Article by Todd Matthews
When a Port Orchard man was mauled by a bear last fall on a local bike trail, wildlife officials called it a highly unusual incident. But human/wildlife encounters are hardly rare. Who is intruding on whose territory? And can we find a way to live side by side?
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Article by Todd Matthews
The April 2008 issue of Seattle Business Monthly magazine features a profile of Colliers International CEO Doug Frye written by Matthews. The brokerage, appraisal, consulting and property management firm manages 2.24 million square feet of commercial space in the Puget Sound area -- including seven large properties downtown -- and employs 150 people in the region. This year, Colliers expects to handle $70 billion in transactions and eclipse the $2 billion mark in annual revenue -- a jump from $1.6 billion last year. It's an impressive tally that comes at the direction of an unconventional leader, who joined the company in 2001 as president and COO, and was promoted to CEO a year later.
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Article and Photos by Todd Matthews
The fact that it's been 20 years since Pierce County took an inventory of its historic properties speaks to a concern that local historians and preservationists have held for some time. While the City of Tacoma's historic preservation program has received necessary funding and community support, Pierce County's program has not. Never mind the buildings. Can the county restore its preservation program?
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Article by Todd Matthews / Photos by Charles Peterson
Like an injured soldier returning from battle, 23-year-old bike messenger Jeff Shufelt reveals his wounds. He lifts the sleeves of his black hooded sweatshirt to expose dime-sized holes on his forearms, purple with bruises and rust-colored from dried blood. A dozen or so dirty, thin strips of athletic tape cover a large, nasty wound on the right side of his torso. The day before, racing down a steep freeway overpass en route from Capitol Hill to Eastlake Avenue, Shufelt hit a pothole, flew Superman style over his handlebars and slid through the middle of an intersection. Traffic stopped long enough for him to collect his gear and relay the news over his two-way radio: He was hurt and needed someone to whom he could hand off his packages. Welcome to the world of Seattle bike messengers.
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FIRST PLACE WINNER! | 2007 SOCIETY OF PROFESSIONAL JOURNALISTS | LIFESTYLE / LEISURE REPORTING
Cover Story by Todd Matthews
The March 2008 issue of Seattle Business Monthly magazine features a nine-page feature cover story -- the magazine's annual small-business guide -- written by Matthews This year, Matthews wrote features on the U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA), the Service Corps of Retired Executives (SCORE), and the Northwest Entrepreneur Network (NWEN). The guide also includes short profiles with small-business owners who have been helped by these organizations. Pick up the March issue of the magazine to read the articles.
Articles by Todd Matthews
In December 2007,
Prison Legal News, the nation's largest and oldest prisoners' rights newsmagazine, began publishing a series of Matthews' interviews with some of the key, cornerstone attorneys and advocates long associated with the movement of human rights for prisoners in America. Since then, a new interview has been published roughly every couple months in PLN. To read these interviews so far, click on the following links:
Elizabeth Alexander -- Director, ACLU National Prison Project, click here (Mar. 08 issue, pg. 26)
John Midgley -- human rights attorney, click here (Dec. 07 issue, pg. 16)
Articles by Todd Matthews
In spring 2007, the Washington State Department of Archaeology and Historic Preservation (DAHP) presented this year's award for outstanding achievement in media to Todd Matthews for his coverage of historic preservation issues as editor of the Tacoma Daily Index. The award recognizes persons, organizations, and projects that have achieved distinction in the field of historic preservation in Washington State. Matthews was nominated for the award by Historic Tacoma, a non-profit organization that aims to preserve Tacoma's architectural legacy through education and advocacy. Dr. Allyson Brooks, the state's historic preservation officer, presented the award to Matthews May 8 during a ceremony held in the Legislative Building on the historic State Capitol Campus. Here are some of the historic preservation articles that merited the award:
A downtown corner at a crossroads
Another chapter for historic Winthrop Hotel
Spokane's Davenport Hotel provides one perspective on Winthrop renovation
Radio signal gone, but former Tacoma broadcaster tunes in to Winthrop's future
Hotel developers find ally in affordable housing community
Putting History in the City's Future
Article by Todd Matthews
At Tacoma's many museums, which are often pointed to as signs of the city's progress, it's easy to find a few souvenir postcards depicting the city's skyline. This image, for the most part, hasn't changed for nearly two decades. By contrast, high-rise construction thrives in Seattle and Bellevue. While Tacoma's commercial real estate market is still a fraction of Seattle's, this former timber town is growing fast and would appear to be a perfect market for developers. But it isn't. In fact, this regional hub, military center and major port is a study in contradictions.
Click here to read the complete article, published in the November 2007 issue of Seattle Business Monthly magazine.
Article and Photo by Todd Matthews
In the North Cascade foothills, just outside the town of Darrington -- where tourists stop to fuel SUV's, and grizzled men with long beards steer Harley Davidson motorcycles northeast toward Winthrop -- a stretch of Washington State Route 530 exists where something almost unnoticeable happens: the speed limit loosens and roadside Douglas Firs reach toward a sooty glaze of clouds to form a column that seems to pull drivers east toward the small town of Rockport. The reason someone from Tacoma might want to travel 130 miles to this open field is simple. Two vintage streetcars rest on a bluff overlooking a small pond: a 1919, 27-foot Birney model, and a 1908, 49-foot Turtleback model. The latter operated on Tacoma's streets nearly a century ago.
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Cover Story by Todd Matthews
Clam chowder for breakfast, anyone? Seafood might not tempt your palate at 9 a.m., but it probably suited the man who created this particular recipe: Ivar Haglund, the late, droopy-eyed and whiskered Seattle icon and seafood restaurateur who urged locals to "Keep Clam." This Monday morning, chowder was certainly on the menu at the company's Mukilteo production plant. A group of executives gathered to taste the latest all-natural version of its signature product. As executives scoop, slurp and offer their critiques, Ivar's president and CEO Bob Donegan quietly looks on. Donegan has a nerdy, boyish appearance -- wire-rimmed glasses, tousled brown hair and a high voice that bursts with enthusiasm. He is probably the most unassuming chief executive you will ever meet.
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Article by Todd Matthews
Jazz Legend . . . . That title is frequently used to describe tenor saxophonist Hadley Caliman. Born in Idabel, Oklahoma, in 1932, Caliman grew up in Los Angeles and learned to play bebop as a teenager, in the raucous jazz clubs that lined Central Avenue. He befriended the late Dexter Gordon (Caliman's nickname as a young man was "Little Dex"), and toured and recorded with such jazz notables as Earl Hines, Roy Porter, Eric Dolphy, Freddie Hubbard, Bobby Hutcherson, Mongo Santamaria, Julian Priester, Gerald Wilson, and Eddie Henderson. An addiction to drugs and a run-in with the law sent Caliman to prison in the 1950s -- an event that nearly derailed his career. Determined to turn his life around, Caliman focused on his talent: playing the saxophone. He beat his drug addiction and experienced a re-birth of sorts in the 1970s, recording and touring with Carlos Santana and The Grateful Dead -- in addition to writing and recording songs as the leader of his own quartet (a group that included drummer Elvin Jones). Finally, a teaching opportunity in Washington State landed Caliman at the esteemed Cornish College of the Arts, from which he retired after two decades. He continues to perform and record as lead tenor in the Seattle Repertory Jazz Orchestra and as the front-man of his own quartet.
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Article by Todd Matthews / Photographs by Erik Castro
It is a rare day when a long-time heroin addict receives a handshake from a judge, an award, a slice of cake, and a dismissed felony charge. Moreover, it's rarer still when that individual is grateful for the accolades -- not because he has avoided jail, but because he has endured 21 months of intensive treatment and has finally kicked his drug habit. "I've served years and years in jail for drug-related crimes -- since I was eighteen years old," says the recovered heroin addict. He is a short, middle-aged man with thinning black hair and a somewhat dazed and monotone voice -- a direct residue of his decades of chronic drug use. We are seated on a bench in a marble hallway on the seventh floor of the King County Superior Court building, in Seattle, Washington. "Being in and out of jail has been a natural part of my life for the past twenty-seven years," he adds, gesturing toward the nearby courtroom. "I was given a chance, and I took advantage of it." Welcome to graduation day at King County Drug Diversion Court -- a program designed to divert substance-abusing defendants in felony drug possession cases away from jail and toward treatment and recovery.
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Article by Todd Matthews
Whistle-Blower. The word conjures derision for some, nobility for others. Whistleblowers have been romanticized by Hollywood (remember Silkwood or The Insider?), vilified by big business and government and heralded by the news media. Earlier this year Colleen Rowley, Minneapolis agent of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) blew the whistle heard around the world, and became round-the-clock news, when she accused FBI headquarters of putting roadblocks in the way of trying to investigate suspected terrorist Zaccarias Moussaoui, charged with conspiring with the hijackers in the September 11, 2001, attacks. For sounding the alarm, whistle-blowers are usually either "thrown into the volcano" (as one described his experience) or rewarded for their forthrightness. However the individual is described, one thing is certain: The whistle-blower is as much a part of American business as the chief executive officer.
SECOND PLACE WINNER! | 2003 SOCIETY OF PROFESSIONAL JOURNALISTS | GOVERNMENT & POLITICAL REPORTING
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Article by Todd Matthews / Photos by Erik Castro
If you are looking for one of the most widely read newspapers about prison-related news and analysis from across the country, don't look to a high-rise publishing house in New York City. Notable writers such as William Greider, Mumia Abu-Jamal, Christian Parenti, Jeffrey St. Clair and William Kunstler frequently contribute to this newspaper, but you would be hard-pressed to find a copy at your nearest newsstand. And though the newspaper boasts subscribers in all 50 states, readers in 23 different countries, and a subscriber-base consisting of a notable shortlist of Attorneys General, state-level Department of Corrections officials, wardens, attorneys, public defenders, appellate defenders, journalists, academics and paralegals, it is produced entirely by an eclectic staff of volunteers, ex-cons, established journalists, and prison inmates. Indeed, if you are looking for the editor of this revered prison newspaper, you have to travel to Pierce County -- namely, the small town of Steilacoom, Washington. For it is across the sound from this once bustling seaport that you will find the McNeil Island Corrections Center (MICC) -- home to Paul Wright, editor of the highly praised Prison Legal News (PLN).
THIRD PLACE WINNER! | 2001 SOCIETY OF PROFESSIONAL JOURNALISTS | GOVERNMENT & POLITICAL REPORTING
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