By Staff
NORTHWEST ASIAN WEEKLY

Tanya Woo
Former Seattle City Councilmember Tanya Woo today held a press conference outside Seattle City Hall, just before today’s full council meeting at 2 p.m., to address the ongoing internal investigation into alleged ethical violations at The Stranger.
PubliCola first reported that two Stranger reporters were put on leave, following allegations of ethical misconduct. It has been alleged that reporters Hannah Krieg and Ashley Nerbovig withheld information about a one-time alleged intimate encounter between former Stranger news editor and endorsements board head, Rich Smith, and current District 8 councilmember, Alexis Mercedes Rinck. Rinck beat Woo in last year’s race for the District 8 seat.
“I’ve seen firsthand how biased reporting can affect a campaign. I’ve felt the weight of misrepresentation and the frustration of watching important issues take a backseat to narratives shaped by questionable motivations. That’s why these recent allegations deeply trouble me,” Woo said at the press conference.
The Stranger endorsed Rinck before the alleged encounter took place.
In its endorsement of Rinck, The Stranger called Woo “the scion of landlords in the Chinatown-International District whose political profile rose after she worked with Republicans to block a shelter expansion in SODO.”
“One of the dimmer bulbs in the council’s already flickering chandelier,” the Stranger’s opinion of Woo continued, “she evinces zero capacity for discussing complex legislation, no will to put forth any major legislation of her own, and otherwise displays total fealty to the corporate class. None of which should surprise anyone, given the fact that she’s only voted in local elections a handful of times in her life.”
The Stranger fired Smith, before information about the alleged encounter surfaced, and his firing had nothing to do with the alleged encounter, according to PubliCola’s reporting. The current investigation at The Stranger concerns whether Krieg and Nerbovig lied about when they knew of the alleged encounter, and whether they attempted to get others in Rinck’s circles to lie about it, too.
“I call for a thorough investigation into these allegations,” Woo said. “I call on The Stranger newspaper to conduct an investigation and to release its results. I am also calling on Seattle Ethics and Elections to also investigate this matter.”
The Stranger did not return request for comment.
I thought Rich Smith was supposed to be a gay homosexual, and a big part of Alexis Mercedes Rinck’s platform/persona is that she is “Queer”. Were they all just lying for “Seattle Progressive” street cred?
The Stranger is nothing but a far left fantasy fiction website. Most of the stuff they print is garbage anyway.
Rich Smith’s dalliance with AMR didn’t fuel her campaign to the biggest landslide in the history of Seattle politics.
There are a number of reasons she trounced Tanya Woo. And one of them might be the fact that she’s an epic moron who doesn’t even know basic civics…
The “she” in paragraph 2, sentence 2 being Woo, not Rick, to be clear.
Who cares? Wowwww people have sex. Oh noes!