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American journalism today is a constant experiment, and its very existence seems to be at stake. This time, Kitsap Sun is included.
Earlier this week, we learned that we will be participating in a new program called the Murrow Fellowship. The fellowship, named after Washington State University alumnus and legendary broadcaster Edward R. Murrow, is part of a legislative effort to strengthen local news coverage in this context. There will be eight journalists in the digital and print newsroom. We need it now more than ever. And we will be one of them.
We are partnering with a new digital newsroom called Gig Harbor Now, a nonprofit organization founded in January 2021 and now led by Vince Dice, former Kitsap Sun newsroom editor. According to program organizers, Vince and I wrote a joint proposal for the Murrow Fellowship, which was selected from a pool of approximately 40 applicants. Our fellows have an anticipated start date of April 1st, with announcements expected in the coming weeks. This member focuses on issues that are of interest to our readers and where we see a need for deeper reporting: how the issues are connected. The effects of addiction, mental health, and health care (and their toll) are being felt throughout the West Sound community of Kitsap County and Gig Harbor.
Murrow Fellows will be based in the Bremerton newsroom and work collaboratively with the Sun and Gig Harbor Now to write stories that are locally applicable or connect issues of interest to each community. Some of the stories were born closer to our home base, and some were born in her GHN home base in Pierce County. This reporter will actually work for two years with us officially through WSU’s Murrow College of Communications and will be employed by Washington State University, but for two local news organizations. I will answer this editorially.
This editorial independence also applies to the program’s origins in Olympia. The state Legislature created the program in 2023 and provided $2.3 million in funding, but there is no formal channel for governing lawmakers other than to report on the program’s projected success. We hope we can be a part of that too. And this will be a path to bring more local reporting back to communities like ours that desperately need more people on the streets to report the news.
“We see this program as a small but important part of maintaining the state’s news infrastructure until financial instability for news organizations subsides,” said Ben Scholl, Murrow’s chairman of journalism and media production. “We are considering it,” he said in a news release. “Over the past eight months, we have spoken to dozens of news organizations, journalists and community leaders, and the response has been somber. From urban centers to rural areas, we rely on trusted local information. It is clear that we need it.”
Other Murrow Fellows include the Tacoma News Tribune, Longview Chinook Observer, Tri-City Herald, Vancouver Columbian and Longview Daily News (co-sponsor), Wenatchee World and Northwest Placed in Daily News (co-sponsor), Yakima Herald. Republic and El Sol de Yakima (co-sponsor), Spokane Public Radio and The Spokesman-Review (co-sponsor), and stations KHQ (Spokane) and KNDU (Tri-Cities/Yakima). If you would like to read the full list of suggestions, click here.
I mentioned this idea in a column just over a year ago, as a proposal sponsored by Sen. Karen Kaiser, a Des Moines Democrat and former journalist herself, was making its way through the budget process. . I wrote about my belief that spending like this is helpful in the present. More local reporters means more local stories. And in the future, everything we can do to understand how precarious our situation is and continue to train the next generation of journalists is important. Your local news – maybe. Now that the pleasant shock of being selected for the Murrow Fellowship has subsided, I have a thought that I admit I don’t often say, but that I feel strongly about right now. It’s Go Cougs.
David Nelson has been editor of the Kitsap Sun since 2009. Contact him at david.nelson@kitsapsun.com.
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