White Center Now: The blog about White Center

Not sure exactly when the new look/location launched, but we looked at some Highline Public Schools webpages within the past few days and they didn’t have the new look or new domain. The district is finally at highlineschools.org and the website’s gotten an overhaul.

Before we get too far into 2012 – thank heavens for the “bonus holiday”! – we wanted to thank you for your support and collaboration in 2011 here on White Center Now. Over the course of the year, this site alone served 162,327 pageviews (per Google Analytics) – an admirable increase of 40 percent from 2010, and yet still fairly modest, but understandable given that there’s not much on this site besides news on the home page, and we seldom use the “jump” feature in stories, so most of the time, 1 visit to WCN equals 1 page viewed. There’s still lots of room to serve you better, so we have just kicked off the New Year with two features that WCN readers have been requesting:

One is a mobile-friendly design that should kick in any time you want to use your smartphone to check WCN – it’s the same one we’ve been using for the past few years on partner site West Seattle Blog. (If you want to keep using the regular desktop look on your smartphone, next time you read WCN on it, just scroll down the page till you see the button that will allow you to turn the mobile design off.)

The other is an events calendar. We had one in the earlier going, but dropped it for, well, lack of events. White Center has a LOT more going on these days – live music, multiple business-networking organizations with monthly events, a monthly Art Walk, we could go on and on. So we’ve installed a new calendar with some cool features – find it at whitecenternow.com/calendar, and check the link anytime from the “Pages” list on the left sidebar. We have several events there now and are adding more. You can click on any event to “expand” it for more information – and if you then follow the “read more” link on the right, you will go to a full page for that event including a Google Map. Other features too; it defaults to the “Agenda” list format, which doesn’t really involve “agendas,” but if you prefer a more classic monthly calendar look, you can choose that instead.

Now, here’s where YOU come in – PLEASE SEND EVENT INFO as soon as you know you’re having an event; whitecenternow@gmail.com is the best address to use. Thanks, and we wish you a healthy/happy 2012.

WIth an online survey that has just one more week to go, King County Parks is hoping to hear from you. They hope to gain “a better understanding of the open space and recreation needs of King County residents and their perspectives of what makes really great parks, trails, cultural areas, and recreational opportunities, now and in the future.” Take the survey here; it’s open till September 14th.

You can find them – and “like” them – by going here.

The company that manages the White Center Now server had a widespread problem today, affecting many sites beyond ours – and even once most were up, this one still had a database disconnect. Fixed now! Please accept our apologies!

Working on the server at West Seattle Blog right now to see what’s up (or more like, what’s down) … meantime, we’ll post news here if anything big happens before it’s fixed.

Seattle Magazine just published a little article about neighborhood-news websites. While we are always honored to see our bigger site West Seattle Blog mentioned, we were pleasantly surprised to see White Center Now included! There were no interviews conducted for this story, totally the writer’s observations, so we didn’t know this was coming till we saw a link go by a few minutes ago via Twitter. Here’s the page mentioning WCN. (Our “best of” list would include a few more, but we’re also glad to see the magazine mention quirky Blogging Georgetown and longtime Tacoma staple Exit 133.) Thanks to the growing number of people who are reading this site and even more importantly, sending us information to share.

Just noticed it while adding links to our previous story about the Evergreen Pool rally; see the North Highline Fire District’s updated website here.

Looking for something interesting to read? The White Center Food Bank now has its own blog. And it’s not just a self-promotional section of the website – writer Donna Pierce has published some thought-provoking entries so far, such as this new one: Why no charities in the Seafair Torchlight Parade? Good question, given that they are vibrant participants in so many neighborhood parades. You can find the WCFB blog here; also, they’re having a contest – suggest a name for the WCFB blog, and you might win a Farmers’ Market gift certificate! Read about the contest here.

Noticed this in the blog-format section of the White Center Community Development Association website – a restaurant review about one of WC’s newest eating/drinking places. Photos too. See it here.

Teresa posted some on her site – and in a comment here on WCN, Mike shared a few dozen more.

Snow showers are expected for much of the day (and the next few days, at this point). No bus/road trouble reported by King County yet; they’ve now added a blog-format website (see it here) and a Twitter account (@kcnews) for informal updates.

SATURDAY NIGHT UPDATE: Snowing in White Center as of about 9 pm. Nothing big around the area so far, though North Seattle neighborhoods have even had thunder/lightning/hail tonight.

That clip is a production of the Common Language Project, related to this story they have just published about federal immigration-violation detainees in Western Washington, and where and how they are held. A week ago, I met the three people who head up the CLP during a small-group conversation convened to talk about the hottest topic in my business: The future of journalism – who will do it, who will pay for it, what is in danger of being lost, what is being gained, all in a time of rapid change, with newspapers losing money and closing, and small independent news sites like West Seattle Blog (which my husband and I operate) on the rise, along with other new types of news enterprises. The CLP trio mentioned they were about to publish a story in the P-I; the multimedia clip above is related to that story. They also have published a blog-format item saying they’re a little unhappy with how the story was buried in the newspaper, while a story about a camera-wearing cat got the big play. Since one of the central parts of the “future of news” discussion relates to “will investigative journalism survive?” we thought we would do our part by calling attention to their story here. (And if you are interested in the future of news, please join us and many of our colleagues at an event coming up at Seattle City Hall’s Bertha Landes Room, 7 pm Feb. 26; read more about it here, RSVP – it’s free – and send questions in advance.)

Though White Center and greater North Highline may not be “unincorporated” that much longer, the county’s just taken a new communication step, by launching a monthly newsletter, with the unromantic name Unincorporated Area Community News. You can read the first edition here.

The new year brings new website features from the White Center Community Development Association — most notably, online classified ads for the community. You can check ‘em out – and post one if you want — by going here.

WCN’s FullTilt broke the news here when Be’s opened in White Center a while back. First comprehensive review I’ve seen is this one just posted by Tara.

… which is very active in White Center. Read it here.

While checking the Highland Park Action Committee website in advance of HPAC’s next meeting tomorrow night (they’re the West Seattle community group closest to White Center, and also leading the fight against the two closest proposed city-jail sites, but they are tackling other issues too) – we were reminded that the site has a great page from the 7/31 meeting about the White Center Cultural Center plans. That was a week before White Center Now was launched, and we unfortunately weren’t at that meeting, but photos and part of the presentation, including the site plans, can be found here.

Thank you for starting and participating in lively discussions here on WCN, right from the start. Couple things we wanted to highlight this afternoon — First: Spirited discussions continue on threads that are now weeks old – so keep checking, if those are topics you’re interested in. In particular, our coverage of the last North Highline Fire District meeting is still drawing comments – including this one, just this morning, from “Concerned Firefighter.”

Second: Dick Thurnau from Friends of Hicks Lake just announced an event in comments on an “old” post. Before publishing it here to make sure everyone sees it, I wanted to note – if you’ve got something to announce – best thing to do is try one of these:
a) Send it to us and we’ll post: whitecenternow@gmail.com
b) Want to be a White Center Now contributor? This is a multi-contributor site – FullTilt, Ricardo, and I are the trio that launched it, but we’ve always hoped to have other participants. E-mail us at that same address, whitecenternow@gmail.com, and let us know what you’d like to write about, in general.

Now, the Hicks Lake event that Dick wants you to know about (also just added to the White Center Now Events Calendar):

Friends of Hicks Lake will sponsor and cooperate with KC Parks Evergreen Maintenance Dist for a cleanup day: On Saturday 9/27/2008 from 10:00 AM to 3:00 PM at Lakewood Park/ Hicks Lake.
Tools, gloves will be furnished — all we need is volunteers as there is a lot of work that needs to be accomplished. Students from Seattle Pacific University come annually.

This is an invite for all residents of North Highline to make a difference. Thank you in advance.
Dick Thurnau 206-244-4558

Figured we would start one of these the first time someone wrote us asking for help in finding a lost pet, or finding the owner of a “found” pet – and our first such e-mail just came in, so the page is launched. See it here (and check out the missing-kitty photo); check the page any time from the list atop the left sidebar; and if you have lost or found a pet in the White Center area, e-mail us information (and a photo if available) to whitecenternow@gmail.com.