Will James

"Adults in the Room" premiers later this month. You can hear the trailer now.

It's been illuminating to work alongside Isolde, editor Jeannie Yandel, and fellow producer Alec Cowan to help report and tell this incredible story for more than a year.

This launches a new effort at @kuow.org called "Focus" — a podcast channel where we'll bring you in-depth audio documentaries on a regular basis.

It builds off "Lost Patients," the podcast I worked on in 2024 with The Seattle Times.

Subscribe to Focus! We're keeping this type of journalism alive.

Coming Soon: Adults in the Room (Trailer) Podcast Episode · Focus: Adults in the Room · S2 Trailer · 3m

I'm very excited to announce a new investigative podcast I've been a part of.

"Adults in the Room" looks into a 25-year-old scandal at Seattle's elite Garfield High School that went unresolved... until my colleague Isolde Raftery revisited her high school years.

podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/c...

Correction: It's more than $30 million. Sorry.

We're working on it.

Correction: It's more than $30 million.

Seattle CHOP verdict: City must pay $29 million to family of slain teen A King County jury found Seattle was negligent in its response to the fatal shooting of a teenager in the Capitol Hill Organized Protest zone in 2020.

Breaking: A jury has found the city of Seattle liable for the death of 16-year-old Antonio Mays Jr., who was shot and killed in CHOP in 2020.

The juror awarded $29 million to his father, Antonio Mays Sr.

www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news...

Seattle CHOP verdict: City must pay $29 million to family of slain teen A King County jury found Seattle was negligent in its response to the fatal shooting of a teenager in the Capitol Hill Organized Protest zone in 2020.

Story: www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news...

Jury finds the city of Seattle liable for the death of Antonio Mays Jr., who was killed in CHOP in 2020.

Awards more than $25 million to his father, Antonio Mays Sr.

There's a verdict in the Antonio Mays Jr. case, after nearly three weeks of jury deliberations and a month-long trial.

Attorneys are assembling in the downtown Seattle courtroom. I'll thread the verdict below.

Yeah. There is an element of journalism that requires engaging with public opinion. But there's also an element that requires *tuning out* opinion in order to make a genuine run at the truth. And being on social media a lot has a way of making that second thing almost impossible.

Totally. It's people not clicking links plus the quality of dialog on algorithmic social media. For every genuinely helpful interaction with a reader or a source, there is an order of magnitude more that are annoying, bizarre, or just someone posturing for one reason or another.

So I begrudge no one for using these platforms to try to scrape by.

But I'd push journalists to consider whether it's really necessary to be posting, and to consider the ways it's limited or altered how they see the world — and thus how they do their jobs.

This was kind of intentional on my part, as I saw less and less value, and more and more hazard, in using these platforms for journalism.

But it's also luck; just a function of the types of stories I've gravitated toward and have been allowed to pursue. That's a privilege not every journalist has.

More and more, I feel incredibly lucky to have fallen into a media career that does not require me to post on social media all the time.

It just seems bad. For the journalist, for the journalism, for the audience, who are tricked into believing they're consuming something more than empty calories.

Having interviewed lots of people and then, lately, having been booked on or almost booked on some podcasts myself has been eye-opening. The takeaway is that I've been way too concerned with being polite and possibly inconveniencing people for my entire career.

We have successfully moved all of our crappy millennial LEGO set furniture and are now tending to the emotional needs of our cats.

If there's no verdict today, the jury in the Antonio Mays Jr. civil trial will have been deliberating for seven full days.

Four full days of deliberation last week with no verdict.

I'll be back in court tomorrow, when the jury meets again.

Hell Is a Grocery Store I have to be willing to subject myself to a Safeway’s Fisher-Price police state to buy ice cream?

Capitol Hill Seattle people know.

www.thestranger.com/the-complain...

Moving is bittersweet. Then there's the ecstasy of knowing that, soon, I will no longer have to shop at the Safeway on 15th, which is without a doubt the worst grocery store in America.

No verdict yesterday; I'm back in the courthouse today.

In case this feels like déjà vu, it's because I posted something like this on Friday. I left court Thursday with the understanding the jury would be deliberating the next day, but it turned out the judge decided to send them home instead.

Jury left to deliberate as trial for teen’s death in CHOP zone ends Ten jurors must agree on two questions related to whether the city’s emergency response failed 16-year-old Antonio Mays Jr.

I'm sitting in the King County courthouse, where a jury is deliberating in Antonio Mays Sr. vs the city of Seattle.

Antonio Mays Jr., 16, was killed at CHOP in 2020; His death led the city to disband the protest zone.

If there's a verdict, I'll post here.

www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news...

Also

Co-sign

This is the way.

For anyone who creates anything, for anyone who values works of creativity at all.

As I get older, I find fewer and fewer things worth getting militant about. But this is one exception. Human creativity is a miracle and we’re at risk of snuffing it out.

Seattle CHOP evidence revealed by city in wrongful death trial City attorneys unveiled a weapon found in a jacket at the scene to help prove their argument that Antonio Mays Jr. was committing a felony when he was fatally shot.

Latest in the civil trial over the death of Antonio Mays Jr., the 16-year-old who was killed in Seattle's CHOP zone:

Today, the lead detective in the homicide case unveiled evidence that was previously not public, as lawyers debated whether Mays committed a felony in the minutes before he was shot.

New video found featuring victim of unsolved CHOP killing - Soundside On the eve of a civil trial over Antonio Mays Jr.'s death, new footage contradicts widely held account of the teenager's motivations

Omari Salisbury and I were on @kuow.org’s Soundside today to talk about newly unearthed footage of Antonio Mays Jr. from 2020.

The footage, shot by Omari, shows Mays talking to a small crowd three days before he was shot and killed in Seattle’s CHOP. The case is unsolved.

omny.fm/shows/sounds...

Were you there?