The Seattle Times reports that it is invoking the newly enacted reporter's statute:  RCW 5.68.010.

The City is involved in a dispute with a police officer who was accused of numerous acts of misconduct.  The City fired the police officer and the police officer brought breach of contract (and breach of the Collective Bargaining Agreement), defamation, and other typical public employee claims.  You can access a copy of the Complaint here.  (pdf)

The Seattle Times detailed the alleged actions of the officers in a series of reports.   (See, e.g., here.)  The City seeks the identities of the reporters' sources, as well as their working papers.  The Seattle Times filed a Motion to Quash the subpoena which you can access here.

The Times' Motion looks like a winner.  I can't really figure out why the City (and not plaintiff) is seeking this information.  The stories contain numerous negative allegations (which also seem to be the subject of plaintiff's defamation claims).  If anything, it would be logical for the plaintiff to seek this information.  Then, the City's interest would be for impeachment or to undermine plaintiff's proof.  Both of these are not sufficient to overcome the high threshold set by the statute for working papers.  With respect to the identity of confidential sources, the statute seems to set an absolute bar (this strikes me as odd for some reason and I'm wondering if courts ultimately will find some way around this bar).

My gut feel is that the only issue that is likely to be resolved in this scenario is how far-fetched the City's justifications for seeking the documents and information are.  Were this not a brand new statute, I would think the Times would be very likely to get its attorney's fees.

NB:  I looked at the statute a while back and I remember something that stuck out at me.  In the context of the ongoing debate between whether bloggers are reporters and what it took to fall into the scope of the shield law, the statute struck a curious balance.  It granted protection for traditional news media type-organizations, and "entities" that engaged in newsgathering/publication.  I didn't really see a lot of room for the pajama clad (non-incorporated) blogger there.