Earlier today I posed a few questions to the Seattle Times about its decision to pay for political ads benefiting Republican Rob McKenna and the Approve R-74 campaign. Then, this afternoon, the campaign of McKenna rival Jay Inslee sent out a press release with seven of its own questions.

Now, Seattle Times spokeswoman Jill Mackie takes a swing at answering all of these questions in one fell swoop. In an e-mail to me, Mackie began by saying, "It seems that in some way, we have proved our point—that print advertising is effective. Otherwise, you would not be hearing from the Inslee campaign."

Mackie then cautioned that she was not offering "a point-by-point detailed response" to the Inslee campaign's questions, but rather addressing them generally before answering my questions. Here's her general response to the Inslee campaign:

This advertising initiative is the business side of our operation, not the journalism side. In execution it is completely separate from our journalism. The ads are clearly identified as ads. This is a pilot effort headed up by Alan Fisco, Executive VP, Revenue and New Products, with support from me in my role as Vice President, Public Affairs. After the decision was made to proceed, members of the Times’ leadership group were informed including our executive editor (news) and editorial page editor. News and editorial were in absolutely no way involved in the decision or anything to do with this effort.

As a part of this one-time pilot project aimed at demonstrating the power of print advertising, we wanted to feature one statewide candidate and one statewide issue where the polling shows them as being fairly close. We chose these two races (Governor’s race and Marriage Equality) because our company believes they are important to the future of our state. The Seattle Times editorial positions also weighed into the decision, as did the fact that these two campaigns cover a range of political and social perspectives. Being for marriage equality and for McKenna for Governor provides some balance given the constituencies of these two statewide elections.

In terms of our readers, it is possible that some readers may question the approach. That said, we hope they will recognize this is not a regular approach but a one-time effort to demonstrate the power of political advertising in The Times, the ultimate purpose of which is to generate revenue that will help us pay for the kind of high quality news and information readers want and need from us.

Reporters are in no way compromised by this effort. We run advertising every day in this newspaper and we regularly report on companies or issues that are the subject of the advertising. We have a demonstrated and honored history of a complete separation between news and advertising and this effort is no different in that regard.

Earlier, I had asked Mackie: "Do you think it's odd that the Seattle Times is supporting marriage equality with these ads while at the same time using these ads to support the candidate for governor who opposes marriage equality?" She responded:

That question did not factor into the decision as to which efforts to focus on. As noted above, we wanted to feature one statewide candidate and one statewide issue where the polling shows them as being fairly close. We chose these two races (Governor’s race and Marriage Equality) because our company believes they are important to the future of our state. The Seattle Times editorial positions also weighed into the decision, as did the fact that these two campaigns cover a range of political and social perspectives. Being for marriage equality and for McKenna for Governor provides some balance given the constituencies of these two statewide elections.

I'd also asked her: "What will it end up saying about the power of political advertising in the print edition of the Seattle Times if McKenna and/or marriage equality end up losing at the polls in November?" She responded:

I’m not going to speculate on that at this point. For now, we will focus on demonstrating an effective print effort.