When Ryan Blethen became publisher of The Seattle Times in January, he inherited far more than a newspaper. He inherited 129 years of family stewardship, a newsroom of 170 journalists, and the responsibility of leading one of the last family-owned metropolitan dailies in the United States.
“I definitely don’t want to be the Blethen who screws it up,” said Blethen, 53, who rose through the newsroom before succeeding his father, Frank Blethen, after four decades as publisher.
The handoff comes at a time when family-owned newspapers have largely disappeared under decades of consolidation, replaced by chains focused on cost-cutting and short-term returns.
In 2024, the Blethen family bought out The McClatchy Company, ending a decades long minority ownership stake in The Seattle Times.
“About 1% of family businesses make it to their fifth generation,” Ryan Blethen said in an interview with E&P. “And the percentage is smaller for newspapers. So, we are one of the very few.”
Unlike his father, who came up through advertising and circulation, Ryan Blethen’s path to the publisher’s office was forged in the newsroom. He worked as a reporter and editor in Maine and Oregon before returning to Seattle, covering business and health beats, including during the COVID-19 pandemic. He also guided the paper’s digital transformation as product director and, at one point, served as editorial page editor, working closely with his father.
“I wasn’t really thinking about being a publisher before that. I was just trying to become a better journalist,” Blethen said. “But when I really started to see what he did … what interested me was thinking I could be the person who creates a place where great journalism can happen.”
“The fact that we have local family ownership here is, sadly, almost unique,” said Michele Matassa Flores, The Seattle Times’ executive editor, who has worked alongside both Frank and Ryan for decades. “The independence of what we do, the belief in the journalistic mission above all. That really sets this place apart.”
Overcoming adversity with mission as guidepost
Matassa Flores has seen the family’s commitment up close. She started at the Times in 1988, reporting for Frank Blethen until she took a buyout during a tough economic period at the paper in 2008. In 2013, she returned when Frank Blethen recruited her as assistant managing editor. She credits the paper’s revival to the family’s investment in its mission: Frank Blethen sold family-owned property in Seattle’s South Lake Union neighborhood and reinvested the proceeds into the company.
“When times got really, really hard, he put the money back into the company,” she said. “Who does that anymore in journalism? The Blethens are about making some money in order to do great journalism, not doing journalism to make a lot of money. And it means everything to me as the leader of the news operation.”
Alan Fisco, the paper’s president and CEO, calls the Blethen approach stewardship rather than ownership.
“He didn’t see himself as publisher or one of the owners,” Fisco said of Frank Blethen. “He sees it as stewardship. The whole stewardship ethos has always been front and center here.”
That ethos has insulated the newsroom from industry pressures. While corporate-owned papers have cut staff and coverage, the Times has maintained one of the country’s largest regional newsrooms. Its public-service reporting, covering government accountability as well as environmental and social issues, has earned 11 Pulitzers over the years, largely for coverage rooted in local and regional issues with national impact.
Frank Blethen’s commitment to journalism was not abstract, Matassa Flores said. He routinely supported coverage that strained his personal connections.
“He has a running joke with me that the newsroom has cost him a lot of friends,” she said. “But he knew he had to let us run stories that might be difficult in his personal world, and we’ve done better journalism because of that.”
Ryan Blethen now inherits and embraces that same tension.
“To serve our community with journalism that illuminates, surprises, brings joy and exposes issues that need fixing — that’s what matters,” he said.
Blethen studied history at Washington State University, unsure if his interests would intersect with the family business. Like his siblings and cousins, he completed a two-year rotation through various departments at the Times, including brief stints in circulation and marketing, before landing in the newsroom. “I was like, ‘Well, this is the greatest job ever. This is what I want to do,’” he said. His final stop had been scheduled to be advertising, but he never made it there, so compelling was his passion for reporting.
He later returned to journalism school at the University of Kansas. For years, the idea of becoming a publisher felt distant. “For most of my life, my dad was the publisher,” he said.
Matassa Flores sees continuity and difference between father and son. “Ryan came out of the newsroom,” she said. “His belief in journalism comes from a different place than Frank’s, but they’re both incredibly dedicated to what we do.”
The Blethen family’s involvement in the company extends beyond the publisher’s office. Eleven members of the fifth generation have worked at the paper over the years. Today, three work full-time: Ryan Blethen as publisher, his cousin Kerry Quinn on the fundraising team, and his brother as a manager at the printing plant. Other family members serve on the board. The sixth generation is already watching closely. Blethen’s two daughters, both in college, are studying journalism and have worked in the newsroom during recent summers.
Inheriting a legacy of innovation
The Seattle Times’ financial survival required abandoning the advertising-based model that sustained newspapers for generations. The company made what Fisco called a “conscious decision” in 2012 to monetize content rather than rely on advertising revenue.
“It was clear to me in conversations that I had with Frank back then that advertising, unfortunately, was a commodity, and what we really have that’s unique to us is our content,” Fisco said.
The paper launched a paywall in 2013. Today, it has approximately 107,000 digital subscribers and about 100,000 print subscribers. Revenue that once came 70% from advertising now comes 70% from audience — a complete reversal.
“I like it, because I think you can create a deeper relationship with readers when you know what they want, you know what they’re responding to, and you are listening,” Ryan Blethen said.
The year 2025 marked what Matassa Flores called “maybe our single biggest leap forward in terms of digital transformation.” The newsroom embraced live updates for developing stories. “We saw the huge demand for information,” she said, and those updates “helped them create a habit of coming back to us over and over.”
Serving Seattle’s increasingly diverse population remains central to that mission. The region’s immigrant communities, Indigenous nations and working-class populations are core to the paper’s coverage priorities. The newsroom has reported extensively on efforts to seek justice for missing and murdered Indigenous women in the region and earned national recognition for its reporting on Indigenous issues, including its Pulitzer finalist investigation into treaty fishing rights.
“We still do have a pretty traditional beat structure here,” Matassa Flores said. “The closer you can get to the people out there and get away from your desk and into the community, the better stories you’re going to find.”
The newsroom operates with a digital-first mentality. “We realize people come to our site between 6-9 a.m., let’s flood the zone,” Matassa Flores said.
The transformation required cultural change. The newsroom now employs numerous producers — roles uncommon at legacy print institutions even five years ago. The staff covers extended hours starting at 4:30 a.m. with robust weekend coverage.
“We have a bit of an unusual partnership here between the newsroom and our business teams,” Matassa Flores said. “We have a really strong feedback loop for the changes we do try in the newsroom, and what seems to be working with readers and subscribers.”
A product team member now sits in the morning news meeting, sharing analytics. “They will say, the story worked, or this story drove subscriptions,” Ryan Blethen explained. “So, you can start to see patterns about what worked with readers.”
This collaboration would have been unthinkable in earlier eras. “It used to be that somebody from advertising or product, they couldn’t even walk through the newsroom,” Ryan Blethen said. “But now we work really well together.”
Politics and business coverage drive the most subscriptions. “People in Seattle, it’s a very activist community, very highly educated, civically engaged community,” Matassa Flores said. “Our political coverage is one of the really important bedrocks of what we do.”
Business coverage also ranks high, particularly given the region’s tech industry presence. The recent announcement of major Amazon layoffs exemplifies the type of story that resonates locally. Sports coverage receives significant resources with winning franchises like the Mariners and Seahawks. On the lighter side, Matassa Flores said the paper employs three food writers, “The fun of the food and drink scene here in Seattle is huge.”
The innovation: Community-funded journalism
The paper has grown its newsroom back after recession-era cuts. “We’re proud of our newsroom ranks,” said Fisco. “The last reduction we had was in 2017, and we’ve been able to grow it thanks to a lot of the philanthropy.”
The paper’s most distinctive innovation came in 2013 when it launched the Education Lab, a team funded by philanthropic donations. Ryan Blethen remembers his skepticism. “I told him, that’s not going to work. I mean, who’s going to give us money outside of a subscription and ad dollars?” he recalled. “And I was wrong.”
The model has expanded to include the Traffic Lab, the Mental Health Project, Project Homelessness, the Climate Lab and an investigative journalism fund. Twenty-five of the newsroom’s 170 positions are now funded through philanthropy. The Seattle Foundation serves as a fiscal sponsor.
The investigative journalism fund operates differently, accepting donations from $5 to six figures from community members. “I just don’t feel like we’d be The Seattle Times without an investigative team,” Ryan Blethen said, explaining that the model of smaller donors relays the commitment to working side by side with the community to produce important reporting.
The paper maintains strict separation between donors and coverage. “We don’t let advertisers give us money; we don’t give them any preferential treatment,” Ryan Blethen said. “And we treat donors the same way. We’ve lost donors because they haven’t approved of our coverage, and we’re happy to hand them their money back.”
Preparing for what’s next
One of the issues in the foreground for The Seattle Times’ leadership team is adapting to how the public wants to consume news and information now and anticipating what that might look like in five years or more.
Print’s future is a topic of special discussion. Fisco explained that he is modeling scenarios to reduce the number of print issues. He said he doesn’t want to move into this without a clear strategy, unlike others who go down to five days or four with no apparent rationale. “That’s death by 1,000 cuts,” he said.
Blethen is wary of chasing industry fads. He recalls conferences touting different “pivots” as a cure-all — ideas that don’t always pan out. “The pivot to video a decade ago didn’t work,” he said.
Instead, he is focused on clarity.
“We know what we are and we know what we want to be,” Blethen said. “That’s a subscription-driven, audience-first newspaper company.”
Even if print eventually disappears, he expects the identity of the paper to endure.
“I’m still going to say newspaper,” he said. “There’s a historical pull to that word. People understand what it is.”
As Blethen looks ahead, like many, he sees multiple challenges converging on journalism — economic pressures and technological change — as well as growing safety issues for the press.
“I feel like we can figure out any of the economic and financial issues facing us,” he said. “We’ve done it before. We can do it again. What scares me the most is the [federal] government and people who have bad intentions and can afford to tie us up in court for however long they need to.”
Matassa Flores shares that concern, given Seattle’s reputation as a blue city in a blue state. “We see Seattle as probably not too far behind” other cities like Chicago and Minneapolis that have become flashpoints, she said. Adding that the newsroom has invested heavily in safety infrastructure, developed during the COVID-19 pandemic and the protests following the murder of George Floyd.
“We put into play a lot of good infrastructure in terms of safety training,” Matassa Flores said. “We already have tactical gear, bulletproof vests and helmets, gas masks, all of that.”
Editorially, the newsroom is preparing for midterm election coverage and other topics that require newsroom-wide mobilization, such as this year’s World Cup.
After a month in the job, the scale of the role is still sinking in.
“My dad did this job for 40 years,” Blethen said. “It still boggles my mind.”
Blethen acknowledged the intensity of the moment. “Some days it feels like we’re in a movie. It’s distressing. Maybe I sound like a masochist, but I also find it energizing,” he said. “If you’re a journalist and you can’t get excited to do your job in the face of this, you’re in the wrong business. You hope you never have to be ready for times like this. We’ve been doing a great job uncovering issues around immigration, the federal government and how they impact us locally. This is why we’re here.”
Diane Sylvester is an award-winning 30-year multimedia news veteran. She works as a reporter, editor and newsroom strategist. She can be reached at diane.povcreative@gmail.com
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Rebecca
Loved your feature! We are family-owned as well — on a much, much smaller level — but operating in very much the same way. The Bourbon County Citizen lineage began in 1808, and there has been a newspaper bearing the name Citizen here, independently owned, ever since. It has never missed an issue.
Today, it is owned by the grandchildren — now in their 70s — of the family who purchased it in 1946. The word “stewardship” truly resonates with us. This work is a passion, a responsibility, and a privilege.
We are thriving, too. Our community supports and respects its newspaper and its tiny but dedicated staff.
Thank you for such an enlightening read this morning. Now — off to work!
Tuesday, March 3 Report this