Here's a story the Seattle P-I and Times don't want you to read about: Their own employees are threatening to strike.

The writers, copy editors, photographers, distributors, sales representatives, clerical and support staff of the two dailies--as many as 900 employees in all--have been locked in heated negotiations with management over new contracts for four months now, and the Pacific Northwest Newspaper Guild is about ready to give up. The two newspapers aren't offering serious wage increases, the guild says, so an indefinite strike has been set "by Thanksgiving."

"We're prepared to continue to publish a newspaper in the event of a strike," says Mason Sizemore, the Times' president. PHIL CAMPBELL

Work Options

No wonder rogue landlords get away with so much knavery. A recent investigation by Seattle's office of ethics found that one of the city's housing-code inspectors was spending work time using city computers to download stock-price histories and applications for purchasing mutual funds. Indeed, the ethics office concluded that "on at least 180 occasions," Inspector Lois Eulberg "used City paid time and City owned computers and printers to conduct market research in various stocks or mutual funds some of which she owned." Eulberg was fined $250 by the city and has promised to stop doing market research on the clock. JOSH FEIT

Yuppies Terrorize Belltown

Never mind budget cuts, the biggest threats to city bus service are stupid Mazda Miata drivers. Thanks to a lazy (and illegal) parking job by the proud owners of a pretty blue Miata, a #56 bus was blocked at the intersection of First and Blanchard in Belltown last Saturday night. In addition to blocking the bus, the Miata was also blocking the wheelchair ramp on the sidewalk! When the derelict yuppies returned, they found a ticket on their windshield. NANCY DREW

Jury of Your Peers

On October 31, a nine-person jury selected from an "average" pool of 29 Washington state residents determined that the city was not racist when it strong-armed Jerseys All-American Sports Bar into nixing rap music (and therefore its predominantly black clientele).

Who are these average people making federal court decisions? Or, perhaps more telling, who aren't they? Well, not a single member of the jury was black. While the court won't release demographic information about jury pools, clearly black jurors are a rarity in Seattle's federal court, since none turned up in the original pool of 29. ALLIE HOLLY-GOTTLIEB