We’re getting ready for GivingTuesday, which is coming up on Dec. 3.
While The Columbian remains a for-profit business, an important part of our local journalism is funded by gifts to our Community Funded Journalism program. Generous donors — we have several hundred, large and small — have made donations to the Local Media Foundation, a nonprofit group that supports journalism, in the name of The Columbian. We can then bill the foundation for the direct cost of supporting four reporters — currently Alexis Weisend, Mia Ryder-Marks, Chrissy Booker and Shari Phiel — covering topics including affordable housing, homelessness, charities and social services, and the environment. None of the money goes to support The Columbian’s profit margin. It all has to be spent on news gathering.
Since launching this program two years ago, it’s been a force multiplier for us. We’ve been able to bring you hundreds and hundreds of local stories that otherwise would go untold.
Web Editor Amy Libby plans to highlight a number of those stories on GivingTuesday. And GivingTuesday also falls within our plan to give everyone free and unlimited access to www.columbian.com for a few days around Thanksgiving. Of course, we’ll also be asking readers to support our CFJ program, but on that day, no one will have to pay to access our content.
If you aren’t familiar with GivingTuesday, its organizers describe it as “a global generosity movement unleashing the power of radical generosity.”
A number of nonprofits doing important work in Clark County also participate in GivingTuesday, so please consider supporting as many of us as you can.
Election endorsements
Toward the end of October, there was a national dust-up when the billionaire publishers of The Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times chose not to endorse a candidate for president. In keeping with our practice in 2020, The Columbian didn’t either.
Although we got some heat, I still think it was the right decision. Our local editorial board had no special insight on the candidates or a chance to ask questions specific to our region. And, on a more practical note, I think voters already had their minds made up. An editorial in The Columbian wasn’t going to affect their decision. Either you see Donald Trump as morally unfit to lead a great nation, or you admire his combativeness and think he was unfairly treated. There isn’t much middle ground!
But it’s hard for voters to take enough time to thoroughly investigate state and local candidates and issues. Who should be the insurance commissioner? What did Stephanie McClintock accomplish in her first term in the Legislature? Why are all these city and county charter amendments on the ballot?
That is where our editorial board worked hard on providing endorsements. We interviewed the candidates, read and discussed the initiatives and amendments, then made our recommendations. I heard from a lot of readers that they really appreciated this.
So how did we do? Although a couple of races may come down to a recount, as of Thursday, voters went along with our endorsements 30 times, and differed from us eight times. Half of those differences were at the state level, including public lands commissioner (we endorsed local candidate Republican Jaime Herrera Beutler), a Supreme Court justice (we endorsed the more conservative choice) and two ballot measures (we opposed the natural gas measure, which passed after a heavy TV ad campaign in the Seattle area, and favored the long-term care initiative, which was rejected).
Of course, it doesn’t matter if you agreed or disagreed with our endorsements. We just wanted you to be able to cast an informed vote.
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