The Stranger

What you're reading

The Stranger is a Seattle alt-weekly founded in 1991 by Tim Keck (co-founder of The Onion) and cartoonist James Sturm. It is owned by Index Newspapers LLC, an independent local company, and covers Seattle city politics, arts and culture, music, nightlife, and queer life. The paper publishes in print biweekly after a pandemic-era cut from weekly and runs a heavily-trafficked website and event-listings franchise.

It is best known nationally for Dan Savage’s long-running sex-advice column, its election-endorsement “cheat sheet” that Seattle-area progressives use as a voting guide, and its early role in the marriage-equality movement (the “It Gets Better” project began there). Audience is overwhelmingly young, urban, and progressive Seattle, with extended reach across the Pacific Northwest. The newsroom is small but punches above its weight on Seattle City Council and King County coverage.

Ownership & funding

Index Newspapers LLC (independent). Funded primarily through ad-supported.

Ad-supported means the paper depends on local entertainment, dispensary, and small-business advertising plus event-listing revenue. That model has been brutal for alt-weeklies nationally — most have folded or gone digital-only — and it explains why The Stranger went biweekly. Ad dependence keeps the paper close to nightlife, arts venues, and the local progressive consumer market, which reinforces editorial focus on culture and city issues that audience cares about. There is no paywall pushing toward subscription depth and no nonprofit cushion, so volume and personality matter for ad rates.

Where they land on the spectrum

nwsly's editorial team places The Stranger at Left with a factuality rating of Mostly Factual.

nwsly places The Stranger at Left because the paper is explicitly progressive and does not pretend otherwise. The endorsement cheat sheet recommends candidates from the Democratic and democratic-socialist left of Seattle politics; city-council coverage frames issues from a tenant, transit, and police-reform perspective; arts and culture coverage centers queer, BIPOC, and explicitly leftist artists and venues.

The pattern breaks where the paper turns on the Seattle Democratic establishment — coverage of moderate Democrats, of police-guild contract negotiations, and of city-hall accommodations to business interests is often as sharp as anything in the right-leaning Seattle Times opinion section, just from the opposite direction. The Mostly Factual rating reflects accurate local reporting on the underlying facts but a strong interpretive voice and a willingness to editorialize inside news copy that is characteristic of the alt-weekly form.

Editorial vs news side

The Stranger does not maintain a separation between news and opinion in the traditional newspaper sense. News stories carry recognizable bylined voice; columns are clearly tagged but share tone with the rest of the paper; the editorial endorsements are written by staff. This is the alt-weekly form, not a flaw of execution. The Left rating reflects the whole package because the whole package is the product.

Why we include them in nwsly

Seattle alt-weekly; explicitly progressive politics and culture.

In the Left band, The Stranger gives nwsly Seattle and Pacific Northwest political and cultural coverage that the Seattle Times (lean left, more cautious) and KUOW (public radio, more institutional) don’t produce. It surfaces city-hall stories, queer-culture stories, and progressive-movement coverage from inside the movement, which is differentiated voice not available from the other Seattle outlets in the lineup.

Recent nwsly briefs citing The Stranger

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