Editorial: Continue discussion on local journalism support

Published 1:30 am Tuesday, January 27, 2026

By The Herald Editorial Board

For a decade, the Medill School of Journalism has charted the expansion of “news deserts” in the United States and — looking at some 20 years of data — now counts 213 counties in the U.S. without a single local source of reporting, be that newspapers, websites or radio or television stations. And even those communities that have such sources of local journalism are becoming more “arid” as they lose outlets and remaining publications see newsroom staffing significantly reduced.

Almost 40 percent of all local U.S. newspapers have vanished in the two-decade period, leaving 50 million Americans with limited or no access to a reliable source of local news, the school’s most recent report found. And newspapers continue to disappear at the same rate as in 2024, with more than 130 closed in 2025.

While the Medill report sees some hope in the growth of digital news sites, it hasn’t been enough to slake the continuing drought.

“Meanwhile,” the report continues, “the journalism industry faces new and intensified challenges including: shrinking circulation and steep losses of revenue from changes to search and the adoption of AI technologies, while political attacks against public broadcasters threaten to leave large swaths of rural America without local news.”

There was more than a flicker of hope seen for local journalism in Washington state last year with a proposal by state Sen. Marko Liias, D-Edmonds; legislation that sought to establish a grant fund to support local journalism outlets, helping sustain salaries and hire additional staff to better cover civic affairs in those communities.

The legislation, Senate Bill 5400, would have establish a business and occupation tax surcharge of 1.22 percent on social media platforms and search engines with revenues of $5 million or more — which benefit from their use of locally produced content and for which no compensation is provided to publications — to fund a grant program to be administered by the state Department of Commerce to support employment of journalists at local newspapers and online and broadcast outlets covering civic affairs in under-served communities.

The legislation had hearings before the chamber’s labor and commerce and ways and means committees, but did not advance to the Senate floor during last year’s session.

At the same time, the state also had seen success with a program the Legislature created in 2023 that established the Murrow News Fellowship, administered by Washington State University, which currently has placed 16 journalism fellows at news outlets throughout the state. Supported through the state’s general fund, the program was threatened with closure last year, but secured funding to continue through the fall of this year.

The state budget woes that threatened the program last year are back again this year, with state lawmakers scraping to fill holes, and with more than the usual selection of vital programs making pitches to preserve or restore funding cut last year or threatened with cuts this year.

Noting those concerns, WSU wasn’t expected to ask legislators to extend funding for the news fellowship program beyond this year, The Seattle Times’ Brier Dudley reported in November, even as the former state lawmaker who sponsored the legislation, Sen. Karen Keiser, said she was working with the state chapter of the League of Women Voters to remind lawmakers of its successes in holding back the news desert by expanding reporting and training journalists.

Liias hasn’t given up on his legislation either. In an interview at the start of the session this month, Liias told The Herald Editorial Board that he would reintroduce the legislation for further consideration this session.

“We’re trying to get another public hearing on it and keep the issue in front of folks,” Liias said.

Also campaigning for a reconsideration of Liias’ legislation are Brenda Mann-Harrison, president-elect for the Snohomish County LWV chapter, and league member Julie Titone. Titone is a former Herald reporter who covered environmental issues. Mann-Harrison served as journalism development director for The Herald.

Both see an opportunity in Liias’ bill to fulfill its mission while also continuing support and even expanding the reach of the Murrow Fellowship, named for broadcast journalist Edward R. Murrow who grew up in Skagit County and graduated from WSU.

While the bill has yet to be officially amended from what was proposed last year, Mann-Harrison and Titone, who have met with stakeholders to the bill, said it now would use a portion of the program’s revenue to support and eventually expand the Murrow fellowship.

“The hope is that going forward there would be a Murrow fellow in every county in the state,” Titone said during an interview last week.

The other benefit to Liias’ bill, both said — noting the state’s budget crunch — is that it wouldn’t require funding through the state’s general fund. The surcharge would tax national search engine and social media sites, which from the start have been using the content lifted from local news publications, then sold advertising using that content without sharing that revenue with the content providers.

Last year, during hearings for SB 5400, advocates for technology companies said the legislation was based on what they called the false premise that social media outlets and search engines were responsible for the financial problems of local news outets; noting the decline of print journalism began before the rapid growth of the internet in the mid-1990s, and adding that news outlets voluntarily share content on social media and through search engines.

We’ll repeat what we said last year, that the roots of local journalism’s decline do have a long list of contributing factors, but that the rise of internet, search engines and social media sites have exacerbated those issues.

More recently the growth in those companies’ use of artificial intelligence — as Medill cited — has broadened the distance between the content from which tech giants are benefiting and those who produced that content. Where once the tech companies could say that the links they provided back to the original source of news were fair compensation in themselves, now AI scrapes that content, condenses and interprets it — not always accurately — then packages and posts it at the top of search results without a direct link to the original source of the news.

In a 60-day session — especially one where the focus is predominately on budget and tax issues — time is understandably short for lawmakers. But there’s urgency, too, in aiding local journalism outlets that help those same lawmakers and other local governments maintain their connection to constituents and voters.

Liias, when he first proposed his bill said it was in recognition of the importance of local journalism and the value in supporting a healthy corps of journalists reporting on government and other issues.

“To not have a lot of eyes on that process is only going to lead to bad outcomes for the people of Washington,” Liias said then.

State lawmaker should make the time to continue this discussion with a hearing, if not a vote on the Senate floor.