Viva La Cola!

Founded in January 2009, PubliCola is a blog about Seattle written by journalists who are dedicated to non-partisan, original daily reporting that prioritizes a balanced approach to news. Started by longtime local editor and award-winning reporter Josh Feit, PubliCola is the first online-only news site in state history to get media credentials to cover the state capitol.

PubliCola was off and running. In June 2009, PubliCola hired another award-winning journalist, super-sourced Seattle city hall reporter Erica C. Barnett.

People were afraid that blogging would change journalism. Instead, we believe journalism can change blogging. Twenty-first century journalism may look and feel different, and yes Erica isn't afraid to get cranky, but we're committed to making sure online news still delivers independent, reliable, even-keeled coverage. And most of all, we're committed to making sure the coverage sparks honest civic debate.

Bringing you cola for the people, PubliCola is named after Publius Valerius PubliCola, the alias for the authors of the Federalist Papers—the original bloggers.

The first online-only news site in state history to get media credentials to cover the state capitol and Seattle city hall, PubliCola has been called a “must-read” by the Seattle Post Intelligencer and a hot “New Media Mover and Shaker” by Seattle Magazine—which also cited our own Erica C. Barnett as the city's No. 1 news nerd.

This Aggression Will Not Stand

SPD keeps trying to put us out business.

Earlier this week, the department unleashed a pretty jazzy map of crimes—assaults, robberies, prostitution, gambling, car prowls, kittens stuck in trees—and then prank called us, like, four times to ask if our refrigerator was running (it was).

But WE will have the last laugh.


All that cool data about robberies, prostitution and kittens on SPD’s website?  Well now you can find it right here at Seattlecrime.com, your one-stop crime news shop.

That’s right: we already had fire department, medic, and a lot of police calls mapped out for you. But now ALL YOUR 911 CALLS ARE BELONG TO US.

We’ve got it all: Police, fire, and medic calls, right here on our map and, as always, on our handy-dandy iPhone app.

We’ee very excited that SPD’s making this data available to everyone, and we’re very happy to be able to bring it all to you in one package here at Seattlecrime.com, along with our usual steady stream of crime news, pro-graffiti rants, and poop jokes.

You can check out our new enhanced map right here. Let us know what you think.




  • Silver in Ballard

    Didn’t you, Jonah? ;-)

    Do you have Prince Albert in a can?

  • Friend

    I like the map but I find it frustrating that there aren’t more details on the app about what the calls involve … So many unexplained aid responses. Any way to change that?

  • justinc

    It’s a function of what SFD makes available to us and we’ll continue to advocate for more transparency and details. We have also built in the ability for anybody to add information to the incident pages. All the events on the SeattleCrime map allow comments. For bigger incidents, we expect to see more and more information come from the site’s users as we all help each other figure out what happened.

  • Carol

    Because you have to register to get the ‘report’ and then the report doesn’t tell you anything more than the little widget did when you held your mouse over it.

    I LOVE the idea of you guys doing this and allowing us to all comment on specific events. Because I sure love to know what the hell’s going down in my neighborhood!