In a surprise announcement late last week, publishers of the Seattle newspaper Eat the State! decided not to move to morning distribution, foregoing a direct effort to put competitors the Seattle Times and Seattle Post-Intelligencer out of business. Reportedly editors and constitutional counsel for ETS! were unable to agree on the meaning of the word "morning," while ETS! layout personnel were said to be completely unfamiliar with the term at all.

But seriously, folks...within five years Seattle, one of the 15 largest media markets in the country, will--just like most other really large media markets--be down to one daily paper, about three companies controlling all the major radio stations, and four or five indistinguishable newscasts on TV stations owned by megachains. The Internet is by definition anti-local. As for cable TV, TCI--soon to be a division of AT&T--and its contentious city council hearings last week are ample enough demonstration of the lack of responsiveness there. In smaller cities, it's much worse. The lack of mainstream local media in any size city, and the dumbed-down infotainment spoon-fed us by the chains, is a major reason any resuscitation of democracy will have to start in the fringes, by esoteric means of communication like (gasp) people talking face-to-face.--G.P.

Two weeks ago, the Port of Seattle agreed to build a new $12.7 million cruise ship terminal for Norwegian Cruise Line at the Bell Street Pier

downtown. The port commissioners looked at four separate options for the new terminal that ranged in price from $4 million to the most expensive $12.7 million option (which is what they chose, of course--after all, it's only taxpayer money!). The terminal was sold to the press and public as a facility that would be used by numerous cruise ship lines taking tourists from Seattle to Alaska; however, only Norwegian Cruise Line has signed a lease with the port. That four year lease allows the company exclusive use of the new cruise ship terminal on Sundays--the preferred day of departure for cruise ship operators. When asked if other cruise lines would be willing to use the deluxe facility on off-days, Steve Sewell, the port's Marine Division director, said: "It is not out of the question." Oh, ha ha.--Maria Tomchick

It's back...Rep. Philip Crane (R-IL) and Charles Rangel (D-NY) are introducing a new bill modeled on the African Growth and Opportunity Act, the sleazy NAFTA-for-Africa bill championed last session by our very own Rep. Jim McDermott. In case you're wondering why McDermott, who rarely rouses himself to care about anything these days, is so worked up about free trade for sub-Saharan Africa, the answer is--surprise--Boeing. Under terms of the bill, not only products produced in sub-Saharan Africa but ones transshipped through one of the two dozen or so affected countries would get waivers on all sorts of tariffs associated with those nasty pre-WTO days. Turns out some of those countries also have similar deals with China--meaning Boeing could use the third party countries in Africa to ship manufactured goods to the U.S., with no further worries about Most Favored Nation status or those annoying human rights debates in Congress.

Oil companies are also way on board, eager to exploit the riches of regimes like the outlaw military thugs of Nigeria. The small print, of course, requires African countries to adopt IMF-style "structural adjustments" and to forego any attempts to control international investment. These are exactly the sorts of scams--hidden in not-very-interesting bills, far away from the headlines--that the impeachment nonsense is helping to hide. Any doubts as to whether the bill's sponsors are Africa experts that have the continent's purest interests at heart had to be exacerbated by comments attributed to sponsor Crane recently, as reported in Congress Daily: "Of those countries in sub-Saharan Africa, to be sure, a lot of them are retards. I mean they've got a long way to go."--G.P.

A faithful ETS! reader wrote in to point out the new Sonics' billboard (doubtless freebies from Sonic owner Barry Ackerley, who also owns AK Media NW) promoting their abbreviated season. It's got County Exec Ron Sims waving a pennant and wearing a big goofy smile. Our correspondent also notes that inmany of the pictures of Sims doing his job splattered across the King County web site (http://www.metrokc.gov/exec/homepage/samm_lib.gif), he's wearing a Sonics jacket. Payment for product placement? Pretty cheeky, considering the city just took a bath on Key Arena lease payments during the strike. And what's with the ever-so-liberal, pro-union Sims promoting a business that just spent months locking out its workers and screwing its customers?--G.P.

We forgot to include this as a P.S. to Katha Pollitt's letter last week, but the outstanding article a few weeks ago by Scott Soriano on Amnesty International's report on the mistreatment of kids in the U.S. gulag comes from Scott's wonderful newsletter, "Sacramento Comment." S.C. comes out more or less twice a month and is, so far as I can tell, the closest thing out there to ETS! in another city: incisive, relentless on the corruptibilities of local politics, and well written enough to be interesting to out-of- towners even when the topics are local. Send a couple bucks for a sample: Scott Soriano, Sacramento Comment, 1114 21st St., Sacramento CA 95814.-- G.P.

In a surprise move late last week, publishers of the Seattle newspaper Eat The State! announced they were changing to late-night distribution in an effort to catch competitors the Seattle Times and Seattle Post-Intelligencer napping. "We'll plaster the town!," said one over-exuberant ETS! distributor after learning of the change. Added an ETS! publisher, "We'd never shoot the neighbor's dog."