Washington State University may halve or even cancel the state’s fledgling journalism fellowship program because the Legislature slashed its funding.
I hope they don’t give up and explore different options first.
The situation presents an opportunity to collaborate with local news outlets on ways to improve and extend the fellowship program. Making it more independent, and less tethered to WSU, is worth exploring.
There’s a short menu of ways that states can help sustain local news coverage that’s a public good and essential to democracy.
Fellowships are perhaps the easiest of these options. They bolster the local news industry and provide job training to recent college graduates.
Washington’s fellowship program was envisioned as a way to restore civic news coverage that voters and residents need. It’s modeled on a larger program in California that’s also facing budget uncertainty.
Starting in early 2024, WSU placed 16 early career journalists at local news outlets around the state for two-year terms. It also placed two legislative correspondents in Olympia this year.
The state initially provided $2.4 million. That included $800,000 to ramp up in year one and $1.6 million in year two for ongoing operations. It sought $3 million for the next two years.
Last month Democratic budget writers cut the annual funding by half as they scrounged for money to keep growing state government. A Republican budget proposal continued the funding but was rejected.
I asked House Appropriations Chair Timm Ormsby, a Spokane Democrat, to comment but he didn’t respond before my deadline.
Remaining funding of $1.5 million will run out in about a year so there’s not enough to hire the next cohort of eight Murrow Fellows, Ben Shors, journalism chair at WSU’s Murrow School, told me last Thursday.
WSU will seek additional funding in the supplemental budget drafted in the next legislative session “or look hard at closing the program at that point,” Shors said.
This week Shors was less dire. He said the school wants to continue the program, with fewer fellows if necessary with a smaller budget.
“If we get the funding we want to run the program but will have to make changes,” he said Wednesday.
Shors said the program is trimming ancillary spending, including funding for research into Washington’s news ecosystem.
Altogether program costs were going to be roughly $1.5 million in its second year, including research, a program director, fellow salaries and expenses.
“Now that’s what we’ve been allocated for two years. That will be essentially gone in a little over a year,” he said.
I asked Gov. Bob Ferguson on Tuesday, during a meeting with The Seattle Times editorial board, about restoring the fellowship’s funding. He said it could be restored next year depending on “where our economy is going.”
“We’ve spoken before about journalism, the future of journalism, so I’m obviously quite supportive,” he said. “And that’s what supplementals are for, is to reevaluate and take a look and see what got left out or what needs to be restored, or what might need to be cut again.”
Former state Sen. Karen Keiser, a Des Moines Democrat who secured the fellowship’s initial funding in 2023, is talking to local-journalism advocates about how to make the program whole.
“A letter has gone in to the governor asking him to veto that particular cut,” she said. “It’s such a modest amount of money, it really is budget dust in the literal sense.”
If funding isn’t restored, the university should work with news publishers on ways to make the most of what remains, rather than kill the fellowship.
Some outlets may be able to share the cost of employing fellows. Private funders may also be able to help cover costs. That would probably require more flexibility than the current approach, in which fellows are hired as state employees with fixed salaries ($55,000) administered through Pullman.
Ferguson said he also supports another journalism proposal, to tax large tech companies that benefit from news content and distribute proceeds to local news outlets. The vehicle to do that, Senate Bill 5400, died late in the session but Ferguson favors trying again next year.
“There seems to be the interest in it for sure, so, and, that’s one I’m happy to sort of engage in and see if we can be helpful on as well,” he said.
The governor was more vague about what he’ll do with Senate Bill 5814, a hodgepodge of last-minute taxes the Legislature imposed last month. It includes a tax on advertising that indirectly affects news outlets and is likely to end up in court. It also substantially increases taxes on tech companies, making it far harder to pass a journalism bill like 5400 next year.
“There may be a piece of it I may not like but I’m not able to go take out the whole section, if that makes sense,” Ferguson said, adding that it’s “too soon to say” what he’ll do with 5814.
Meanwhile, Murrow Fellows continue churning out local news stories for 22 news outlets. They produced 1,328 stories in the program’s first year, according to WSU’s tally.
“It’s been so great,” Questen Inghram, a fellow covering Lower Yakima Valley communities for the Yakima Herald-Republic, told me. “I’m like five years out of college and I’d been desperate to get something like this and it feels great to be hitting the pavement.”
Enjoy it, and the local news reporting, while it lasts.
This is excerpted from the free, weekly Voices for a Free Press newsletter. Sign up to receive it at the Save the Free Press website, st.news/SavetheFreePress. Seattle Times’ Brier Dudley is the editor of the Free Press Initiative, which aims to inform the public about issues facing newspapers, local news coverage, and a free press. You can learn more about the Free Press Initiative, or sign up for a newsletter, at https://company.seattletimes.com/save-the-free-press/.
