League of Women Voters discusses local journalism

Kirk Boxleitner | Mar 24, 20220

The League of Women Voters of Mason County heard from a pair of veteran journalists on "The Decline of Local Journalism and Its Impact on Democracy" during its March 15 meeting.

Sally Carpenter Hale retired in 2019 after 40 years with The Associated Press, most recently as director of regional media for Pennsylvania, New York and New Jersey.

As the AP's bureau chief in New Jersey, she directed that state's coverage of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks and their aftermath.

Dee Anne Finken reported for the Fresno and Sacramento Bee newspapers early in her career, then worked for an extended stretch as a freelancer for the Oregonian.

She also taught and directed the journalism program at Clark College in Vancouver, Wash.

Since 2004, Finken said newspapers across the nation have lost 47% of their staff, and more than 1,800 newspapers have closed - one-quarter of the nation's total.

Finken said at least 200 counties, totaling 3 million residents among them, don't have a newspaper, while 1,500 counties have just one, usually a weekly, to cover between 1,000 to more than 1 million residents.

Of the surviving 7,200 newspapers, at least 1,000 are what Finken called "ghost newspapers," in that they're so damaged by cutbacks they produce little original reporting.

Finken and Hale's study has considered how these newspaper reductions have affected the areas of civic engagement, political polarization, political participation by voters and candidates, public finance and public health.

Hale said their study reviewed more than 400 articles, from the mainstream press and industry publications to "detailed scholarly research."

One of their first interviews was with Penny Abernathy, a former journalist at The Dallas Times-Herald, and later an executive at The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times.

When Abernathy became an educator in 2009 for the University of North Carolina, she began to study the effect of "news deserts" and delivered what Hale deemed "a handful of highly regarded reports" that "painted a really difficult picture of the industry" and how its decline harms communities.

Hale also cited University of Illinois' Robert McChesney, who hosts the "Media Matters" weekly radio program and has written several books about the ties between the media and democracy.

Finken touted the number of studies they had examined, from Portland State University's Lee Shaker on "Dead Newspapers and Citizens' Civic Engagement," the Pew Research Center's "Civic Engagement Strongly Tied to News Habits," and the University of Washington's Jake Grumbach on "Laboratories of Democratic Backsliding."

Other studies drew connections between "the Endangered Local Watchdog" and mayoral elections in the United States, and between newspaper closures and polarized voting behavior.

Although Finken has read reports suggesting this newspaper decline affects public health outcomes, she conceded that "establishing a key study on that front has been difficult."

To localize these findings to Washington, Finken and Hale's study has conducted interviews with academic faculty and researchers within the state, on communications and journalism, political science, economics and public health.

Other study interviews have covered government officials, from public health directors in Kittitas and Spokane counties, to the state treasurer and attorney general, plus elections personnel.

Civic leaders interviewed included the executive director of Fix Democracy First, while the journalists interviewed were reporters, editors and publishers at dozens of news operations, including The Associated Press, McClatchy Newspapers, Sound Publishing, The Seattle Times, The Spokesman-Review, The Columbian, startups, nonprofits and the Capitol Bureau in Olympia.

"We're currently interviewing representatives of newspapers serving communities of color," Hale said. "Because we can't pinpoint any Washington-centric studies, we're looking for people close to these issues to get their insights."

Overwhelmingly, what Hale has heard from those sources is that Washington is seeing "significant" declines in the staffing levels of its news organizations and considerable reductions in its newspapers' coverage, frequencies of print publication and numbers of pages dedicated to Washington news. According to Finken, staffing levels fell 67% at Washington newspapers from 2005 to 2020.

Hale and Finken's study surveyed four Washington newspapers - the Bellingham Herald, the Ellensburg Herald, The Spokesman-Review and The News Tribune in Tacoma - comparing their page counts on a given Sunday in 2004 to the same date in 2020.

"In nearly all the cases, the papers featured half as many pages, although their prices were usually doubled," Finken said.

Although Finken noted Washington has not experienced the levels of newspaper closures as other states, it has sustained some significant losses, including the Kent Journal in South King County and The Seattle Post-Intelligencer.

"One Washington county doesn't have a publication of its own, but it's served by a newspaper across the border in Idaho," Finken said.

Finken has observed optimism over the growth of nonprofits, such as in Gig Harbor, and expansions by Sound Publishing, but she's also heard concerns from folks who anticipate the worst is yet to come.

Finken said other remedies being considered include legislative action, the evolution of print publications into more online-centric media, philanthropic efforts, community partnerships, Free Press initiatives and organizations including Report for America, which she likened to a "Peace Corps for journalism," to supply reporters to newspapers that can provide half of their income in exchange for covering areas of "great need."

"News operations have an impact on our communities and have also been slow to adapt to society's changes and the marketplace," Finken said. "Likely scenarios for the future include more reductions in print and greater online growth."