New WSU report sheds light on health of Washington’s news industry

For more than three decades, journalism advocates worldwide have celebrated May 3 as World Press Freedom Day.

The day marks the anniversary of the Windhoek Declaration of 1991, which promoted a free and independent press in Africa. It is meant to celebrate the importance of a free and independent press and raise awareness of the threats journalists around the world face.

“World Press Freedom Day is a great reminder about the importance of journalism and some of the issues that are facing journalists today,” said Jennifer Henrichsen, an assistant professor at the Edward R. Murrow College of Communication at Washington State University. “Whether physical or digital attacks or partisan politics, we know that journalism has been in crisis for a long time, and both at the national and international level.”

According to a Pew Research study published in 2021, newsroom employment in the United States has fallen by 26% since 2008. According to data compiled by the Local News Initiative at the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University, more than 3,200 newspapers have gone out of business since 2005, with more than two per week folding, on average.

While the decline of the journalism industry nationally has been well-documented, Henrichsen and a group of professors at the Murrow School recently published the most complete review of the health of journalism in Washington.

The report, “From News Deserts to Nonprofit Resilience: Assessing the Health of Washington’s Local News Ecosystem,” examines the decline of Washington state’s news industry, and offers suggestions to policymakers about what could be done to revive it.

“This is the most comprehensive study to date of Washington and is also a benchmark for us in the state,” Henrichsen said. “So our intention is to survey outlets moving forward to try to get a sense of trends.”

The report surveyed news outlets and interviewed journalists and civic leaders to study the health of journalism in Washington, and found a system in decline.

“Unfortunately, the reports of local news crises across the state, anecdotal or research-based, seem to be mirroring what we found in Washington state as well,” said Pawel Popiel, an assistant professor at Murrow College.

According to the findings, only 170 outlets across the state provide daily news coverage, with about half of these outlets running on an annual budget of $250,000 or less.

The report found that two counties – Skamania and Ferry – qualify as news deserts, which means they lack a consistent and credible news source for local information. Additionally, five counties only have one news outlet, while five others only have two outlets.

“So it’s actually a problem facing Washington writ large, to a large extent, because the number of outlets is important for understanding the types of media diversity that exist in a particular area,” Henrichsen said.

The lack of outlets providing local coverage also means there’s a lack of media diversity, according to Popiel. Media diversity, he said, is essential for competitive coverage, a wider array of opinions and to ensure a built-in resilience in the system.

“This is a problem that plagues both rural and sort of sparser areas as much as urban ones,” Popiel said.

Other outlets throughout the state, the study found, struggle to hire and retain staff due to declining budgets, which can be partially attributed to a decrease in ad revenue.

The lack of staff to adequately report on a coverage area means that outlets are often left to make tough decisions when deciding what to cover. For example, an outlet may have to choose whether to cover a local school board meeting or report on a car crash that is causing a delay across town.

“You have to make really hard choices when you have so few staff,” Henrichsen said. “And that, of course, has implications for the type of information that gets covered and the type of information that people can obtain to go about their daily lives.”

The report, which was meant to provide a snapshot of the journalism industry, examined data collected between November 2023 and December 2024, which means a recent announcement that the Cowles family plans to donate The Spokesman-Review to a recently formed Spokane-based community nonprofit organization was not discussed.

“The nonprofit model provides hope and optimism to many who care about the future of local journalism because it can provide a sustainable funding model that allows for enhanced accountability reporting,” Henrichsen said.

But the model isn’t a “silver bullet,” she said.

“Nonprofit outlets also face challenges and closures, as evidenced by the recent shuttering of the prominent nonprofit startup, the Houston Landing, and require ongoing innovation and attention to audiences, if they are going to be sustainable and successful long-term,” Henrichsen said.

The plan calls for Publisher Stacey Cowles and his family’s Cowles Co. to transfer ownership of the newspaper and award a $2 million matching grant to the nonprofit, called the Comma Community Journalism Lab, which was founded by current Spokesman-Review Executive Editor Rob Curley.

While the report examined the decline in Washington’s news industry, it also offered suggestions for policymakers to support it. Those include ensuring that local journalism is “viewed as a public good which is necessary for a healthy democracy,” Henrichsen said.

The recommendations also include making news subscriptions and business advertising in local outlets federally tax deductible, providing outlets tax credits to hire reporters, and providing direct subsidies to news outlets.

“When you think about the threats facing local news from resource constraints to dwindling subscriptions to a sort of collapsing talent pipeline that draws journalists in to a public that may not be informed about the journalism crisis to legal and other attacks against journalists themselves and news outlets, the range of solutions has to be comprehensive to fully address what is ultimately a structural, systemic problem,” Popiel said.

In recent years, federal and state lawmakers have sought to throw the journalism industry a lifeline, to varying degrees of success.

This year, the Legislature considered imposing a surcharge on large search engines and social media companies with a gross income of $5 million or more, with the tax capped at $6 million a year. The Office of Financial Management estimated the tax would raise $27 million in fiscal year 2027, and an additional $102 million between 2027 and 2031, with the funds distributed to print, digital and broadcast media outlets.

While the proposal died in committee, the report examines “how additional funding mechanisms are necessary to try to ensure that this crisis of resources can be ameliorated so that journalism can be strengthened in the state,” Henrichsen said.

A program that has found more support from lawmakers is a two-year fellowship program through the Murrow College.

Under the program, journalists in the early stages of their careers are placed in newsrooms throughout the state, including The Spokesman-Review and Spokane Public Radio, to cover underreported beats, which include voting rights, housing and rural issues, among others.

In 2023, the Legislature appropriated $2.4 million for its operation, and the state budget currently under review by Gov. Bob Ferguson includes additional funds for the program, though it would receive about half of its previous funding level.

“The true measure of journalism isn’t whether it pleases people in civic life, but whether it empowers them with information,” said Ben Shors, chair of the Department of Journalism and Media Production. “So that’s sort of the baseline that we need to understand, that a free and functioning press is not a luxury in civic life in Washington state, it’s a necessity, and it requires maintenance, and it requires investment, and it has to not just for the journalists who work in those jobs, but for the citizens who live in those communities.”

Editors note: This article has been updated to reflect that Pawel Popiel is an assistant professor, not an associate professor.