4:30 news meeting, Thursday

The web site is seeing about 100 pageviews a minute today on the Jim West package. That’s very high traffic for S-R.com. There is a substantial amount of information online that’s not been in the paper, including audio, transcripts and other materials. See it here.

Editor Steve Smith has spent much of the day granting interviews with media and trade publications about this story.

For the paper tomorrow:

Several follow-up stories to the Jim West issue:
—City hall reaction
—Official reaction
—Business reaction
—A story on ethics
—A story on an FBI investigation.

In other news, Jim Hagengruber is writing about the Bush administration tossing out protections for roadless national forests.

Internationally, Tony Blair is re-elected prime minister in Great Britain; and 26 dead in Iraq in continued violence today.

Finally, former WSU football star Mark Fields announced that he will miss the upcoming NFL season because he has suffered from a cancer relapse.