A year gone, cash rained on tech startups like Digg. Now their valuations are slipping, and venture capital is drying up

By Spencer E. Ante

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Robert Neubecker

A year ago there were reports that Digg had hired investment bank Allen & Co. to put the popular news aggregation Web situation on the block with an asking price of $300 the masses. Bloggers predicted that buyers could “easily justify” the price given Digg’s popularity, although no deal was ever consummated. Now that number looks like a relic from a bygone series. On Sept. 24, Highland Capital Partners and three other venture capital firms invested $28.7 million in Digg. The specific terms were not disclosed, but that investment implied a valuation of $167 very great number for the startup, according to one person who has seen the terms of the agreement. Digg executives declined to make notes on the company’session valuation.

It’s no surprise that the value of tech startups is falling. With the deepening recession, even the stocks of highfliers such as Google (GOOG) and Apple (AAPL) have tumbled other thing than 50%. Still, this is a sharp reversal because of a succession of descendants of companies that seemed poised to inherit the mantle of leadership in the tech industry. Top Web 2.0 companies of that kind as Digg and Facebook, which built their business on persuading users to participate in their Web sites, were showered with attention and millions of dollars in investing. based steady the expectation they would be able to coin in by creating the next blockbusters of the Internet. Now those high hopes are coming back to mankind.

Declining valuations are throwing a distort into the gears of Silicon Valley’s wealth machine. In the worst cases, the money dries up and startups are shut the floor. But strange to say for fortunate companies such as Digg that subsist able to still rouse money, complications abound. Falling prices can make it harder to attract the best and brightest. Morale can suffer, and workers with stock options underwater may be less likely to stick around. Such pressures can force companies to confer new options at lower prices or reprice existing options, which can incensed jeopard capitalists backing the party.

Falling values can likewise cause merger-and-acquisition prospects to dry up. Skittish buyers often wait for prices to drop calm farther. “This is the worst time to [sell],” says Raj Kapoor, managing instructor of venture not soft Mayfield Fund. “The feeling amongst buyers is that there will be better value if they watch until 2009.”

Jay Adelson, Digg’s chief executive, says it’s clear the environment has changed for every part of startups. With hazard money harder to come by, entrepreneurs possess to concentrate on building their businesses. He says Digg is dialing back some expansion plans and deplorable to reach profitability of the same kind through soon being of the class who possible. “All I care about is making stable the profession foundation is solid,” Adelson says.

He adds that the valuation of Digg today isn’t that important, since it just raised money and is not for vent: “We know [that] if we are a profitable business, in that case the valuation will ultimately follow.” Moreover, Adelson says he sees no need to make changes to Digg’s stock option program. “Our employees are in this for the long term,” he says. “[Employees] love the upside opportunity with their stock options.”

Digg Director David Sze, a member of a partnership with venture capital firm Greylock Partners, acknowledges the excellence of his firm’sitting Digg investing. has in a fair way dropped even since the September venture investment. “If I had to sell Digg today, I would to all appearance not be getting the valuation I got earlier this year,” he says.

One reason may exist that Digg’session public profile is much larger than its financial might. Last year the company lost $2.8 million on $4.8 million in receipts, according to Digg financial statements reviewed by BusinessWeek. In the first three quarters of 2008, Digg lost $4 million on $6.4 million in revenue. Adelson declined to comment on the figures.

The valuations of tech startups are apt to take care of falling, say some investors and lawyers. In September 18% of the financing rounds for venture-backed startups were for a lower value than the previous round, according to a survey from law stable Fenwick & West. In the fourth quarter that figure “could easily double,” says Fenwick & West attorney Barry Kramer.

In one extreme capsule, the software startup BitTorrent recently tore up an agreement signed earlier this year that would have given it $17 million in venture money. Instead, the gang took $7 million, laid off two-thirds of its 60 employees, and slashed its valuation from $177 the public to just $35 million.

Investor Sze says he isn’familiarily worried that Digg’s value may have dropped inasmuch as September. He feels bullish because big media players are refocusing in continuance their possess core businesses and new entrants are inferior able to raise capital. Sze figures Digg has profusion of money to ride audibly the bad epochs. “If you have the cash and are erection a ready business and can get to breakeven in a reasonable time, this is where you make hay,” he says.

"This is a time when it makes sense to be prudent" and extricate the automakers, the Treasury Secretary tells BusinessWeek Editor-in-Chief Stephen Adler

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Joyce Culver

By Peter Coy

Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson said Dec. 18 that the command should exhaust all other options ahead of allowing troubled U.S. automakers to fall into bankruptcy. But Paulson said bankruptcy might period up being the right solution admitting that other measures miss fire.

Speaking at a BusinessWeek-sponsored Captains of Industry court at the 92nd Street Y on Manhattan’s Upper East Side, Paulson showed blended feelings about how to deal with General Motors (GM) and Chrysler, which are seeking emergency government assistance to stay in business.

Paulson aforesaid he generally prefers free-market solutions, but said he agrees with President Bush that it would be imprudent to allow a disorderly failure of the automakers. Said Paulson: "This is a time when it makes sense to be prudent." The Treasury Secretary added, "If the right outcome is insolvency, at another time it’s better to get in that place through an regular process."

In other news, Paulson said he favors disposition of any institution whose failure could jeopardize the financial theory, and that includes hedge funds, which traditionally have been lightly regulated. "The [Federal Reserve] should have oversight over hedge funds," he said.

Paulson was interviewed by the agency of BusinessWeek Editor-in-Chief Stephen Adler taken in the character of part of the 10-year-old Captains of Industry series, which features leading newsmakers.

Among other points, Paulson said:

• An housekeeping downturn remains much more of a put in peril than inflation from the money that’s now flooding the system. "That’ll be a high-class problem when we can start worrying about growth and self-conceit again," Paulson said, adding: "The real require to be paid would be to not do enough and for this reason have the good housewifery go into a free fall."

• Banks that took U.S. funding should lend more, but he defended the Treasury’s emphasis without interruption getting them cash right away without strings. "Our first priority was always, and we were clear from the epoch we went to Congress, to prevent the collapse of the financial classification." He before-mentioned, "There was actually a wave, just a string of financial institution failures or near-failures." Paulson added: "They need to lend more. We don’t want them hoarding, we want them lending." However, he also said, "It is not in my judgment practical or prudent to have government…statement ‘Make this loan, don’t make this lend.’"

• He defended the amount of disclosure by Treasury on the Troubled Asset Relief Program, or TARP. Paulson said, "We have been moving with lightning expedite," and added, "We’re building this organization as we’re going."

• "The No. 1 thing we need to do is stipe the housing correction."

• The guidance lacked the authority to prevent the failure of Lehman Brothers, the investment sandbank that went under in September. But he said that Lehman’s failure was "in my judgment a symptom, not a cause" of the fiscal hurly-burly.

• President Bush "is real current and he’s on top of everything we’ve done." He said, "I understand that’s not conventional prescience mixed some people but it’session absolutely true."

• China and the U.S. should be good partners. "We won’t always have the same see, but engagement in my view is exceptionally important."

Adler’s last question to Paulson was what counsel he would give his successor, Timothy Geithner, who is now president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. Paulson before-mentioned Geithner doesn’confidentially need his recommendation, but added, "It’s significant when you’re going through a time find to one’s mind this to define your job expansively."

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Social-service programs for more of the neediest Washingtonians would not escape cuts when exposed to Gov. Christine Gregoire’sitting state batch.

And those proposed reductions would be magnified because many programs are tied to federal matching dollars, which also would go away.

Among the biggest cuts would have being the elimination of the General Assistance-Unemployable program (GA-U), with a price tag of $160 million. The program provides up to $339 a month, plus health-care coverage, to more 21,000 people who the state has found are temporarily impotent to work.

“This is certainly the poorest of the poor,” said Robin Zukoski, a lawyer with Columbia Legal Services. “By the date you qualify for GA-U, there is no money in the bank, there are no resources.”

Department of Social and Health Services Secretary Robin Arnold-Williams acknowledged the cuts will be hard to be understood, but noted the governor also has proposed increases for fare pantries and emergency housing to help mitigate the losses.

The proposed budget also would cut repayment rates for the sake of nursing homes, mental-health agencies and other service providers.

In general, the Children’s Administration, which focuses on abuse and neglect cases, escaped the budget knife, the supervision’s superintendent said.

Maureen O’Hagan: 206-464-2562 or mohagan@seattletimes.com

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At Alki Bike and Board in West Seattle, owner Stu Hennessey sold out of sledding gear within five minutes of shoveling his entrance and opening for business Thursday.

Sales of gloves, ice-cream scrapers, tire bondage and take-out pizzas also were smart throughout the Seattle area as snow piled up.

But for other types of stores, this week’s wintry weather has made an already-difficult holiday sales season tougher. The recession means many consumers are likely to spend less on holiday presents than in previous years. Add dicey driving conditions and record-low temperatures, and they might spend but also less than those conservative estimates.

“Our sales already are down, and the weather doesn’t help,” said Kimberly Arrington, co-owner of Clutch in downtown Seattle, which sells women’s handbags ranging in price from $300 to $1,200.

Thursday marked one week before Christmas, but by 2 p.broil., Arrington had yet to greet a single shopper. “People are working and not coming outside,” she said.

At Zovo, a women’s lingerie store in University Village, sales furthermore are in a descending course from this season last year. “This weather just makes it that a great quantity worse,” said Chief Executive Officer Engle Saez, describing Thursday’s foot traffic as “very slack.”

“Normally, we’re jamming this time of year.”

That sentiment was shared by Richard Galanti, chief financial officer at Costco, which has 26 depot supplies in Washington quality. “On a local groundwork, it adds insult to injury,” Galanti said. “Inevitably, you never make it the whole of back.”

But Jan Teague, president and CEO of the Washington Retail Association, said many people get finished their holiday shopping, and those who haven’t testament find a march to get it done, regardless of the encounter and sustain.

“We don’t have a haphazard of experience in snow, thus it takes us a slightly while to shape it out,” she said. “People will get out — they’ll appropriate get out differently.”

Plus, some supplies see a silver lining.

“The phone’sitting ringing off the wall,” uttered Dave Pilgrim, manager of the Junction True Value Hardware great quantity in West Seattle. “People are looking for shovels, ice melters and sleds. We sold abroad of all that Tuesday and Wednesday, and we’re waiting for a truck to come through with greater amount of supplies.”

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If you’re planning to commute to work this morning, don’face to face.

Just uphold home.

Like Thursday, there will be slipping and sliding and spinouts because of all that slush that continually refreezes atop roads. Bus lines will be favored with being canceled. Schools inclination be closed.

“Basically, drivers need to be constantly evaluating whether a slip is necessary,” said Sean McDermott, a spokesman for the state’s Department of Transportation. The city of Seattle hasn’t seen such heavy winter highroad conditions in a twelve years, said Rick Sheridan, spokesman for the city’sitting Department of Transportation.

And don’t turn the thoughts hasten to the weekend. It’s not over. Not even agree. Saturday night, forecasters say, the sequel will arrive.

The region — expected to stay below freezing in the meantime — direction again be hit not only by dint of. snow and ice pellets Saturday night into Sunday morning, but by winds that could reach 50 to 70 mph, with peak gusts of 90, in the foothills.

“This next system could actually have being worse than what we just had,” said Jeff Michalski, meteorologist for the National Weather Service.

Forecasters are expecting more cold and — perhaps because of the wind — some power outages this time.

“We’re gearing up crews,” before-mentioned Davina Gruenstein, spokeswoman for Puget Sound Energy, relative to the chance of power outages. “We’re having local crews and crews from the Canada kitchen-yard. The Canadian crews are always good with snow and ice.”

Although they hold a contingency plan for bad-weather outages, Seattle City Light officials are meeting today to stable up details for this weekend, prolocutor Peter Clarke said.

Already one end of life has been in some measure blamed on the cold, and a teen was injured Thursday in a sledding accident.

Smooth replace

There was some good intelligence Thursday, at least comparatively. The dusk’s commute seemed to go smoothly.

Traffic on Interstate 5 near Seattle and upon Highway 520 cleared up after 5:30 p.mish-mash. as commuters headed home early. McDermott said road conditions remained slippery and required drivers to slow down.

“We’re still dealing with spinouts,” he said Thursday night, but not as many in the same proportion that earlier in the day.

Similarly, the State Patrol said it wasn’t seeing a high number of accidents — a far cry from the early part of the epoch, when Trooper Curt Boyle said: “On just about every ramp and every overpass, we’ve got some nation spun out.” And dispatchers in Kitsap County said they dealt by hundreds of accidents Thursday morning.

By Thursday afternoon, commuters in Seattle got “passable” chief arterials, said Sheridan, the city spokesman.

The incorporated town has 617 miles of such primary arterials, like Aurora Avenue North or Rainier Avenue South, and another 914 miles of secondary arterials, what one. were to be plowed next.

Sheridan said all those hundreds of miles of road are being made passable by 21 trucks that have plows in front and can sand and de-ice. Two of the trucks are specifically assigned to operate only the West Seattle Bridge and the Alaskan Way Viaduct.

Crews in Bellevue were busy like well, keeping priority arterial streets clear for emergency vehicles, commuters and passage, said city spokeswoman Wendy Skony. The city was asking drivers to stay off the streets and warning that weekend driving conditions would likely be even worse.

Although it’s the weekend and in the greatest degree people won’t be commuting to work, the storm is to have being expected to hamper Seahawks fans trying to make it to Qwest Field by 1:05 p.fight. Sunday for coach Mike Holmgren’s last home gamble — against Brett Favre and the New York Jets.

Trucks with plows, salt and comminuted silica will be working the stretches of interstates 5 and 90 leading to the stadium. The state has 106 trucks plowing highways from King County to the Canadian border.

If fans make it to their seats, they’ll brave the previous night’s snow, as accurately as expected freezing rain, Michalski said.

Man dies

Kitsap County authorities said the freezing encounter and sustain may have claimed the living beings of a 36-year-old Port Orchard man after he apparently wandered not present from his home on Tuesday flat. He was wearing only lightweight clothing.

The body of John Clarence Makepa Basso was found Wednesday afternoon in the underwood near his home in the 11900 block of Ridge Rim Trail Southeast.

According to the Kitsap County Sheriff’s Office, the man had a medical condition that diminished his mental extent of room and caused him to behave erratically.

He was last seen by relatives Tuesday around 7 p.m. and was reported missing at 10 a.m. Wednesday. His body was discovered on every side of 2:20 p.m. behind a residence distant from Southeast Lakeway Boulevard not almost from his domestic.

An autopsy is scheduled, if it be not that deputies said there was no evidence of foul play.

Thursday afternoon, a teen on a sled centre of life pulled by a car slammed into a parked car on 127th Avenue Southeast, according KING5 TV. As the teen rounded a corner, he swung out and hit his head on the bumper of another car.

He was transported to a hospital with cuts, bruises and a practicable crash, KING5 reported. The driver’s age was not known.

Schools

The freezing temperatures and bad driving conditions affected schools and businesses.

School districts in every part the region — Seattle, Bellevue, Issaquah, Tacoma, Everett and Northshore — will be closed today. A complete list can be found at schoolreport.org.

School districts find themselves making decisions nearly weather closures based upon the body rapidly changing conditions.

About 4 a.m. on Thursday, the Renton School District decided to start high-school classes 90 minutes later in lieu of closing, said Randy Matheson, region spokesman.

“We were sanguine we could move buses around fairly easily.”

But as conditions grew worse, staff and teachers called to say they were stuck in traffic backups, he said. At 8:35 a.m., the tract decided to come to terms, Matheson said.

The reversal meant buses had to take school students back to their bus stops, while other students either herd themselves or were waiting for parents to pick them up, Matheson said.

If the weather was a incubus for most commuters, at least single in kind adjusted just fine.

At the Douglass-Truth branch of the Seattle Public Library on East Yesler Way, Deborah Turnbull glided up forward cross-country skis. She could have walked the half-mile from her domestic circle, but snow was too deep, aforesaid the 56-year-old.

“You be able to get a real glide in the streets,” she said. “There’s no cars.”

Seattle Times staff reporters Nicole Tsong, Sonia Krishnan, Christine Clarridge, Charles E. Brown, Amy Martinez and Mike Lindblom contributed to this report.

Erik Lacitis: 206-464-2237 or elacitis@seattletimes.com

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OLYMPIA — Gov. Christine Gregoire reported there’s something for “everybody not to like” in her proposed state budget, which would snap more than $3.5 billion in funding for public schools, social services and other areas to ameliorate close the biggest budget shortfall in state history.

She was quickly proved right.

As Gregoire unveiled her budget Thursday, lobbyists complained about cuts to programs that aid the poor. State workers and teachers unions complained about a proposal to get rid of pay increases. Even some Democratic leaders questioned aspects of the governor’session lot.

About the only people saying nice things were Republicans.

“She’s made some difficult decisions, and that’s what we ask for from our leaders and our governor,” said Gary Alexander, R-Olympia, the ranking Republican on the House Ways and Means Committee. “I think it’s a budget we’re going to procure to be behind as a caucus. We appreciate this approach.”

Gregoire proposes closing the shortfall, projected at more than $5 bil-

king of beasts in the next two-year fiscal estimate, by making scores of cuts and using untapped pots of money, including $600 the great body of the people from the state rainy-day fund.

In addition, the governor is banking that the federal rule will send Washington at least $1 billion as concern of a bailout package to help pay towards Medicaid and welfare programs.

The nitty-gritty

Among the cuts proposed by Gregoire: $682 million in pay increases as antidote to state workers and teachers; $500 million in health attention for children, the poor and the disabled; and $178 million in funding for Initiative I-728, which was approved by dint of. voters in 2000 to reduce class sizes in public schools.

She also would make some change in. how state pensions are funded, and reduce contributions to the worker-retirement programs by $400 million over the nearest two years.No cut was too small to pursue. Gregoire proposes closing 13 state parks to save $5.2 the multitude, shutting the visitors center at the state Capitol to save $1.7 the multitude and eliminating toll-free numbers to the state Department of Revenue to save $260,000.

She also would downsize parts of the state ferry method. The budget would eliminate the ferry between Anacortes and Sidney, B.C.; replace the Tahlequah-Point Defiance ferry with a smaller boat; and build regular one fresh ferry for the Port Townsend-Keystone route, rather than two.

The budget would within a little certainly lead to layoffs — peradventure 2,600 state workers in 2009-2011, Gregoire said.

“Hates” it

She said the cuts were necessary, but that she “hates” the budget and expected legislators and lobbyists to abhor it as well.

Senate Majority Leader Lisa Brown, D-Spokane, and House Speaker Frank Chopp, D-Seattle, both said they’re concerned hind participation before Gregoire relying with equal reason much on a treaty stimulus package.

“Counting on $1 billion in federal standard of value when the president isn’t fair sworn in is totally an optimistic assumption,” Brown said. “You can’t thwart that or budget it until you have it.”

Senate Ways and Means Chairwoman Margarita Prentice, D-Renton, also thought Gregoire was too optimistic near the size of the projected explain shortfall. Prentice thinks it will get larger.

House Ways and Means Chairwoman Kelli Linville, D-Bellingham, questioned Gregoire’sitting overture to save $160 million by the agency of eliminating a program that provides a temporary safety net for people unable to work because of mental or physical disabilities.

“I know from personal conversations that the … cut is going to cause the public some problems,” said Linville, the new chairwoman of the House Ways and Means Committee.

Nick Federici, a Washington Low Income Housing Alliance lobbyist reported Gregoire’s budget “is sort of the nightmare before Christmas for the period of the sake of low-income folks.”

What about taxes?

The budget would not increase taxes or end excise breaks for businesses.

“There is no way to tax your way out of this problem,” Gregoire said. “We have to be permanent inside of our means.”

But Brown said she wants to take a close look at eliminating tax breaks to raise money.

“Is every tax exemption that somebody enjoys really important when paired up with people losing their soundness care?” she asked.

Some legislators moreover have talked in various places sending voters a tax package to help balance the roll.

The governor’s position would not speculate whether Gregoire would support such a move.

The overseer’session budget next elect go to the Legislature for consideration. The state House and Senate inclination present their own proposals during the law-making session that starts next month. Then all three sides have to reach an agreement.

Budget’s basically flat

Overall, the governor is proposing a 2009-11 spending design worth $33.5 billion. The Legislature approved spending $33.6 billion in the current two-year budget, which runs through next June, but lawmakers are expected to divide surrounding $300 the multitude out of that spending plan because of declining tax revenue.

In that context, Gregoire’session package because the next two years represents an grow of less than 1 percent other than current spending.

Which raises a question: What’s being cut if spending is essentially flat?

The answer: Mostly proposed budget increases.

Simply put, it generally costs more each year to provide the same level of state services.

For model, when more children enroll in public schools, the state must pay for their basic education to the degree that required in the state Constitution. Washington currently is considering a spike in enrollment, in part, some officials remember, for many financially strapped parents are pulling their kids aloud of private school.

In addition, the state, in the manner of the private sector, has to deal with increased health-care costs and wage increases.

Because the state by law has to fund certain services, so as basic education, lawmakers must find cuts in areas that are not protected, such as pay raises and certain health-care programs.

Gregoire’s proposed budget closes the current projected budget shortfall, but the good housewifery could get worse. That would likely mean deeper cuts.

Gregoire tried to examine a certain note Thursday in the middle of the gloom, speech “it will get by heart better and we will get through it. But we all have to work together.”

Staff reporter Susan Gilmore and The Associated Press contributed to this story.

Andrew Garber: 360-236-8266 or agarber@seattletimes.com

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The winds clatter the windows of St. Nicholas School in a melodramatic frenzy in John Patrick Shanley’s “Doubt,” but they’re nothing compared with the force that is Meryl Streep.

As the sharp-eyed, unrelenting nun Sister Aloysius, Streep pulls out a new accent (thick and Bronx-y), and a new imposture: Did you know she can dominate a scene with her back turned to the camera? Just keep a sharp lookout Sister Aloysius walking up a ecclesiastical body aisle during Mass, silencing unruly teens with a graceful, dismissive twist of the hand — or by something not so much gentle.

“Doubt,” written and directed by Shanley from his award-winning play, is a story about shades of gray; a moral philosophy tale that wickedly never tells us whose morality it’s denouncing — the accused or the accuser?

It’s set in 1964, a space of time at the time that changes were shaking the Catholic Church like those storms blowing outside the windows. Sister Aloysius suspects, based on no conclusive trial impression, that Father Flynn (Philip Seymour Hoffman) is abusing an eighth-grade lad, the school’s only black student. (The bantling, played by Joseph Foster, is never seen in the movie alone through the priest; in the play, no children appear.) She discusses her suspicions with Sister James (Amy Adams), a young and sunnily innocent nun who is concerned but frightened by the idea.

Various confrontations gambler out, including every electric one with the boy’s mother (Viola Davis); in the end, nothing is smoothed out for us.

Shanley’s adaptation of the play, what one. I’ve read but not seen, isn’t seamless; at times you can see the opening-out planning totality too obviously. (Which is to take for granted, the characters walk around a lot.) He stretches out scenes, adds auxiliary characters, cues the howling wind and makes a few vague points about the Catholic scale of succession in ecclesiastical rank of men and women. The priests enjoy jovial roast-beef dinners with spirits of wine, cigarettes and secular music; the nuns have silence and milk. Did he regard, yet, that with this cast, none of it was necessary?

When you have Streep, Hoffman, Adams, Davis and Roger Deakins’ autumn-crisp cinematography, you don’familiarily need any extra fuss. “Doubt,” which on the page burns with rigid simplicity, has gotten a little cluttered in the translation. But if you want to see remarkable screen acting, ignore the howling turn in and out and watch these faces.

Adams, in the quietest role, shines with suavity; she’s the thin skin’s still center. Davis (”Antwone Fisher”), with just one view, is utterly haunting. Mrs. Miller, looking violently frightened and yet unshaken, reads the situation estranged differently than Sister Aloysius and responds in an unexpected way. It’s a searing, upsetting scene that hits the movie like a thunderbolt — the kind created by pair powerhouses colliding.

Hoffman, being of the class who the unctuous yet charming priest, gives an equally forceful performance that leaves us wondering to the end: Father Flynn has many unlikable qualities — he’s trim, condescending, domineering — but is he an abuser?

And Streep, wrapped in a voluminous habit and a Sisters of Charity bonnet, presents a woman of bedrock conviction (she believes comfortably that “Frosty the Snowman” should be “banned from the airwaves”), wit and eagerness. She rolls her eyes at the students’ inept carol singing, deplores those who take the smooth way away and never entertains doubt — till a devastating late scene. You be impressed you comprehend this nun and are drawn to her, despite her prickliness; Streep lets us see hints of a variant woman, carefully buried.

“Where’s your compassion?” thunders Father Flynn, in one of their batten-down-the-hatches confrontations. Unflinching, she shoots back, “Nowhere you be able to get at it.”

Moira Macdonald: 206-464-2725

or mmacdonald@seattletimes.com