What if our conversations about local news were grounded in hope?

I’ve worked in local news for nearly 20 years and, yes, we’re losing local newspapers, trust in news is at an all-time low and threats to the press are increasing under this White House’s administration. But there is a national movement to revitalize local news, and we’re seeing that movement gain traction in Washington.

That’s why I’m writing this newsletter, in collaboration with fellow local news supporters Linda Shaw and Anika Anand. We believe one of the best ways to capitalize on this momentum is to build power by rallying people around a common goal and purpose.

I’ve helped build this kind of coalition before.

In 2018, I launched the New Mexico Local News Fund, where we raised money for local news outlets and offered them training and networking opportunities. At the heart of this work was convening newsrooms, educators, community members and philanthropic leaders. We launched a paid fellowship that’s going strong today, created a business accelerator during the pandemic to help newsrooms raise revenue and the fund continues to bring in new funding and partners to support a range of programs to support news and information in local communities.

We know there is interest to do this type of work here, too. There is a local effort to raise philanthropic dollars as part of the national Press Forward campaign; our legislature funded a recently published landscape analysis of the local news crisis in WA and a news fellowship; and some of our elected leaders proposed a way to funnel public dollars to local newsrooms.

But none of these efforts can succeed in siloes. This newsletter will build a foundation for a coalition of people who want to help more Washingtonians understand how they can contribute to and support reliable news and information in our state. We believe we need a broad coalition with a shared purpose that we can all work toward together. The goal is to take best practices from across the country and work with local partners to support new resources, funding and networking that will help bring together the incredible people in our state who care deeply about local news.

More on that in our next newsletter. For now, here’s what’s happening in local news…

– Sarah Gustvaus Lim

What We’re Reading

• Going nonprofit? The Spokesman-Review has a plan to go nonprofit, with its current owners, the Cowles family, wanting to donate the paper to a new nonprofit founded by current paper editor Rob Curley.

• Financial troubles. Also in Spokane, the founder and editor of RANGE Media, a worker-owned local news startup, laid himself off to keep the publication going. Luke Baumgarten wrote last week about the financial issues that led to his decision, which he also discussed on Spokane Public radio.

• In philanthropy… Two philanthropists recently donated $250,000–– their largest gift ever – to InvestigateWest. Five Washington state foundations have signed on to launch a local chapter of Press Forward, the national effort to support local news. Meanwhile, some local news efforts may suffer as the Seattle-based Gates Foundation works to close down by 2045, including The Seattle Times’ Education Lab.

• Federal cuts and Seattle public media. If the Trump administration succeeds in eliminating funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, University of Washington Professor Matthew Powers argues that will further reduce the number of reporters in Seattle.

• State cuts in news fellowship. The Legislature cut funding to Washington’s Murrow News Fellowship, which has placed 18 reporters in newsrooms across the state. It appears those fellows will be able to stay in place for their full two-year terms, but other cutbacks are probably in store.

• New sources of funding? Senate Bill 5400 proposed increasing an existing tax on large local companies to provide funding for Washington state news outlets, and while it died this year, it likely will be raised again. Oregon has a similar bill, still under discussion, that would require tech platforms to pay news organizations for content on their sites. And last year, the idea of local news vouchers was floated by union organizer Katie Wilson, who is now running for Seattle mayor.

• Celebrating a new startup. Uplift Local has launched in the Columbia River Gorge area with a mission of providing “a new kind of participatory journalism that will change how people in Oregon and Washington get news and information in the next 10 years.”

Your Data Snapshot

If we’re going to solve the local news crisis, we need to understand exactly the scope of that crisis. That’s why many states across the country are commissioning “ecosystem” or “landscape” assessments to help develop policy, philanthropic and other support at a local level.

Washington’s legislature funded an assessment last year as part of the $2.4 million Murrow News Fellowship. The findings were published last month, and in each newsletter, we’ll drill down into one piece of data from the report. For starters, let this sink in: Nearly half of the 98 news organizations that shared their annual operating budgets reported they spent less than $250,000, which means small teams and challenges for local news leaders to fully cover their communities.

What questions do you have about the state of local news in Washington state? Hit reply to let us know.

Read the full report here.

Could it Work Here?

• After he was laid off, Portland journalist Bryan Vance channeled his energy into launching a new newsletter called Stumptown Savings that tracks grocery prices and shares discounts with readers. How might other newsrooms offer services like this to their readers?

• Outlier Media used its investigative and data journalism skills and spent 16 weeks–– in collaboration with “nonprofit partners and a volunteer civic army–– to help Detroiters affected by tax foreclosure recoup a total of $5.9 million they were owed from the county. How might more newsrooms uncover dollars owed to residents and advocate for those dollars to be returned?

• Six news organizations experimented with influencer collaborations and the American Press Institute wrote a guide about what they learned. How might other journalists build stronger relationships with local folks trusted in the community to reach people not currently engaged with their reporting?

Asks & Offers

In future newsletters, we’ll feature Asks & Offers from all of you. To get us started, here are two asks from us:

• Hit reply: How can this newsletter be most useful to you? Reply to this email or reach out to us at freshgroundwa@gmail.com

• Forward this email: Share this newsletter with someone who wants to help support a healthy local news and information ecosystem in Washington state.

Fresh Ground Washington is a monthly newsletter written and edited by Sarah Gustavus Lim, Linda Shaw and Anika Anand.