Well, if most of their journalists aren't citizens, that might explain a lot:

Jim Simon, assistant managing editor of the Seattle Times, said ... “We don’t typically use citizen journalists to go down and report on City Hall,” Simon said.

I've always hated the term "citizen journalist" as an arbitrary economic distinction that has little or no bearing on the actual quality of one's work. What Simon really means by "citizen" is "amateur." You know, as opposed to Simon and his coworkers, who are all "professionals," of course.

Honestly, I find it a little galling that one's credibility as a journalist should in any way be linked to whether or not you are being paid for your work—as if a paycheck signed by Frank Blethen (or Tim Keck for that matter) is some sort of Certificate of Qualification. To paraphrase Martin Luther King Jr., I dream of a day when journalists are judged not by the size of their paycheck but by the character of their content.