WSU, Report for America plan to fund reporter in every Washington county over next 5 years

Each of the 39 counties in Washington should have a designated reporter by 2029 through a new collaboration between Washington State University and Report for America.

The initiative would be one of the first of its kind in the country, aiming to address gaps in news coverage, especially in rural areas. In a 2025 WSU survey, nearly half of responding news outlets in Washington reported operating on a budget of less than $250,000 per year, contributing to what WSU communications department chair Benjamin Shors called a “news deserts across the state.”

“We think that news, local news, is part of the civic infrastructure. It’s part of what connects communities and informs them and empowers them,” Shors said. “It’s really been the closure of news outlets – it’s been the loss of jobs in local news – that has really resulted in this crisis across not just Washington state, but across the country.

“And so we want to try and address that.”

Ferry and Skamania counties, for instance, have no designated news outlets, per the WSU survey. A number of others, including Stevens, Lincoln, Adams and Garfield, have only one outlet, despite their large acreage. This makes them effectively invisible to state and regional decision makers, Shors said.

“I think reporting in these rural communities ensures that those communities have, first of all, an understanding of statewide policy,” he said. “But then also a voice and a stake in those policy debates.”

The nonprofit Report for America has historically sought to fund journalists’ reporting on “under-covered issues and communities,” but the collaboration with WSU will make for a unique blend of public and private support, parent organization Report Local CEO Rob Zeaske said. He believes the partnership could be a model for other states across the country.

“I would say I think too few Americans understand what a crisis local news is facing,” he said. “And I think one of the things that’s appealing and interesting about this program is it allows us to help put a human being that has a face and curiosity and engagement and can drive trust in every corner of the state.”

Inaccessibility of local media outlets – whether that means a paywall or a belief that coverage is overly political – has led to distrust in the news among growing pockets of Americans, Shors said. The lack of local outlets also contributes to a “nationalized news conversation” where “we often forget that many of our folks are most directly impacted by those local, county-level and city-level decisions.”

“I mean, in these places, the vote of a single county commissioner can determine whether a hospital stays open or a road gets plowed, or whether schools consolidate,” he said. “And so those decisions affect people’s daily lives as much – if not more than – decisions that are made in Olympia and Washington D.C.”

The program has a $10 million budget laid out for the next five years. Currently, the state legislature provides $750,000 for the project through WSU’s Murrow News Fellowship – a number Zeaske hopes will soon increase to $1 million, which Report for America will match with private donations. To keep journalists “off the realm of taxpayer dollars,” the plan thus far is to focus on getting them hired as regular employees in their host newsrooms.

In counties without existing newsrooms for reporters to join, Shors said connections through t WSU, Washington’s land-grant college, in each county should make for a jumping off point.

The first 13 journalists should be deployed beginning in 2027, acting on a three-year contract, Zeaske said.

“We still have a lot to figure out, but we’ve got two programs that have already been strongly tested and we think are worth combining forces,” he said. “We think this is a ‘one plus one equals three’ opportunity for the state.”