The Spokesman-Review from Spokane, Washington • c11

June 19, 2022 Sunday C11The SpokeSman-Review nORTHWeST By Katie Fairbanks DAILY NEWS George Weyerhaeuser the fourth-generation heir of his timber com- pany, died June 11 at the age of 95, leaving a lasting legacy on the region and industry. Weyerhaeuser became CEO in 1966, leading the company through 25 years of changes that affect the Fortune 500 company to- day. was an extraor- dinary person and leader one of the most influential in the history of the indus- said Devin Stockfish, president and chief exec- utive officer, in a news re- lease. his many years as president and CEO, he brought transformational changes to our company, in- cluding important advances in sustainable, high-yield forestry and wood products research, as well as expan- sion into overseas markets, among many other achieve- The Weyerhaeuser family is planning a memorial ser- vice for later this summer, the press release states. George Hunt Walker Weyerhaeuser was born July 8, 1926, in Seattle, to Helen (Walker) Weyerhae- user and John Philip Wey- erhaeuser grandson of company co-founder Fred- erick Weyerhaeuser, ac- cording to his obituary.

Three years later, the company opened its first mill in Longview the larg- est in the world at the time, according to the company. During its heyday, Weyer- haeuser employed as many as 5,000 workers locally, according to TDN archives. An April Weyerhaeuser report says the company earned $771 million in net earnings in the first quarter of 2022. In 1935, an 8-year-old George Weyerhaeuser first made headlines when he was kidnapped in Taco- ma and held for ransom. According to his obituary, Weyerhaeuser not let the experience derail his life nor cloud his feelings to- ward other Weyerhaeuser served in the Navy from 1944 to 1946 and graduated from Yale in 1949.

Unlike many heirs, Weyerhaeuser joined the ranks at the beginning of his career, working at the Longview kraft mill in 1949 and 1950, according to the Daily News archives. He also worked in a Springfield, mill, before moving up to management positions. He said working in the business taught him the business. believe there is any substitute for having been there and done he said in a 2000 Daily News article. The last member of the founding family to lead the company, Weyerhaeuser was named CEO in 1966 when he was 39.

Throughout his tenure, the company developed new products and expand- ed overseas before shrink- ing back to focus on its North American operations, according to Daily News ar- chives. In 1979, the company launched NORPAC, a joint operation with Nippon Paper in Japan, based in Longview. The company sold the mill in 2016 to One Rock Capital Partners, a pri- vate equity firm headquar- tered in New York. In 1991, John Creighton took over as CEO. Weyer- haeuser served as board chair until 1999.

When Weyerhaeuser re- tired in 2000, a handful of local retirees remembered him best for his time work- ing shoulder-to-shoulder with them. Stockfish said Weyerhae- death will be felt by many. left a tremendous legacy and will be greatly missed by everyone in the greater Weyerhaeuser fam- ily and he said. George Weyerhaeuser Sr. leaves legacy in Longview, on industry after death By Scott Greenstone THE SEATTLE TIMES SEATTLE As a small crowd filters into the Co- lumbia City Theater on a gray May Tuesday, Tony Benton stands on the stage with a mic in one hand and a smoothie in the other, saying, Volunteers and assistants yell back and forth as the moment they go live ticks closer we only have one camera but Benton exudes Zen.

In a cramped little studio in the next room, a commu- nity talk show is ending. An ad comes on for a Wednes- day walking for older adults or people with disabilities. A volunteer counts down to one. to Rainier Av- enue Benton said. is a town hall meeting.

First of all, my name is Tony Rainier Avenue Radio has existed since 2017 as an online community radio station, with Benton as its founder and station man- ager, but it was late last year that the station moved into the Columbia City Theater. The theater was purchased last year in a partnership between Benton and a pub- lic development authority called the Cultural Space Agency, with a grant from the city of Seattle paying for the upfront costs and some upcoming renovations, Ben- ton said. a flourishing mo- ment for the little radio sta- tion, which Benton started broadcasting from a reading room of the Columbia City library branch a block away. Before 2020, the station had about 10,000 month- ly listeners on its website, rainieravenueradio.world; COVID-19 and the pro- gramming Benton created to spread information about COVID bumped that to- ward 50,000. After nationwide protests in the wake of the killing of George Floyd, Rainier Avenue Radio which has lots of buy-in from Black community, though its programming is direct- ed toward all of Seattle saw its listenership soar to 70,000 monthly listeners, according to Benton.

Rainier Avenue Radio is one of several Black-run online media organizations that sprang up in the mid- 2010s but has seen a lot of growth since the pandemic hit and protests rocked the country. Most are focused on the communities they feel are undercovered by largely white-owned main- stream media. Now, many of the orga- nizations are building their home bases like the radio move into Colum- bia City Theater or shifting into new eras of leadership and looking to the future. At the same time, the past looms: in the civil-rights era, when many Black-led and -owned newspapers and radio stations sprung up in Seattle, many survive to the modern day. so much further back than we used to be, so it feels like we lost a lot and attempting to catch up, and there are a few said Crystal Fincher, a political consultant who hosts a podcast and radio show broadcasting on two Se- attle low-power FM radio stations, KODX 96.9 and KVRU 105.7.

KVRU also has largely Black leadership. have changed, but they said Larry Williams, who founded The Anchor Group U.S.A., a con- sulting group specializing in Black media, in 1982; before that, he worked for local Black-run newspapers The Seattle Medium and The Facts. The Anchor Group saw a increase in busi- ness last year much of that from local advertisers seek- ing out Black media which is encouraging to Williams. But Black media is subject to the same market forces as other media and still finds itself competing for the same information out there, the volume, the am- plification of Black media is out there, but still not getting the results as far as clients are Wil- liams said. Where Black perspectives are thriving Benton has no script as he introduces that event at Columbia City Theater, and he memorize an intro.

He just has his de- cades of experience hosting radio shows, and his voice. Tonight: a town hall on the redistricting of sec- ond and third city council districts. In the small au- dience is Councilmember Tammy Morales, who rep- resents District 2, which the theater sits in. Eight of the audience members simply came in off the street because volunteer Tyrone Kenney host of the religious talk and inspirational show was sitting at the door handing out fliers. is a critical Benton said.

not the sexiest issue, so you may not have heard about Benton often says that Rainier Avenue Radio is not Black media; simply a media company run by a Black man. not a Black voice; Black, and I have a he said. The station which accepts donations via Shunpike, an arts ad- ministration support non- profit has nine part-time and volunteer staff from a number of racial back- grounds, and over 80 people who broadcast shows, from pastors to business owners to attorneys to nonprofit leaders to hobbyists. There are shows in Span- ish, Fijian, Tagalog, Viet- namese and other languag- es. reggae, jazz, live high school sports broad- casts, fitness shows and shows on money and real estate and of course, Ben- weekly news show, of the Coronavirus on South Seattle and Sur- rounding which hosted from 1-3 p.m.

every Friday since March 13, 2020. Yet Rainier Avenue Radio and shows like are of- ten pigeonholed as just for Black people or communi- ties of color. podcast has a leaning audience, and many listen- ers are white, she said. In the past two years had lots of politicians wanting to come on and talk about Black issues, but she makes it very clear that her show a show just be- cause a Black woman: she wants to talk about their entire record. we absolutely want to have Black-owned outlets Fincher said.

also want Black perspec- tives thriving in all places, and to relegate that to Black media only is overall not a Media organizations like Rainier Avenue Radio have been growing steadily for years, but many saw a bump in 2020 that has held steady. The budget for news and opinion website the South Seattle Emerald, though un- der $1 million a year, is three times what it was three years ago, as hundreds of monthly donors and a few bigger grantees signed on to support the nonprofit. The South Seattle Emerald pub- lishes turn-of-the-screw police coverage, neighbor- hood-by-neighborhood an- nouncements and coverage of South Seattle events, and op-eds by local elected lead- ers. Rep. Kirsten Harris-Tal- ley, D-Seattle, recently took to the pages to announce she be running for reelection and document what she called a lack of integrity among state House Democrats as the Legislature rolled back some police-accountability measures.

Web broadcast network Converge Media whose CEO Omari Salisbury be- came well known locally for broadcasting from the front lines of the Seattle protests went from talking to or so in 2019 to tens of thousands. The organi- dozen or so shows and podcasts cover every- thing from news to sports to activism to pop culture, often but not always from a Central District or South End perspective, and has gathered nearly 400,000 YouTube views and almost 15,000 Instagram followers. The company announced an expansion to Portland this summer, and earlier this month at the North- west Emmy Awards, Con- verge received a Award from the Nation- al Academy of Television Arts Sciences Northwest. (Salisbury declined to talk on the record for this story.) Many of these organiza- tions are still small, howev- er, with few to no full-time staff, and while the resur- gence is welcome, it does feel at times like a drop in the bucket. hard to com- pare to the number of Black newspapers and radio sta- tions that existed in Seattle in the 20th century, Benton and Fincher said.

Future an Now these organizations are at an inflection point. Leadership roles are shift- ing: Salisbury announced at the end of May he was end- ing his show on Converge a new show hosted by King County Equity media director, TraeAnna Holiday, will succeed it and wrote in a blog post about mental scars and even physical in- juries sustained during pro- tests two years ago that have yet to be healed. Benton said had four strokes this year, and is try- ing to limit his time working for Rainier Avenue Radio. He talks slower on the ra- dio now, and gets far more fatigued. South Seattle founder, Marcus Harrison Green (who writes a column for this newspaper), stepped back from his role at the site in May, and hired a new ex- ecutive director to succeed him, Michael McPhearson the first full- time employee.

Some new leaders, like McPhearson, feel the future is still an While McPhearson feels the Emerald will always have support from community readers, media organiza- tions need big-dollar invest- ment to thrive. He worries that commitments from big- ger institutions could fade like they have in the past. years, three years from now? I McPhearson said. his- tory of this country is one that after a while, people get sidetracked, or bored, or some other new thing comes along and we continue to focus on an is- sue been with us from the beginning, which is rac- If some of these organiza- tions last, it be the first time. media fought over the same Back at the theater, Ben- ton soon turns the mic over to a gathered handful of community advocates and activists: Yuan Tao, chair of the King County Young Democrats; Nirae Petty, ad- vocacy program manager for the Black-led social ser- vices and housing nonprofit the Urban League; and Ma- ria Batayola, chair of Beacon community council.

The discussion starts bare-bones. Tao explains that with the census comes a redrawing of council districts, chopping up neighborhoods into sev- en chunks. On tables in the back of the theater, there are a number of draft maps that cut up the city in different ways, being considered by the redistricting com- mission. Tao printed them out to show them to the gathered audience. One major concern to speakers is the splitting-up of the Chinatown Interna- tional District, which they fear could cut most or all of the neighborhood off from the majority-minority Dis- trict 2 and dilute it in a whit- er district.

The Columbia City The- ater all standing in has been a lot of things in over a century: the gold crown molding around the stage Benton is standing on calls back to its status as the first vaudeville theater in the state. On the walls, Benton has put up posters of 1970s flicks that hear- ken back to his childhood, when the place was called Rainier Cinema and it was the only place he could go to see Black films and kung fu movies (at some point, it also became an adult film theater before shutting down). When Benton came here to see those movies, he had no idea one day own the space. When he listened to Are by Sis- ter Sledge growing up, he had no idea one day be interviewing Kathy Sledge on this stage, which he did a month ago. Benton grew up in what he would say was a better time for Black-owned Se- attle media.

The had seen a flurry in the creation of Black-owned newspapers, such as the Afro American Journal, The Seattle Medium and The Facts. KYAC, which in the became by some accounts the first Black- owned radio station on the West Coast, was on the when Benton was growing up. But as Benton got into ra- dio himself, hosting on KUBE 93 for 20 years, he saw organizations like KYAC and the Afro American Journal fade. media fought over the same Benton said. lost ground.

If there the internet now, have lost more spread the Another thing dif- ferent, according to Benton: Many of the Black-led or- ganizations work together. The South Seattle Emerald posted Morning show on its site every day until Salis- bury announced it was end- ing earlier this month. This May Rainier Avenue Radio event on redistricting is also being simulcast by Converge, and at one point, Salisbury can be seen on a walkway above the stage. Benton, meanwhile, goes to the audience gathering questions. do we stop this politically motivated re- asks Bereket Kiros, chair of the Coalition of Immigrants, Refugees and Communities of Color.

Several people express frustration they know about this critical process of redistricting, and that one public forum had already taken place without any of them knowing about it. you feeling about all Benton asked one man in the audience. think a bunch of ba- he said. This is why Benton loves community media. He treats the format as some- what informal and ad hoc.

If shrieking feedback from a speaker for a few sec- onds, OK. If an audi- ence member gets upset and goes on a rant, Benton hears them out. As he draws the event to an end, Benton talks about how it came about: a con- ference call two weeks ago with community activists, where he learned about this redistricting process that was happening without his knowledge, and without the knowledge of many people in the community. was, know what, spread the word. not complain about what we And free to do that, Benton said, turning to the online audience.

this has got your attention like it got the attention of some of the folks in here, request a map. Have a meeting in your own home, have a barbecue, and say, talk about going on in our neighbor- Black-led media sees resurgence in Seattle DEAN SEATTLE TIMES Tony Benton, founder and station manager at Rainier Avenue Radio, has seen the local media effort grow significantly in the wake of George murder, and the pandemic. In May, his group hosted a discussion on Seattle redistricting in the Columbia City Theater, which it purchased and made its home. murder, pandemic helped open up discussions.