Downtown Seattle News

Random photographs, observations, and 2,000 word editorials about life in general are all well and good … for an indie blog authored by one guy.

When I put up news pieces, business reviews, or announcements, however, it can be overwhelming for people who aren’t necessarily interested in opinion or “creativity”. There is a good chance that they do not want to wade through photos of my clam chowder in order to find more newsworthy information.

Because of this, we (myself and a couple of other people) are going to start a blog that is a little more “news” oriented and less opinion-based.

Over the past few months, I’ve realized that there really isn’t a ton of independent coverage of the places I go to every day. Pike Place Market, Westlake Park, The Waterfront, the Transit Tunnel, or even the Space Needle. The mainstream media does a good enough job in Downtown Seattle, but there just isn’t a ton of content on an ultra-local level.

Neighborhoods like Capitol Hill, Ballard, West Seattle, and Wallingford are well-covered on the blog front, but the central core tends to be somewhat overlooked in this respect.

Yet here I am, down in the middle of it each and every day. Someone who has been rabidly covering my immediate surroundings daily for over six years.

Because of this, we’ve decided to go forward with an idea we have been considering for awhile. A “community news” blog so to speak. A news blog which benefits so many other neighborhoods in our fine city.

We stressed over a name, and finally settled on “Downtown Seattle News”. It was between that and “Downtown Seattle Blog” (we have both domains), but honestly, the difference between a blog and a small news outlet is almost nil.

Now, by “Downtown”, we don’t just mean the area between Pine & Yesler. Instead, we mean the greater area in the shadow of the skyscrapers: Downtown, Belltown, The Waterfront, Pike/Pine, and apartment-dwelling, close-in sections of adjacent neighborhoods that are inextricably linked to the urban core which can be more generically referred to as “Downtown”.

Myself and one other person will be the primary authors at first while a couple of other folks do, well, everything else. The start will be slow. Very slow. It will probably take a solid year to have a decent product … or maybe longer. At some point, we may also bring on other authors/contributors. In order to do that, it will have to attempt to make money, so someone will try to make that happen (there will be ads and all of that other good stuff).

For this one, I have to hearken back to my days as a photojournalist on the east coast. No colorful language. No self-indulgent rants. No lame attempts at humor. Okay, maybe some lame attempts at humor. I’m sure my entries will at times be somewhat characteristic of my own style, but scaled way back.

Seattle Rex will, unfortunately for most of you, continue to exist as my own creative outlet. My own corner of the Seattle ether. My own words and my own photos. Live shots, tons of photos, and some things that defy categorization. A true “personal blog” if you will.

Real things … things that matter, however, shall be covered in a somewhat more traditional way. I will probably link to it liberally from here as well, after all, it will have a large amount of content published by yours truly.

Last but not least, it must be noted that the News site has only been live for a few minutes, and a design and layout have not yet been established. I personally have nothing to do with the look and feel (as you can probably tell since it’s not plastered with comically colorful graphics), so I just have to trust that it will look decent at some point. Actually, I’m sure it will.

In any event, if you live, work, or play within a one or two mile radius of Pike Place Market, check out:

http://www.downtownseattlenews.com/