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Rob Curley: How one subscriber’s passion has spilled over into more support for decades of journalism to come
Shortly after we started Northwest Passages more than eight years ago, a longtime subscriber noticed we showed a list of donors on the big video board of those who helped us keep improving and growing the series. From the very first Northwest Passages event, we were blown away by the generosity and support of those who came to our budding bibliophile bonanzas.
Owen loved everything about this.
He loved seeing the community come together. He loved the smart, and surprisingly fun, discussions. He loved books almost as much as he loved to read newspapers. It wasn’t just our newspaper he loved. He read so many each and every day that he was basically a human encyclopedia for current affairs.
And Owen loved seeing all of the names of those who were helping. He wanted to help, too. He also walked to all of our events, even in the winter, and was the biggest recycler you ever met. He didn’t have a lot. But helping us continue to do all of this mattered so much to him.
One night after a packed house for Northwest Passages, he came up and handed me $20 and asked if that would help. He asked if it was enough. I told him it meant the world to me that he wanted to support us, and that the amount never mattered. From that moment on, Owen had a reserved seat at every event. Right beside me. And his name was listed with all of our other supporters.
I wish Owen could see this now. He passed away in 2022. It’s hard to explain just how much he loved the idea that his hometown newspaper might someday become one of the first community-owned daily newspapers in the nation.
For more than 140 years, The Spokesman-Review has helped hold our community together – through world wars and world’s fairs, recessions and renaissances, county fairs and Final Fours, heartbreaks and happy endings. This family-owned newspaper has been the daily beacon of accountability, storytelling and connection across Eastern Washington and North Idaho.
It also understood that it was a local newspaper. It knew how to celebrate state championships won by the smallest schools in our county, and understood that you still publish the name of every graduating high school senior. And you write stories about potholes and potlucks.
That kind of legacy doesn’t just continue on its own. It requires people – thoughtful, generous, community-minded people who treasure local independent journalism and who want to strengthen community news for the next 140 years. For our children. For our great-grandchildren. And for those who didn’t even understand the importance of a local newspaper until it looked out for them in a way that only the Fourth Estate can.
It means the world to me that our community has turned out in full force to support The Spokesman-Review as we transform into one of the nation’s first community-owned daily newspapers. You’ll see a list of those who have jumped in to help, in all ways and at all levels, in today’s newspaper. You will see your neighbors, colleagues and local businesses who all understood that history is being made in Spokane, and that it is essential for a newspaper to be to document all of that history in real-time. Every day.
Our newsroom has been blown away by the overwhelming community response since the Cowles family generously agreed in April 2025 to donate the Spokesman-Review to the people of Spokane. The Cowleses also have pledged a $2 million matching grant to support the transition to the ownership of the nonprofit Comma Community Journalism Lab.
We are about one month away from the deadline to reach our fundraising goal.
This is a decisive moment. We have close to $300,000 left to raise to unlock the full $2 million match. Every dollar given to Comma before April 1 is doubled by the Cowles family. This is not a “someday” conversation. This is a “right-now” opportunity. It’s a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.
More importantly, this is a celebration, not an ask.
The support we’re seeing for local journalism is moving in ways you can’t even imagine. More than two newspapers are closing every week in this nation. And those communities didn’t know what that meant until they lost their newspaper.
That’s not going to happen in Spokane. Because of you.
Your support has done much more than begin the transition process of The Spokesman-Review to nonprofit ownership. Your support is making sure this local news organization will be healthy for years to come. At the center of all of this is the new Comma Community Journalism Lab, which will become the nonprofit operator of The Spokesman-Review once the transition is complete.
In the past few months we’ve been spreading the word about all of this at Northwest Passages events, movie nights, house parties, student performances, tours of the historic Spokesman-Review building and joyful celebrations of women leaders and Difference Makers who make Spokane better every day.
I’ve shared so many laughs, smiles and more than a few Red Bulls with many of you talking about what matters most to our community.
Since January, for example, we’ve hosted a sold-out Newspapers in the Movie Night at the Bing Theater with 750 readers and a special guest appearance from the Spokane Youth Symphony. We followed up with a Northwest Passages conversation with novelist Dean Koontz, one of the world’s best-selling authors, that brought more than a few members of the audience to tears.
In February, we filled our stage with young writers sharing their own writing with a packed house at the Montvale Center for the annual Black Voices Symposium. Two nights later, we hosted more than 700 readers for a sold-out evening with novelists David Guterson and Jess Walter at Gonzaga University.
This spring we’re looking forward to welcoming bestselling writer Shelby Van Pelt home to the Pacific Northwest to celebrate her bestselling “Remarkably Bright Creatures” as the film adaptation of her novel is set to stream on Netflix.
Our event this Wednesday with author Sue Aikens is almost sold out. At the Bing Theater. Do you know how big the Bing Theater is? This simply doesn’t happen in other communities, including those that have millions more people that we do.
That’s because this is what community looks like, Spokane style.
Local readers and business leaders have responded with donations ranging from $5 to $500,000, determined to make Comma and The Spokesman-Review sustainable for future generations.
At its core, Comma is a community-owned, nonpartisan nonprofit created to preserve and strengthen local news, starting with The Spokesman-Review. It’s how a community can own its local newspapers. We are building a media startup with a hybrid business model that blends reader revenue, advertising, philanthropy and community partnerships to sustain high-impact journalism and rebuild public trust in the press.
The Comma Community Journalism Lab will publish The Spokesman-Review as its flagship newspaper. The nonprofit has a teaching-hospital mission and we have forged partnerships with academic institutions across the region, including our local universities and colleges, and two local school districts, that go far beyond traditional internships. Students and teachers will be embedded in the Comma Lab year-round.
Comma also helped to bring back the Black Lens, a newspaper serving the region’s Black community. The Black Lens will not be the last community newspaper Comma helps bring back, as small-town weeklies that have been long gone are about to return to celebrate and look out for their neighbors.
Spokane has a history of doing things other communities could never even imagine. Bloomsday. Hoopfest. Expo ’74. A downtown that is still relevant. Local malls still brimming with shoppers. A mid-major college that behaves like one of basketball’s Blue Bloods. And a community that is taking over the ownership of its local, daily newspaper.
For the first time, we will own our community’s narrative. That is powerful stuff. It’s unprecedented. That’s exactly why every gift toward Comma is a heartfelt vote for this community.
I truly believe “community” is at the core of uniting us, realizing that we all have more in common than we are different. It is only together that we can sustain and strengthen our hometowns by understanding the importance of those who are documenting our living community’s history and always looking out for the truth. Together, we can carry this 140-year legacy forward.
The best part is that we are almost there, rising together – side by side – to ensure that the next chapter of The Spokesman-Review is its strongest yet.
When we are young and learning to read and write, we are taught that commas are different than periods. A period ends a sentence, but a comma tells you something else is still coming.
That’s one of the reasons we named our nonprofit Comma. Well, that and to confuse people in Boise.
I am kidding. That’s a little energy-drink-infused joke.
We are so close to seeing our community own its local newspaper that I only wish Owen was here to see it. He would have loved this so much. He knew what a local newspaper means to its community, and he gave all he could to make sure we stuck around.
Now you know why his gift from years ago mattered so much to me. It’s also why you will see Owen’s name in today’s list of all of those who want to make sure this newspaper is here for generations and generations.