It hasn’t yet nailed down a location but the new Olympia news bureau already has additional reporters on the way.
Washington’s broadcasting and newspaper trade groups are creating the bureau to provide state-government coverage, which has dwindled as local news outlets and wire services downsized in recent years.
As I reported earlier this month, the groups are expecting to launch the bureau in December and have a staff of four journalists covering the Legislature when it convenes in January.
One is planned to be a Murrow Fellow, placed through a state-funded news fellowship operated by Washington State University’s Murrow College.
WSU has since agreed to provide two additional, temporary reporters, using leftover funds in the fellowship’s $2.4 million biennial budget.
The school plans to hire two journalists for six-month internships at the bureau, extending across legislative sessions. They will be paid the same monthly salary as Murrow Fellows, who receive $55,000 per year, according to Jody Brannon, the fellowship program manager.
“We actually had a plethora of candidates who we have interviewed as we settled on the most recent cohort of fellows,” Brannon said. “We’re hoping that some of those would be interested because they’ve already been interviewed and vetted though anyone of course would be welcome to apply.”
Journalists at the bureau will report to an independent bureau chief, who has yet to be hired. Ideally interns will bring the staff to six, though they could end up filling one or two previously planned spots as the bureau gets started.
Funding for the bureau is primarily coming from the Washington State Association of Broadcasters. It’s creating the bureau along with Allied Daily Newspapers of Washington, with plans for the bureau’s journalism to be shared with the associations’ members.
Allied is working with state administrators to find a location for the bureau in the Capitol.
Digital site buying paper, cutting print: Arlington, Va., digital news company Local News Now acquired a local weekly newspaper, the Gazette Leader, and will discontinue its print editions.
Two staff members of the paper are joining Local News Now and will write for its ARLnow and FFXnow online news sites, the Gazette Leader reports.
The paper was sold by O’Rourke Media Group, an Arizona company that publishes 50 outlets across the U.S. It launched the Gazette Leader last year to replace another failed weekly in the Arlington area, which had a local daily paper until 1998, per ARLnow’s report on the sale. ARLnow launched in 2010 and serves the Arlington and Falls Church areas.
U.K. publisher on antitrust: The U.S. antitrust crackdown on Google and new competition regulations in the U.K. are a reset opportunity for news publishers. But they must be more engaged in the process, Rich Caccappolo, CEO of Daily Mail publisher DMG Media, said at a Press Gazette conference in London.
“We’re going to see new browsers, new search engines, new ad servers. And those of us in the space who have traffic are going to be key partners for these new initiatives. This is a chance to fix a lot of things that are bad in our space,” said Caccappolo, according to Press Gazette’s report.
This is excerpted from the free, weekly Voices for a Free Press newsletter. Sign up to receive it at the Save the Free Press website, st.news/SavetheFreePress. Seattle Times’ Brier Dudley is the editor of the Free Press Initiative, which aims to inform the public about issues facing newspapers, local news coverage, and a free press. You can learn more about the Free Press Initiative, or sign up for a newsletter, at https://company.seattletimes.com/save-the-free-press/.
