In July of 1991, Tim Keck moved to Seattle from Madison, Wisconsin, to launch a newspaper. He'd recruited a handful of friends and colleagues from the Onion, the satirical weekly he'd cofounded and recently sold (yes, that Onion), to help him conceive a new, irreverent publication—one which sent-up the weekly newspaper format and had equal doses of reporting and criticism as it did satire.Among those who joined him were James Sturm, Peri Pakroo, Nancy Hartunian, Wm. Steven Humphrey, Christine Wenc, Johanna "Jonnie" Wilder, Matt Cook, Andy Spletzer, and, later, Dan Savage.
Armed mostly with hubris, a few thousand dollars, and three slow-as-fuck computers, they initially set their sights on appealing to University of Washington students, but quickly found their real audience among the queers and weirdos who (used to) populate Capitol Hill. Their coverage of Seattle was necessarily informed by their perspective as outsiders, transplants... (are you really going to make me say it?) strangers.
You could make the case that The Stranger's relationship with its adoptive hometown has not always been frictionless. That's not entirely accidental. Making people uncomfortable—while entertaining and serving them—is an important part of the job.
"The only way I see myself becoming one of the cherished traditions of the Village," Norman Mailer wrote of his column in the Village Voice in 1956, "is to be actively disliked each week."
Mailer only lasted 17 columns in the Voice. The Stranger just turned 25. Here's how it got started.