A look at WA’s first state-funded news fellowships

A lucky few news outlets are expanding their coverage this spring with journalists funded by Washington’s news fellowship program.

Participating newsrooms were announced Feb. 20 by Washington State University, which is coordinating the Murrow News Fellowship and will employ the nine journalists.

The program is a great show of support by Washington state for its struggling local news industry. It was championed by state Sen. Karen Keiser of Des Moines, who secured its $2.4 million in annual funding last year.

While it’s off to a strong start, I hope the program continues to evolve and increase coverage of core civic and municipal news as Keiser envisioned.

Several of the chosen news outlets are interviewing fellowship candidates this week, with expectations that they’ll be hired soon and begin reporting by April 1.

“It’s exciting — this is a brand-new program where the state of Washington recognized a great need for news coverage,” my college friend Sean Flaherty, publisher of The Wenatchee World, told me.

The World submitted a joint proposal with Northwest Public Broadcasting to increase bilingual coverage of civic issues in the Wenatchee area and was among the nine chosen, out of 40 proposals.

Flaherty said the World’s news department has between 12 and 15 people who produce the newspaper, several weeklies, two monthlies, the website and newsletters. It’s owned by Arizona-based Wick Communications.

“We could use lots more people,” Flaherty said. “The key is being able to do deeper stories on things.”

Still to be determined are details like whether the reporter will be based in The World’s office or the radio station nearby and how much of the work will be for print and how much for broadcast.

At The Chinook Observer in Long Beach, editor Matthew Winters is interviewing fellows to expand coverage of economically disadvantaged people in the area.

The weekly paper, owned by Oregon’s EO Media, is relatively robust with four in the newsroom and support from Seattle’s Inatai Foundation.

Winters hopes that the fellow will not only increase coverage but build trust with working people, particularly Spanish-speaking immigrants, who face deportation concerns while being critical to the region’s shellfish and lodging industries.

“It’s challenging to get very deep into the lives of ordinary working people and in many cases here they are recent immigrants,” he said.

Another challenge will be finding a place for fellows to live for two years, even though they’ll receive a $55,000 salary that’s more than journalists typically receive at smaller papers. As the program evolves, it might consider structuring the compensation as a grant that could be partly used for a housing stipend.

Cognizant of potential friction over a higher salary, Winters said he structured the fellowship as a temporary, special project.

“For the most part I’m planning for this position to be doing closed-ended project coverage, which I hope will smooth things over with the news staff,” he said.

Program organizers provided an update to news media representatives at a Feb. 15 meeting in Olympia, saying they believe funding will continue indefinitely but the state still needs more local journalism.

“We see this not as a solution but one way to help news organizations and inform communities across the state,” said Ben Shors, chair of the WSU Murrow School’s journalism and media production department.

The fellowship was modeled in part on one in California. New Mexico has a similar program and several other states are now considering their own.

Keiser said the need for more local news coverage is acute and apparent. That includes her South King County district where for “the vast majority, we have no decent information flow going on,” she said at the Feb. 15 event.

Here are the other outlets and proposals chosen in the first cohort, as described by WSU’s announcement:

• TV stations KHQ in Spokane and KNDU of Tri-Cities and Yakima, to jointly “focus on three concerns facing Okanogan, Grant and Douglas counties: housing, civic health, and agriculture.”
• Spokane Public Radio and The Spokesman-Review “to increase coverage of public policy on rural Eastern Washington residents, including infrastructure, rural economies, agriculture and environmental issues, health care and education.”
• The News Tribune of Tacoma, “to expand coverage of public policy, economy, and plights of unhoused and homeless people in Tacoma and Pierce County.”
• The Tri-City Herald, “to increase coverage of the Hispanic and Latinx communities in the Mid-Columbia and Lower Yakima Valley, including civic life, agriculture, food processing industry and other statewide issues.”
• The Columbian in Vancouver and The Daily News in Longview, to jointly “expand on coverage of the Columbia River corridor including water rights, tribal issues, hydropower, and environmental issues along the 1,243-mile river.”
• Gig Harbor Now and The Kitsap Sun, to jointly “expand coverage of local government, including health care, drug addiction, and mental health in Kitsap County’s rural, suburban and urban communities.”
• The Yakima Herald-Republic and El Sol de Yakima, “to increase coverage of municipal, county, state and federal government issues in smaller communities in central Washington. Certain articles likely will be shared with the Walla Walla Union-Bulletin and The Seattle Times, the Herald-Republic’s sister newspapers.”

The program was initially going to fund two cohorts of eight fellows. It’s starting with nine and the remaining seven are expected in summer, putting all 16 in the field this year, Jody Brannon, program manager, said at the Olympia event.

Brannon said 64 people applied for fellowship jobs and 17 were chosen as finalists. They include experienced journalists and recent graduates, including five from WSU, five from Western Washington University and two from the University of Washington.

Still, given that Washington’s newspapers lost two-thirds of their newsroom staff as the industry contracted over the last two decades, the 16 fellows are only part of what’s needed to restore local coverage that communities and voters need.

“I don’t know if 80 would make a difference anymore,” Brannon said.

This is excerpted from the free, weekly Voices for a Free Press newsletter. Sign up to receive it at the Save the Free Press website, st.news/SavetheFreePress.