Josh was getting a little lonely all by himself at PubliCola headquarters, so we decided to double the size of our staff. Erica C. Barnett, news editor of the Stranger (a friend and former colleague of both Josh and I) will be coming on board at PubliCola ASAP as News Editor. Christopher Frizzelle, the Stranger’s editor, wrote about Erica’s announcement in a gracious post on Slog a couple of hours ago.
In case you are not a Stranger reader, here’s the Barnett bio: Until today Erica was the news editor for Seattle’s alternative newsweekly, the Stranger, where she covered City Hall, state politics, and transportation, edited the paper’s news section, and wrote a weekly politics column. She also contributed frequently to Slog (www.slog.thestranger.com), the Stranger’s blog.
In 2007, she won a Civic Award from the Municipal League of King County for the year’s best government affairs reporting.
Before she came to the Stranger in 2003, Erica was a staff writer for Seattle Weekly. Prior to that, Erica was the senior news editor and city hall columnist for the weekly Austin Chronicle. She has also written for the Texas Observer, Dallas Observer, and Kirkus Reviews.
She also currently writes for the politics blog Shakesville and has her own food blog, The C. is for Cocina.
A native of Houston, Texas, Erica graduated with honors from the University of Texas at Austin.
We’re very happy to have her on board. I worked side by side with Erica for a couple of years before I left the Stranger in 2005 when she was a news staffer and Josh was the news editor. During those years, I was always amazed—and a little jealous—at how plugged in Erica was (and is) to Seattle politics, and at her remarkable productivity.
We like ECB’s writing, reporting, and (the real reason we hired her) her rolodex. When it comes to knowing the movers and shakers in local politics—she has a source list to die for. A major voice in this town, she has a devoted following (and, yes, as a strong woman fearless about expressing her opinion on controversial topics, she has more than her share of detractors).
Erica has a strong voice, and the last thing we want to do is squelch it. But we have a more laid back and balanced tone here at PubliCola. I don’t expect that will change.
Welcome aboard, ECB. Now go write some stuff and let’s see what happens.
