Neal Pattison, the Herald's Executive Editor, trying to put a happy face on economic uncertainty for the Herald and the rumors afoot that layoffs for reporters and staffers are just around the corner, announced on the Monday's front page that the Herald was dicing up its business section by dropping stock market reporting and consolidating all of the food, family, entertainment and trends reporting into a new reduced size section called "Good Life".

What it boils down to is that the ever shrinking size of the Herald is about down to the size of a local weekly newspaper. Advertising in Autos and Real Estate are dramatically off and so is the paper's Sunday circulation-a kiss of death in the industry.

During the 6 month period ending in September of 2007 the Everett Herald circulation dropped by 1.4 percent to 48,519. Then the latest report from 03/07 to 03/08 showed a slight increase up to 50,272 from 49,109 in March of last year - and overall increase of 2.37%. So Herald circulation went down and then back up slightly. Just enough to survive, according to the Audit Bureau of Circulations that does the surveys. All of this in light of the fact that more than 100,000 new residents moved into Snohomish County in the last few years, coupled by the slight increase in SEATTLE TIMES circulation in Everett and the county in general. These circulation figures are everything to the newspapers because these numbers determine the advertising rates the papers get for charging for advertising.

In an obvious effort to increase a lack luster click performance on their on-line presence (Heraldnet.com), Pattison asks its readers to go on line to pick up those portions of the newspaper they are no longer printing.
What's really happening to the Washington Post Everett newspaper? Well, there has been a barrage of complaints over the last 18 months from community leaders, citizens and others complaining about the newspaper's turn to the sharp left, politically. The chief culprit in all of this has to be the crackpot, off the wall editorial editor Bob Bolarjack, who is clearly a socialist of the European variety and an environmental extremist. Bolarjack apparently has done a lot since the departure of the respected Stan Strick who retired in November of last year as Executive Editor and was replaced by Neal Pattison. Bolarjack has basically gone off the deep end since Strick's departure. To make matters even worse: Allen Funk the publisher has apparently given Bob carte blanch to write anything he wants on the editorial page and that coupled with the left leaning reporting of most of the pavement pounding reporters of the Herald, makes the newspaper hard to swallow for citizens who live in Arlington, Monroe, Lake Stevens, Gold Bar and Sultan, those cities who got most of the population increase aside from Edmonds and Lynnwood where the Seattle Times/PI remains King of the hill!
The immediate outlook for the Washington Post West?

Bleak to say the least coming on the heels of major cutbacks at the Seattle Times two months ago. We will just have to wait until the Everett Herald shoe drops! LAYOFFS AND MORE CUTS?