Here in Seattle, we have two daily papers. They’re embroiled in a seemingly endless joint-operating dispute. I don’t know the ins and outs of the deal, being a relative newcomer to the city, but I do know this: every morning at the bus stop, as I review the front pages displayed in the papers’ side-by-side machines, I marvel at their attempts to tell the same stories in different ways.

Today, for instance, both front pages featured huge, splashy photos of our visit from the Blue Angels — but with different headlines, people! Different headlines! And there, at upper left, each had a plug for an article on an electric car. The Times went with the Tesla, while the P-I featured the Zap! Xebra. (Both PDFs, sorry.)

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Semi-funny, yes. But it’s also an indication of how far we’ve come. This is the dawning of the age of the curious. Better to have two papers reporting on this kind of thing than none.

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