“Whenever the people are well informed, they can be trusted with their own government; that whenever things get so far wrong as to attract their notice, they may be relied on to set them to rights.”
—Thomas Jefferson letter to Richard Price, January 8, 1789
Shrinking newsrooms across Washington need more reporters covering local government, the environment, marginalized communities, and other important beats.
To bolster the gap in local news, Washington state lawmakers set aside funding for the Murrow News Fellowship, a creative program from the Edward R. Murrow College of Communication at Washington State University. Now the first group of 16 reporters are working in newsrooms statewide.
The stories they produce are available to any news outlet to use free of charge, whether broadcast, print, digital, or radio. Another two to three fellows will cover the 2025 legislative session in Olympia, supplementing a dwindling statehouse press corps.
Murrow News Fellows are recent graduates of journalism programs or are early-career journalists.
Questen Inghram is the latter; he graduated from Western Washington University five years ago. As a Murrow News Fellow he’s covering several city governments for the Yakima Herald-Republic and focusing on water and agriculture issues.
“I just feel so lucky,” he says, noting the ongoing training offered to Murrow Fellows as part of the program. “I have a job where I learn every day, and I’m in a peer group where we’re going to be learning even more.”
Monica Carrillo-Casas is one of a handful of participants whose fellowship is shared by two newsrooms, in her case the Spokesman-Review and Spokane Public Radio. She covers rural communities that have increasingly become news deserts. “To be able to go out to these communities, talk to them, connect with them and see what’s going on … having these fellows all over the state really helps bridge that gap,” she says.
Reneé Dìaz, who works for the Wenatchee World and Northwest Public Broadcasting, focuses on Latino communities, among other beats. “I knew I wanted to work in communities I’m passionate about, and the Murrow Fellowship gave me a head start,” she says.
The Murrow News Fellowship also produced a report detailing Washington’s news ecosystem, which now includes traditional media outlets, nonprofit news sites, and less reputable sites peddling misinformation and disinformation.
The Murrow News Fellowship isn’t a cure for the struggling news industry, but it’s a step in the right direction, says Ben Shors, program director and journalism and media production chair at the Murrow College.
“This is a significant investment in Washington’s news infrastructure at a critical juncture for journalism,” Shors says. “From urban centers to rural communities, the need for reliable local information is clear. Our responsibility is to ensure good stewardship of this program, to engage with reporters, editors, and publishers, and to direct a program with the flexibility to be responsive to a rapidly evolving media landscape.”
With a century-old business model upended by the Internet, newspapers have closed and newsrooms have been hollowed out. Local news, in particular, has been hard-hit.
“We need informed voters; we need engaged community members,” Shors says. “For us this is not just a journalism crisis, it’s a democracy issue.”
The model can be replicated elsewhere, in all kinds of communities. From WSU’s standpoint, it aligns with the university’s mission.
Says Shors, “This is land-grant university work we’re doing, in service to the state of Washington.”