Well, shit. We were going to tell you this news ✨tomorrow✨, but it looks like the badger is out of the bag. The Stranger has been acquired by Noisy Creek, a new company founded by Brady Walkinshaw.
Noisy Creek also bought our sister publication, Portland Mercury, our events site EverOut, and our ticketing business, Bold Type Tickets.
So what does this mean?
We’re all fucked! Lol, jk, jk. This is actually good news, we think!
Walkinshaw, our new benevolent overlord, worked as a former Democratic Washington State House Representative for a while before becoming the CEO of Grist, which does a nice job reporting on our melting planet. He says he’s not going to lay off anyone, and he’ll bring in a bunch more money to expand and deepen our coverage.
Our first question to Walkinshaw was, “Motherfucker, if you think you’re getting within 10 feet of the fucking Stranger Election Control Board, we are going to throw you in a garbage can so fucking fast you won’t even fucking believe it.” In response, he said, “That’s fine! Actually, I want nothing to do with editorial! I was a politician 10 years ago, and I have moved on with my life.”
We accept that answer, but we have installed a new, big garbage can outside of the conference room where we grill people just in case he tries some shit.
Now, he did install a new editor, Hannah Murphy Winter. But she’s legit. She worked at Rolling Stone and ProPublica, she’s mentored young journalists, she’s published a book on queer power couples, she’s got cool hair, and she seems really nice! While we all learn more about her, Rich Smith will take on his old role as news editor, where he and the news team will continue to terrorize local politicians.
Now, we’re journalists. We’re skeptical by nature. We’ve been raised to distrust power and money. And as the Index Media Union writes, "Our workers still have many questions, as the vast majority of Index Newspapers employees have not yet had a chance to hear Walkinshaw’s plans in his own words. Regardless of what we learn at tomorrow’s all-staff meeting, we remain committed to the editorial independence of our publications—both in day-to-day reporting and in the candidates we endorse.”
As we wait for more explicit plans from the new top brass, we’re optimistic, and we look forward to working with these new people to make the biggest, best, brattiest possible Stranger we can make. And we hope you all will continue along with us on this journey, or at least continue yelling at us in the comments.
We also hope you continue to support our journalism by maintaining your contributions to The Stranger. These new people are bringing money, but they’re betting not losing what we got.
On a serious note, Big Tech gutted our industry. Journalism is collapsing at a time when tyrants are on the rise nationally, and when corruption continues to creep into local government. Journalists—the guardians of our democracy, the people who speak truth to power—are fleeing the field and learning to code. Our old frenemies, the Seattle Weekly, are a shadow of their former selves. The regional papers are fighting for their lives, even the big boys are trying everything they can to keep staff and tell stories that change worlds big and small. We hope this deal gives us the opportunity to pay our staff more (RIGHT, BRADY? RIGHT? THAT’S WHAT YOU SAID. THAT’S WHAT YOU FUCKING SAID), add staff, and create more of the journalism you love and/or love to hate. That doesn’t sound too bad to us.