally just said ‘enough is enough’ and bought them out.”

The offending article ran Wednesday under the headline “Icy Tacoma roads anger many” with a byline by Kris Sherman, but it was featured on the homepage of thenewstribune.com Tuesday and Thursday as well.

The article gives equal time to the City representatives as well as angry citizens, but Mayor Baarsma felt the article should have gone further to promote the City’s point of view. Since purchasing the newspaper and their website, the headline for the article has since changed to “City does its best – as usual” and all negative references to the city have been deleted.

Cole Cosgrove, copy editor, headline writer, and blogger at the Tribune’s GritCity, was immediately fired after the purchase for his “mean-spirited” headlines, according to a City spokesman.

Cosgrove, in an e-mail statement, expressed concerns about the City owning the biggest print media outlet in the region. “Citizens of Tacoma should be very worried that they will get distorted views,” he said. “The City already owns the cable company [Click! Network], and now the Tribune. Will they go after the Funky Monkey or Warm 106.9 next?”

Other critics of the purchased have pointed out the City’s monopoly is actually far wider than just the media. The ACLU, which is representing Cosgrove against the City, said, “Let’s look at the facts. Besides Click! and the Tribune, the City owns the Water Works and the Electric Company, plus one of the four railroads. They also have the biggest monopoly in town: Park Place (both North and South garages) and they’ve begun building a hotel on Boardwalk (which they’ve tried to rename as ‘The Esplanade.’)”

The City went on the counter attack and pointed out that Prium Companies has just as big of a monopoly.

Prium is building housing on its green, red, and orange properties but construction has slowed ever since they received notice that they were included in the City’s Local Improvement District.  The note came on a yellow card reading “You are assessed for street repairs – $40 per house, $115 per hotel.”

To avoid paying the full amount Prium has decided to build tax-sheltered, low income housing on Baltic Ave and Mediterranean Ave, a move housing advocates call “short-sighted.” “These are already our hardest hit neighborhoods,” said one Baltic Ave resident. “Low income housing should be spread around. New York Avenue and Marvin Gardens should get their fair share, too.”

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