I don't know if I'd be too hard on Mackie. She's probably updating her resume. This idea is so collossally stupid it can only have come from the top.

The "experiment" was just a bullshit excuse for them to create a full page ad for McKenna...I don't know why they have such a hard-on for him, but they do.

This is another example of people trying to slide some terrible practices under the radar and getting skewered for it.

O, and here's how they could measure it. Let's see how many people cancel their subscription in the next week or so because of this bullshit.

Then they could say "Look! We lost half our readership over this! Clearly half the people reading our newspaper pay attention to the ads!"

Blethen and the Times have been assisting the AG's office in ways that make me sick. This is just more proof of it. Rather than bird dogging the AG, Blethen is going down on him again and again, shamelessly, proudly.

This "experiment" will blow up. Good for the few talented reporters left there who can stand up for their credibility. Readers? They are voting with their feet.

There are a lot of things about the business model for news that are deeply troubling, starting with the core problem that the news companies (regardless of medium) are not paid for accuracy, speed, analysis, or integrity, but, rather, paid to gather an audience for advertisers.

This is what has given rise to the media's one true bias: a bias towards sensationalism.

Any thoughtful reader of the Seattle Times has known for a long time that the paper has a number of political biases which it routinely indulges and clearly prioritizes above integrity. I don't believe for one moment that the views of the Editorial Board don't reflect those of the ownership and are not, in turn, reflected in the news content.

The Seattle Times should not be read as an unbiased account of activity in our community - no more than the Stranger, Fox News, MSNBC, or any other media outlet. They are all skewed by their need to make money if not by an overt and plainly stated bias.

NPR and PBS are not much better in their news coverage because they, too, are fighting for market share. They need to attract an audience just like any other media outlet.

On top of all of this, of course, is the McLuhan truth that television and radio are entertainment media, not information media, and everything on them, regardless of content, is entertainment.

When my kids were little I kept reminding them that nothing they see on TV is real. "What about the news?" they asked. "Especially the news" I told them.

The internet presents an interesting new medium which is an amalgam of a number of existing media. It is print, and video and audio all together. It is both a mass medium and a personal medium. It is both broadcast and peer-to-peer. The future appears to belong to aggregators like Huffington Post and Zite. But they don't do original journalism and I don't think they pay their contributors. People expect internet content to be free and given the supply, they should.

This is a critical question and concern because if newspapers no longer have a viable business model - and they don't - then who will do original journalism?

I think their explanation makes things worse. They are explicitly attempting to sway a close race for the sole purpose of increasing future ad revenue. Their statement yesterday makes it sound like they didn't particularly care which candidate they endorsed and that the primary goal is to prove the effectiveness of advertising in a close election. So they threw a bunch of free advertising at one candidate in the hopes that one wins and everybody is forced to spend more money on ads in the next election.

Or perhaps Inslee hasn't been spending enough money on ads in the Seattle Times and the real experiment is to see if they can force the campaign to spend more money now.

As someone who frequently talks with the reporters covering education issues at the Times, this action by them has given me pause. I see the line between reporting and editorial getting blurry and I feel uneasy about working with their reporters.

What makes Frank's conservative agenda especially stupid is that it doesn't even make good business sense for his paper - Seattle is a liberal city situated in a blue state.

Frank's inability to inhibit his political impulses is just one of the character flaws that will ultimately put him out of business.

I wouldn't expect a paper that supports candidates that oppose science to understand any kind of scientific method.

Two basic outcomes exist in the gubernatorial election: either Inslee or McKenna wins.

If McKenna wins, who is to say it had anything to do with the Seattle Times advertising. One can never know, but I suspect Blethen and Co. will announce that their "experiment" was a success.

If Inslee wins, then will the Seattle Times admit their newspaper has no reach and obviously advertising in their pages is a worthless endeavor? Doubtful.

At the end of the day, all this will really prove is that the Seattle Times does not have the means to fill all their pages with any meaningful news and reporting, as opposed to advertising and political manifestos and endorsements. Why anybody would spend any money to buy what they produce is beyond me.

I just cancelled my subscription. I'm really surprised that they put no effort into trying to keep me. Netflix, comcast, mobile providers -- all monthly services I subscribe to really bend over backwards to keep cancelling customers. As a non-fan of the Times, particularly after yesterday's announcement, I'm happy they're doing such a lousy job at retention.

At the end of the call, when we were sorting out my billing status, I mentioned that I was quitting because of their announcement yesterday. The rep said she was hearing a lot of that this morning.

I'll be curious to see if either the McKenna or R-74 campaigns issues statements distancing themselves from this "experiment." I would especially hate to see the R-74 campaign caught in any blowback.

Also, is this type of expenditure only legal now due to the Citizen's United ruling?

I'm now planning on donating both to R-74 and Inslee to counter this.

If you have unregistered comments hidden, #4 has an entertaining bit of Blethen bashing.

Yeah - these free full page ads for Rob "screw Peter Goldmark and the law" McKenna are a hijacking in what is basically a one paper town since Skip & co. left the SW for reasons that don't need to be brought up here...

Oh wait...The Times has spent thousands of column inches endorsing I-502 - the legalization (taxing and regulating) of pot (and the authorization of industrial hemp.) Bless the whole Blethen family!

Oh wait...I still haven't forgiven Frank Blethen for shooting his neighbors dog.

I hate these conflicts...

At this point the Times is just the Blethen's personal lobbying rag. There's no money to be made in newspapers anymore anyway. Expect them to become a cog in Washington's burgeoning for-profit education industry (hence their lobbying for 1240).

Nice old Goldy post on Blethen's business acumen. http://horsesass.org/?p=16424

@10 - I don't think holding this against the reporters is the right response. There are dozens of hard working, principled journalists (and token black columnist Jerry Large) in there don't deserve to have their lives made harder because of business decisions far above them.

@19 It's just the perfect storm of bad management, the digital age, and a down economy. It won't be long now. But I have to say, the way they treated the people at the P.I. really looks like a bit of karmic justice.

This is truly weird, isn't it? It is, ostensibly, an effort to show that the dead-tree version of the paper still has value to advertisers, but - regardless of the results of the elections - it will actually only prove the opposite: that there is no way to measure the effectiveness of print ads.

Since this stunt cannot possibly work for its stated purpose and, in fact, works contrary to its stated purpose, the stated purpose cannot possibly be the actual purpose. The actual purpose must be simply to promote Rob McKenna's election.

I just canceled. I feel bad, because the woman on the phone was obviously pretty upset herself, as she listens to her job evaporate over her headphones this morning. "The employees don't necessarily agree with it either", she said. I swear her voice hitched up. I feel like a heel. But I ain't puttin' any more dollars in Frank Blethen's bank account.

This is why my 74-year-old mother called me at 8:30 this morning to tell me that she had just cancelled the Seattle Times. To be fair, she was partially irate because she mis-read it and thought they were also taking out ANTI-marriage equality ads; but this admission that journalistic objectivity is a farce was the last straw for her. She'll miss her crosswords.

She also felt a little bad for the employee on the phone.

This is a newspaper that's committing suicide. They're reinforcing what people already suspect: advertising in their paper is now so worthless that they'll give it away to anyone. Then, why should any other advertiser pay them for advertising? They should just be giving advertising away to everyone for free.

Before you say this is impossible, consider this: decades ago when I attempted to sell radio advertising, I once had a potential client try to argue this with me, as if the station's FCC license required me to give away its only possible commercial product, so I believe the premise is already out there.