WSU study documents WA’s news ecosystem

A new study of Washington’s news ecosystem found two counties with zero local news outlets and five with only one.

That suggests more of the state is becoming a news desert, since previous tallies found just one of Washington’s 39 counties in that situation.

The study, led by researchers at Washington State University’s Murrow College of Communication, provides useful data on the number of places Washingtonians may find news and information.

But it falls short of documenting the state of local journalism because it lacks detail on how much and where original reporting is being done.

That may sound persnickety, but it’s important to distinguish who is actually doing this work, especially as states like Washington and countries like the U.S. consider policies to stop the decline of local news reporting.

The WSU report does address the loss of local reporting and its implications, and notes the dire situation for remaining news outlets. It includes a survey of news outlets that found nearly half have budgets under $250,000 “which indicates a limited capacity to produce news.”

But I question some of its definitions and methodology, which led to perplexing conclusions.

For instance, the report concluded that the Seattle area has a relatively scarcity of news compared to some less populous parts of the state.

That’s because the study counted the number of news outlets relative to each county’s population but didn’t factor in the number of journalists per outlet.

So yes, King County has fewer news outlets per capita (104) than Wahkiakum County (2). But King County is home to most of the state’s journalists and the output of original reporting is far higher in Seattle than in Cathlamet.

The WSU report laudably tried to be inclusive and capture new places people find information.

The lead researcher, WSU Assistant Professor Jennifer Henrichsen, said they “were trying to be very expansive in what we covered … whereas we do adhere to this idea of ‘original and journalistic,’ we also wanted to be careful not to exclude outlets if they didn’t adhere to, like, Western norms of journalism.”

That led to a very generous definition of what’s a local news outlet. To be considered journalistic, an outlet had to produce just one substantial piece of original content per month.

Even so, I found several outlets in the report that appeared to produce no recent, original reporting.

That included websites that mirrored work done elsewhere by radio stations or simply published essays submitted by the community. Also counted were newsletters and channels operated by government, including tribal and city governments.

As a result, WSU found many more “news outlets” than expected, with 353 meeting its criteria.

For comparison, a journalism grant program under consideration in the Legislature is expected to benefit around 200 outlets. It’s designed to preserve newsroom jobs at news outlets with full-time journalists.

Of course there’s value in researching all the places people find news and information, especially as traditional news organizations dwindle and do less reporting.

WSU found 1,092 online sources in Washington state, before applying its criteria for journalistic sources.

“News” is everywhere, thanks to the internet, social media and the ease of online publishing.

But that proliferation masks the decline of local journalism that’s left more than 70 million Americans with little to no local, original reporting on their communities, per earlier news desert reporting.

This muddling was evident in Wednesday’s congressional hearing on federal funding of the public broadcasters NPR and PBS.

U.S. Rep. James Comer, a Kentucky Republican, said there’s no need to continue funding public radio because “there’s a whole menu of media options now.”

The web generates so much noise, it’s hard to tell the signal is fading.

Even so, there’s little disagreement that the decline of local journalism is a problem needing attention.

WSU’s report is part of a wave of research into news ecosystems, including similar studies in other states.

They build on landmark research that began a decade ago at the University of North Carolina to document the decline of local newspapers and the spread of news deserts. It used teams of students to analyze content and whether outlets were producing credible and comprehensive reporting. That’s the journalism that holds government and institutions accountable, deeply informs voters and binds communities.

That quantified how much local journalism was fading because of economic and technological disruption and consolidation. It also spurred public and philanthropic interventions to help save local news.

But that project, now done at Northwestern University, drew critics in recent years who thought it missed places that people find news and had other gaps.

I’m all for the next generation of research into this issue. The news industry and how people are informed are evolving, with big consequences for civic engagement, political civility and democracy. More information is better.

But what’s particularly needed now are studies that quantify how many journalists are doing original reporting at independent news outlets with professional standards.

That’s hard, especially with modern publishing technologies. It’s easy for news outlets to create a virtual presence in a community, with newspapers, broadcasts, websites and newsletters produced remotely with few if any local reporters. Chain newspapers have done this for years, producing “ghost newspapers.”

Lately AI is being used by opportunistic entrepreneurs to create faux news organizations using purloined stories and made-up newspaper names.

Henrichsen said the WSU report is hopefully the first of several phases, and the project gathered some staffing data that’s still being analyzed. She’s also part of a coalition of academics working to improve research into the study of local news ecosystems.

Maybe I’m jumping the gun with my critique, or just wishing for something different.

WSU provided a useful baseline of where Washingtonians may find local news and information.

What’s still needed, though, is more detail on the endangered species that must be saved — local news outlets doing comprehensive, original journalism — and not just a report on the ecosystem’s breadth of wildlife.