1. Mayor Katie Wilson, who had been planning to release her “News Notes” proposal to help fund independent media on or around Independence Day, has pushed the potential ballot measure back a year, according to her office. We’ve followed up with more questions about the reason for the delay and will update this post if we hear back.

News vouchers would work much like democracy vouchers, Seattle’s public campaign finance program. If approved, the program would use a small property tax to provide funding to local news outlets that meet certain criteria, such as providing core content for free, adhering to basic standards such as factual accuracy, and having independent ownership. (Many of the details are TBD).

As they already do with democracy vouchers, Seattle residents could spend news vouchers on the outlets they want to support—providing a boost to the local news ecosystem and allowing more established independent outlets to expand their coverage.

Wilson’s team had reportedly been vetting the outlines of her plan with editorial board members at the Seattle Times, which had already started ramping up its opposition campaign—in the form of opinion pieces by their “save print newspapers” columnist Brier Dudley—as far back as 2023. The pro-news voucher camp was reportedly working to convince the Times editorial board to stay neutral on the measure, rather than opposing it.

2. The Stranger’s editor-in-chief, Hannah Murphy Winter, is out. Stranger publisher Tracey Cataldo told PubliCola Murphy Winter will “stay on to help see the team through the transition” but would not provide further details, such as whether the Stranger has hired a replacement. Murphy Winter took over the paper after it was bought by Noisy Creek, a media company founded by former state legislator and Grist CEO Brady Walkinshaw.

Stranger staff found out about the firing this morning. Internally, there appears to have been some shock at the timing, just before a print endorsement issue that will reportedly include at least one controversial pick. The optics of firing the paper’s top editor right as endorsements hit are also less than ideal.

Murphy Winter, previously the chief research editor at Rolling Stone, did not respond to text messages seeking comment. Walkingshaw also did not respond to messages. (Editor’s note: This post originally said Walkinshaw lives out of state; he contacted us to let us know that he lives in Seattle and owns a house in LA. We regret the error.)

3. A video from last weekend’s Pride events, taken by Turning Point USA activist Jonathan Choe., appears to show former Seattle police officer Adley Shepherd immobilizing a person’s wheelchair by standing on it as they yell “get off my chair!” Shepherd, ID’d in the video as a security guard protecting a street preacher who’s heard yelling something about the “kingdom of Satan,” then appears to shove or punch the person in the wheelchair, prompting a brief fracas in which Shepherd appears to trip and fall to the ground, where another person restrains him. When a third person briefly jumps on Shepherd, people in the crowd, including Choe, can be heard yelling “Stop!”

PubliCola is supported entirely by readers like you.
CLICK BELOW to become a one-time or monthly contributor.

Support PubliCola

If Shepherd’s name isn’t immediately familiar, here’s a refresher: He’s the former cop who was fired in 2016 for punching a woman who was handcuffed in the back of his police car after she kicked him. The woman, who suffered a fractured eye socket, had not committed any obvious crime before Shepherd handcuffed her and shoved her into his car. An arbitrator overturned the firing in a case that led a federal judge to rule SPD out of compliance with a longstanding consent decree, but the firing was upheld after a protracted court battle.

Shepherd was in the news again in 2020 after he attended the January 6 rally alongside with several SPD officers.

Choe and TPUSA, unsurprisingly, have characterized the incident as a vicious attack by activists on a Christian minister and his security guard, but even his own heavily edited video does not show anything of the sort.

Shepherd now runs a security firm, Edrei Solutions. When we called him, Shepherd said PubliCola had treated him unfairly in the past and hung up on us.