My first column for the Enumclaw Courier-Herald (ECH) was printed on April 18, 2012. I had written letters to the editor before then about Enumclaw Fire District #28 and in support of annexing the Enumclaw library into the King County Library System. That measure won by only 34 votes.

I’ve been writing on a weekly basis since then, going on eleven years now. In that time a lot has changed at the paper. In the beginning, there were ten employees listed, including the publisher. Dennis Box was the editor. There were two advertising sales representatives, one office coordinator, two reporters and three production staff.

The Enumclaw Courier-Herald is now owned by Sound Publishing, the largest community news organization in Washington state and Alaska, serving about 3.5 million readers in print and online.

Today, the ECH consists of editor Ray Miller-Still, an advertising director, one half-time reporter (who is transitioning to the Federal Way Mirror), and the classified advertising agent. That makes three-and-a-half employees, less than half of what it was in 2012 (and the advertising director doesn’t work full time out of the local office).

When I started to write, the ECH office was located on Cole Street. Today that space is filled by the Cole Street Brewery. The ECH is now located around the corner on Myrtle in a much smaller office.

The ECH used to cover an area that encompassed Black Diamond, Enumclaw, Buckley, Bonney Lake, and Sumner. Today it only includes Enumclaw and Buckley.

What has happened to the ECH is symptomatic of a nation-wide trend. According to The Week’s January 27, 2023 column entitled “The Demise of Local News”, “The U.S. is losing newspapers at the rate of more than two a week, at a steep cost to our communities—and our democracies.” A large number of Americans—70 million— now live in what the article called “a news desert”—where there is no local news.

The reason this is happening is because readers have shifted to online news. The effect of this is that advertising revenue now goes to Google, Facebook, and other sites. Nationwide, newspaper revenue fell from $49 billion in 2006 to $14 billion in 2018. At that point, Wall Street hedge funds and other speculators swooped in, buying up papers at discounted prices. They drastically cut staff and sold off assets to gain short-term profits. Today, “Half of the daily newspapers are now owned by hedge funds, private equity firms, and other investment companies, according to a Financial Times analysis.”

In some towns, such as Pottstown, PA, and Vallejo, CA, there is only one reporter.

Newspapers help bind communities together, encourage citizen engagement, and tell taxpayers how their taxes are being used. According to the Week’s article, “Studies have shown that communities without local news have lower voter engagement and social cohesion and few candidates running for local offices. One study suggested that a lack of local news contributes to political polarization and intense partisanship.”

We see this problem with the recent U.S. House election of New York representative George Santos who has admitted publicly that he blatantly lied on his resume to get elected. A small local paper on Long Island, The North Shore Leader, broke the news before the election, but major news outlets didn’t pick the story up until after Santos had already been elected.

It’s clear that new business models and greater funding for both print and online additions are needed to reverse this trend. Some groups have arisen that work to reach out to those “news deserts”.

Two bills are before the Washington State Legislature: Senate Bill 5199 and its companion House Bill 1266 proposes to exempt Washington news outlets from the Business and Occupation Tax, saving money and jobs.

We are fortunate to still have a local newspaper, but as you see by following the Enumclaw Courier-Herald’s recent history, our newspaper and others like it around the nation have become “endangered species”. Perhaps it’s time for the state and/or federal government to step in to save them like it did for the Bald Eagle, our national symbol. The survival of our rights and freedoms — our democracy — hangs in the balance.