Frank Blethen
American publisher of The Seattle Times
Frank A. Blethen (born April 20, 1945) is an American executive who served as the publisher of The Seattle Times and chief executive officer (CEO) of The Seattle Times Company, based in Seattle, Washington, United States. A fourth-generation member of the Blethen family, which has owned the newspaper since 1896, he became a publisher in 1985. He has also served as a publisher of the Walla Walla Union-Bulletin, another newspaper that was owned by the company in the 1970s. During his tenure as publisher, the family's control over the newspaper decreased, consistent with the profitability across the newspaper industry. The newspaper entered into a joint operating agreement with the Seattle Post-Intelligencer that lasted until it ceased printing in 2009.
Early life and education
Francis Alden Blethen Jr. was born in Seattle on April 20, 1945, the second of two children of Francis Alden Blethen and his third wife, Kathleen Mary Ryan. He is a fourth-generation member of the Blethen family and the great-grandson of Seattle Times founder Alden J. Blethen. His parents divorced in 1951, and Blethen moved to Scottsdale, Arizona, with his mother and elder sister, Diane. He was the only member of the Blethen family to have been raised outside of Seattle.
“Frank Blethen” enters the record as american publisher of The Seattle Times. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Frank, Blethen and American can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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This entry incorporates text from “Frank Blethen” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.