April 2021

Lee Side: Our mother was an excellent writer

Our mother Lee Robinson (speaking now as the Robinson Family) was an excellent writer.  She was wise, witty, and without her efforts the paper, especially in the early days would not have survived. Before she began what would be a series of her own columns for the paper she would take over our Dad's "colllum" as they called it as a guest writer. Here's one of her early entries from the first year the family owned the White Center News.

Lee Robinson collum

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Tim's View: Days as an indentured servant at the newspaper

By Tim Robinson

Co-Publisher, Robinson Newspapers

In those early days, when our dad acquired the White Center News, we often accompanied him to the office, usually on weekday mornings in the summer. An immediate side-trip took us to the post office on the main street in town where he collected a twine-wrapped bundle of letters the size of a loaf of bread. 

At his office he would separate the mail, often discarding pieces of mail unopened. I noticed this and questioned the action. Dad said "junk mail" to me. I had no idea what that meant as receiving mail was as foreign to me as visiting relatives in Portland, OR. In other words, not often.

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Ken's View: My last column for print and one from a while back

By Ken Robinson

Managing Editor

As this is my last column for print, it seems fitting to append the FIRST column I wrote for this paper, age 9.

By the way, the family tradition was to spell column as "collum" in the event you thought we habitually made typos, which we did of course, but we usually caught them before putting them in print.

Ken collum age 9

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So ends an era; Our near century of service in print is over

This week's print edition of Westside Seattle is the last one in a long line of community papers in a couple of ways. It is the last of a group of papers begun in 1895 in Ballard. And includes papers in Federal Way, Des Moines, Burien, White Center and West Seattle. 

We saw the edge of the waterfall years ago. We knew one day we would have to portage. We’re doing that now, hastened by the pandemic which worked to further strip advertising from the paper. The paper needs both subscribers and advertisers to work, to continue. Both types fell to a level which no longer was acceptable.

Ou work over the years was very good. We are proud of it and its role in the community.

We will carry on with our website and a form of community news we are developing now. 

Thank you for believing in us. For supporting us. And for reading. It means everything.

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HERBOLD: West Seattle Bridge Rehabilitation: Post-Tensioning explained
Updated cost estimates and schedule will be shared in July

District 1 City Councilmember Lisa Herbold shared this information in her weekly newsletter to constituents

One of the key elements for stabilization work done to date, and forthcoming rehabilitation of the West Seattle Bridge, is the installation of new post-tensioning steel cables, which reinforce the bridge structure and help prevent it from cracking. Some cables were included in the original bridge.

In case you haven't seen the update to SDOT’s West Seattle Bridge Repair website,

The visual above shows how it works.

 

Here’s a visual showing a cross section of the bridge showing where post-tensioning and carbon-fiber wrapping will be located:

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