Related Stories: ? First Dispatch: Seattle Pickets Online

? Second Dispatch: A Crucial Week in Publishing History

? Third Dispatch: Part 2, Funding the Fight Editor's Note: This is the third in a series of dispatches from the Seattle Union Record newsroom. The staff of the Seattle Times and Post-Intelligencer both went on strike on Nov. 20. Part one of this two-part story looks at life in the newsroom in the second week of publication. Part two examines the role of Web and print advertising in the publication.

The Seattle Union Record, the Web site and newspaper published by the striking workers of the Seattle Times and Seattle Post-Intelligencer, moved into its second week of publication. The manic scrabble of the first week of publication had become a kind of sustained and manageable fury -- the institutional equivalent of shifting into an energetic stride from the first week's full-on sprint.

As an emerging publication and complex strike strategy, the Union Record not only had to continue its hardsell pressure on the local media organization against which it was striking, but fill in those areas of support necessary for a sustained effort if that becomes necessary.

Because of the rapid growth of the Union Record, a few workdays generated more news than month might for a traditional content start-up. Among the highlights:

On Monday, Nov. 27, Newspaper Guild International President Linda Foley told striking workers that the Washington, D.C.-based union was pledging $10,000 a week to fund the Union Record effort until advertising revenues are such that the paper is self-sufficient.

In conjunction with Monday's announcement, the Union Record enjoyed an increase in hits and page views that was expected on the first full work day after the holiday weekend. Although official figures were not released to OJR, charts posted on the Northwest Newspaper Guild office door concerning usage indicated that the site receives its most traffic during traditional daytime work hours.

The Union Record has delayed moving into more spacious offices until the weekend of Dec. 2 or 3. At Sunday's staff meeting, managing editor Chuck Taylor had expressed the desire to make the move, Tuesday night, Nov. 28.

The Union Record is on schedule to publish a print edition as projected in the Sunday meeting. Despite some conjecture the print paper could be moved to a five-day-a-week schedule, the original Monday, Wednesday, Friday, three-day-a-week publication plan was announced as official through the strike's duration by Union Record staffers.

The federal mediator assigned to the strike has contacted both sides, but as of Wednesday evening, no movement towards serious negotiation was reported from either side.

The Union Record received thumbs up from Brill's Content, as shown by Eric Nalder's report on an insurer's effort to avoid payment on a jury verdict appearing in Brill?s Content?s All-Star Newspaper.

Visiting the newspaper offices during the week, one encounters a completely different atmosphere than during the holiday weekend. For one thing, there are simply more people around: other unions inhabiting the Eastlake building are back at work, including the Washington Alliance of Technology Workers, in whose offices the Union-Record newsroom temporarily resides. The publication itself has become more ambitious and personnel-intensive.

The staffers seem much more comfortable in their sounders: tweaking stories on spare furniture and sharing strike information in an empty conference room. Writers even approach and interrogate newcomers with the laid-back intensity one sees in regular newsrooms, right down to the click-heel turn and stride away once initial, personal curiosity is satisfied.

It is a familiar, laconic, slow burn of measured activity, with a soundtrack made up of equal parts whispered insider information and public professions of obliviousness to whole realms of news just outside of one's intensely strike-driven purview.

THE RELUCTANT SPORTS EDITOR

One of the major issues for the second week of publication, as outlined at the Union Record's Nov. 26 meeting, was the publication's ability to build a functional newsroom using their pod model of organization. Staffers from both papers write for one editor according to their time commitments, interests, and beats.

The pods announced in Sunday's meeting include, but are not limited to, the recognizable sections running at the bottom of the Union-Record's front page: Metro, Northwest, National/World, Business, Arts and Entertainment, and Sports. Each pod editor was asked to not only provide editorial guidance to the writing submitted in their section, but to oversee the coverage and encourage writers to contribute.

On Monday, the spotlight was definitely thrown on the sports team, as the Union Record got the chance to cover an unfolding local event: the firing of Seattle Sonics basketball team coach Paul Westphal, and the hiring of popular ex-player Nate McMillan as his interim replacement.

Mike Mahoney, an on-strike Seattle Post-Intelligencer sports copy editor, received the news of the firing, admitting with a laugh that the firing had already put him in the office two hours earlier than he thought he would make it in that day.

Mahoney's background, experience and attitude towards online media puts into sharp relief the unique needs of the Union Record section editor against, say, a similar editor for a start-up that did not depend on striking writers and an overall strategy.

He is a 16-year journalism veteran, who has worked in both print and online media, and describes working for newspapers as his life's work. He worked for the Post-Intelligencer from '89 until '90, the Times from '90 to '93, and again at the Post-Intelligencer from '98 until the strike, as a sports copy editor.

Mahoney had also worked in online publishing, having spent five years in the mid-'90s with Starwave, the Seattle-based company later purchased by Disney, responsible for the content of several sites, including the ESPN.com and NBA.com. With that background, he was recruited by Taylor about a week before Monday's launch.

'[Taylor] didn't have a sports editor,' Mahoney said. 'He had a lot of people from the Times interested, and not very many from the P-I. And no one from Times sports wanted to be sports editor.'

He believes that the job fell to him in part because of the dearth of Times involvement, which could be partially ascribed to the managers of that department.

'There's a lot of intimidation,' Mahoney said. 'There were a lot of people afraid to be involved in this because of fear of retribution from the sports editor and other managers there.'

Mahoney, with experience on both papers, was a choice to help negotiate those issues. 'I worked at the Times for two and a half years. I know what the environment's like there. I not only sympathize but empathize with what they're going through. A lot of Times writers, especially younger writers, have been discouraged at the very least from becoming involved with the Union Record.'

'It's very understandable that Chuck [Taylor] was having difficult finding anybody to stand up and be sports editor,' he added. 'When I found out that was the case, I said, 'Hey, if no one else will do it, I'll do it.''

A big portion of Mahoney's job in the days leading up to the strike and the strike's first week involved recruitment. In addition to a shrinking the writer pool caused by fearful or uncertain writers, some at the Times simply crossed the picket line.

But he was confident that P-I staff members, with whom he worked on a daily basis in the past, would pitch in. 'Well, I basically just said, 'Hey, we're putting out a newspaper,'' he laughs, before explaining. 'This is what these people do for a living. For a lot of them like me it is their life's work. Just the opportunity to be involved was enough for a lot of them to bring a great deal of enthusiasm initially.'

Writers for the Union Record are almost universally encouraged to work their own beats, emphasizing their value to the papers they're striking against. It's the same in sports.

'I'm trying to be as loose as I can,' Mahoney said. 'If somebody wants to cover their beat, that would be the first preference,' adding that the writers had leeway because of the nature of the effort.

'I want people to do what they feel comfortable doing. If our Sonics beat writer wants to write about NBA issues, or the guy who covers the Seahawks wants to write about general NFL issues, we want people to do what they're comfortable with. That's not always what they've been doing the past few years,' he added. 'I don't want anybody going out there and feeling this is a chore. Especially given they're going to be working just as hard as they were for the Times or P-I and being paid a lot less.'

Mahoney also said that local organizations seemed to have no problem recognizing the credibility of the paper and its familiar local faces. 'I'm not anticipating any problems there. I think people recognize that this is a legitimate newspaper. We have [sports columnist] Art Thiel. We have [Post-Intelligencer sportswriter] Clare Farnsworth. We have all the names that people know. I don't see what point there would be in a sports organization playing hardball. I can't see why'd they do that.'

It's on the nature of Web writing where Mahoney break somewhat surprisingly with the outlook promoted in earlier interviews by Managing Editor Taylor. For someone with a background in online media, Mahoney proudly proclaims himself a creature of print.

He believes that the tenor of the Union Record's effort changed with the publication of a print edition starting Nov. 24 and continuing into this week. 'It's one thing to be on the Web,' Mahoney said. 'It's transitory, here one day and gone the next. But we put out the first strike newspaper in Seattle in 64 years. We made history. For better or for worse, everybody involved in that is part of that history. And if people believe that something is going to be held against them in the future, being involved in an actual concrete product you can hold in your hands, it raised the stakes considerably.'

He also described that the effect of a print edition on Union Record writers and editors may have been sobering -- as tactile evidence of their competition -- but not discouraging. And due to the strike forcing the newspaper's deadline back into the afternoon, editors believe the thrice-weekly print version will enjoy coverage not in the Times or P-I on late-night games from the previous evening.

Strangely, Monday's story of Westphal's firing did not appear on the Union Record site first. 'I'm a little bit disappointed about that,' admitted Mahoney citing organizational issues of the still-cramped mini-newsroom.

'I came down and anticipated that we had a photo of Westphal that was one of the candidates to run with Art [Thiel]'s column on Friday. I just wanted to get that photo slapped up on the site, and I was going to write a caption, just so we could get it out there,' Mahoney said. 'And we didn't have people to post on the Web right, I couldn't find the photo. As it stands right now, we don't have anything about it on the Web site, which is frustrating to me. I want to have stories before anybody else does.'

However, not getting the online story first doesn't necessarily nullify the strike-fueled Union Record philosophy. The Westphal coverage consisted of beat writers and popular columnists in team coverage, including sports columns from Thiel and Laura Vecsey, and on-site coverage from sportswriter Angelo Bruscas.

Future coverage concentrated not on the event nature of Westphal's firing but articles from the paper's better-read names on what fans can expect from Nate McMillan's coaching tenure, a natural suite of articles for Wednesday's print edition.

Mahoney makes it clear that he remains enthusiastic about the online effort. 'I don't want to sell the Web site short at all. The Web site plays a vital role, especially in our publication,' he said. 'The Web site is the daily representation of the Union Record.'

He adds that getting the Web site running played a vital role in even having a print edition. 'If not for the Web site, we would certainly not have been able to launch the paper with as much confidence as we did. We got so much positive feedback on the site.'

As he prepared to return to his newsroom work, Mahoney conjectured that if the Union Record continues to publish for any length of time, the Web site would expand the quantity of coverage from the first week's effort of four to five stories a day, at the same time negotiating the increased pressures of an extended strike, both financial and personal.

For now, though, Mahoney is only too glad to be working wherever he can, on what he considers to be the side of the angels. 'I want to be able to look at myself in the mirror when this thing is done and know I did the right thing.'

The Union Record sports section ran multiple articles on the Westphal firing and follow-ups on McMillan the following day, while overall departmental output by article was at five to six by mid-week from the first week's of four to five.

Mahoney left the online effort on Tuesday to move into a more direct copy editing position with the print edition. He said he moved in order to best meet the overall needs of the strike effort.

'Really, that's the best place for me,' Mahoney said. 'It's where I want to be.'

Next... Funding the Fight