An extraordinary effort to save local journalism in the Yakima Valley, backed by Microsoft and local supporters, is taking off this year.
The Yakima Free Press campaign aims to raise at least $1 million annually for several years to sustain and grow essential news coverage as the local-news business evolves. If successful, that will start with adding four reporters at the Yakima Herald-Republic newspaper, which will provide free online access to their stories.
A group of local leaders is working with the Herald-Republic and the Yakima Valley Community Foundation to raise the funds. Donations go to the foundation, which will provide grants to support the local news ecosystem.
Kristin Kershaw Snapp, a member of a longtime Yakima farming family who until recently chaired the foundation board, said the local newspaper is “an essential part of a community. When you lose that you lose all kinds of things. Not only is the community worse off, the country is worse off. I don’t think any of us want to see that.”
For Microsoft, the Yakima campaign expands a company initiative to sustain journalism, which it sees as both a civic duty and a way to support communities and democracies where its products are sold.
Microsoft President Brad Smith last year wrote about the foundational role of local news outlets and said their precipitous decline “is a defining issue of our time that goes to the heart of our democratic freedoms.”
The Yakima project stands out among a flurry of recent efforts to revive local news coverage, most of which are focused on metro areas. It seeks to provide quality coverage in a largely rural and diverse region with above-average poverty.
While the entire country is suffering from a journalism crisis, rural and poorer communities are especially hard hit. They particularly need the local advocacy and increased civic engagement that local news provides.
Yakima’s project is focused on building reporting capacity, generating a critical mass of local support and broadening access to essential news and information. Microsoft is providing $250,000 to continue its previous support and help launch the Yakima campaign.
After the four reporters are hired, the plan is to hire a parallel team of bilingual reporters to produce stories in Spanish as well as English. The Yakima Herald-Republic also publishes a Spanish edition called El Sol.
For context, four reporters is comparable to or larger than the reporting teams at many of the “ghost” papers now operating in much of the country. These are outlets barely covering their communities after being eviscerated by the industry’s contraction and consolidation by extractive Wall Street firms.
“It’s a very tough business,” said Corey Corr, who is involved with the project. “But the transmission of ideas, debate, information, even advertising, is vital to an informed society.”
Brier Dudley is editor of The Seattle Times Save the Free Press Initiative. bdudley@seattletimes.com
