Olympia bureau plan fizzles, press freedom questions loom

A wave of newly elected officials are heading to Olympia but it's unclear how much news coverage and scrutiny they'll receive from Washington's depleted Capitol press corps.

Plans for a new Olympia bureau to fill the growing void in state government news coverage fizzled.

As I first reported in September , press organizations were planning to launch a four-person bureau later this year. It would have provided stories to newspapers and TV and radio broadcasters starting in the Legislature's 2025 session.

The model was the Illinois Press Foundation's Capitol News Illinois.

Funding would mostly come from the Washington State Association of Broadcasters. But its board declined to underwrite the bureau and a bureau chief.

"When we looked at the investment and revenue sources everyone felt like let's give it a while," said Glenn Johnson, board secretary/treasurer.

WSAB CEO Keith Shipman declined to comment.

Fewer than a dozen full-time reporters were left covering the state Capitol this year and three recently took other jobs.

We'll see in January how many are there when the new governor, legislators and others take office.

But it won't be nearly enough to watchdog and report on a government with a nearly $72 billion biennial budget, looming revenue challenges and an array of controversial policies affecting the state's 8 million residents.

Washington State University's Murrow College was planning to place three reporters at the new Olympia bureau, including a two-year Murrow Fellow and two six-month interns.

The fellows, mostly early career journalists, are funded by the state but report independently under the management of news organizations where they are placed.

Without a bureau chief to manage and mentor staff, WSU chose not to place a fellow there, Ben Shors, Murrow's journalism chair, told me.

"We're not going to have a two-year fellow in Olympia right now because we want to have that infrastructure in place if we're going to send somebody there for two years," he said.

Instead, WSU will place three six-month fellows in Olympia for the upcoming legislative session. One will work at the Washington State Standard, a subsidiary of North Carolina-based nonprofit States Newsroom.

A second fellow will be a television reporter co-located at the nonprofit, public-affairs broadcaster TVW. The third will be a radio reporter, Shors said.

WSU and the University of Washington also send interns to Olympia to help news organizations cover the Legislature. But Shors said it's getting harder to find news organizations willing or able to fund the internships.

"We used to send three but it's usually one or two now," he said.

Since the state demolished two houses used by the press corps it's hard to find a place for interns to work, not to mention the challenge of securing short-term housing.

Even so, press trade groups haven't completely abandoned the idea of creating a news bureau for their members.

Rowland Thompson, executive director of Allied Daily Newspapers of Washington and a lobbyist for the broadcasters' group, said they may try again next fall.

Oregonian returning to broadsheet: I was concerned that The Oregonian newspaper might stop printing altogether, after the chain that owns it announced plans to stop printing its dailies in New Jersey.

New York-based Advance Publications announced last week that it will stop printing The Star-Ledger and other New Jersey papers in early 2025.

Advance earlier cut The Oregonian down to a tabloid-sized paper and reduced its print frequency. It currently prints on Wednesdays, Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays.

Then on Oct. 31 the paper announced plans to "shift print editions from a compact size back to a traditional broadsheet format."

Subscribers will see a bigger paper but not necessarily more Oregon news.

The announcement said the amount of content "will remain about the same" and the change is being made partly to better utilize supplements, like comics, and features shared across the Advance chain.

A broadsheet format also works better with a new online platform the company is launching in January, John Maher, regional president and publisher, said in the release .

Editor Therese Bottomly noted that this will coincide with the paper's 175th anniversary in 2025.

"I love the idea of commemorating that milestone in our classic format," she said in the release.

Urging Trump to support press freedom: Reporters Without Borders called on President-elect Donald Trump to "turn a page on press freedom," after demonizing the media during his campaign.

"Rather than doubling down on the hostility he has espoused towards the media so far, Trump should take the opportunity instead to repair the domestic press freedom climate and reposition the United States as a global leader in press freedom."

That would make America even greater and help uphold the president's oath to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution . But I'm not holding my breath.

This is excerpted from the free, weekly Voices for a Free Press newsletter. , st.news/SavetheFreePress .