This election reporting is provided free to all readers as a public service by your locally owned Cascadia Daily News. Thanks for supporting truly local news by donating to CDN or subscribing here.
Bits and pieces of flotsam from election season, rising to a quiet boil nationally this week thanks to the Kamala Harris/Donald Trump debate in Philadelphia; the heat is felt all the way across the continent.
Trickle-down politics
The newsroom at Cascadia Daily News is in the midst of its third year of face-to-face candidate interviews for Election 2024, part of our award-winning Citizens Agenda election-issues crowdsourcing project.
These video sessions with candidates, being recorded for later distribution on our website and social channels, serve a dual purpose: They’re a chance for CDN’s editorial board to ask detailed questions that will inform coming endorsements. And as on-the-record interviews, they allow intrepid CDN reporters to make their own informed inquiries about the races, politics, and issues brought to the forefront by CDN’s Citizens Agenda project.
No spoilers here, yet, but one observation: Talking points from a supercharged presidential election nationally are clearly visible in local Northwest Washington state races. Early interviews have been sprinkled with pieces of what clearly qualifies as downhill drift from national political strategies.
From the right, we’re hearing about the scourge of a supposed erosion of “parental rights” as well as passionate discourse about participation in sports by transgender high school athletes. (Not exactly a pressing dinner-table topic for most local folks, I would venture, without the streams of misinformation about the subject from various propaganda arms masquerading as mass media.)
And from the left: The clear recognition that “people are struggling to make ends meet” — a nod to the national Democratic party’s latent realization that higher consumer prices tied to the Biden Administration threaten their own prospects.
Not surprising, in either case. But notable, to a degree we’ve not seen before. Hard to say if that’s a result of this being the first presidential election we’ve covered, or this one being more vituperative than most.
Much more election enlightenment pending
Our local newsroom, meanwhile, is very hard at work on a broad range of interesting pieces about both candidate races and, especially, overarching issues in the current election. These have already begun to appear regularly across our platforms. (Find all these stories, offered for free outside our paywall as a public service, in the “Elections” section of our website.)
One worthy new addition this year: Isaac Stone Simonelli’s insightful election “pre-bunking” series, laying out our findings about how the mechanics of the election processes work in our coverage area. Much of this coverage, plus candidate responses to Citizens Agenda questions, and our own editorial board endorsements, will appear in our comprehensive Voter Guide. Watch for it on streets and screens during the week of Oct. 18.
All the newsies here are pleased (if not, they’re faking it well!) to take on this additional duty, atop their regular work, to help shed light on smarter choices for voters who’ll get ballots in the mail in a month’s time. (You can help with this by weighing in: Reporter Annie Todd is working on a piece about how true “moderate” voters feel about races including the governor’s contest; if you qualify, reach out to her at annietodd@cascadiadaily.com.)
Badly needed light to shine on Olympia
Happy news also has arrived about a chronic statewide public-process issue: The lack of any consistent coverage of the Washington State Legislature.
A dozen or so years ago, most Washington communities had reliable, if not robust, coverage of statewide issues via metro daily newspaper reporters assigned full-time to Olympia, and wire service reporters, working for the Associated Press, working out of the same office.
Now that coverage is literally gone. Budget cuts have eliminated most of the newspaper positions; AP’s coverage of Northwest news in general, the Legislature in specific, has dwindled to nearly nothing.
Help looms on the horizon: A four-person Olympia news bureau, with help from some interns, is slated to be restored in January, thanks to the cooperation of three organizations. Two industry trade groups, the Washington State Association of Broadcasters and Allied Daily Newspapers of Washington, will do most of the budgetary lifting here.
Add to that a contribution of one reporter from the Murrow News Fellowships statewide reporter project providing journalists for two years to 16 state news organizations, including Cascadia Daily News, by year’s end. Our Murrow Fellow will spend much of their time reporting in rural areas of Whatcom and Skagit Counties, beginning next month.
This will be a welcome addition to the existing efforts of the enterprising, nonprofit Washington State Standard, which is already doing excellent work to fill part of the void, and should be in the bookmarks of any serious Washington public-policy wonk.
While most coverage from the newly-forming group is aimed at journalism organizations who are members, the work of the Murrow Fellow will be available for free, outside paywalls, consistent with that budding program.
The cooperative approach, modeled on several other successful ventures nationally, is another encouraging sign of media organizations working en masse to claw back against a marked decline in civic reporting due to industry woes.
Don’t think that’s a necessary battle?
Consider: Your own “people’s” Legislature has worked itself into a lather in recent years by trying to exempt itself from its own public records laws, claiming some sort of imaginary royal “legislative privilege.”
It’s one of the most shameful displays from that body over its entire lifespan. And yes, that is a high bar in this former ragged-edge territorial outpost.
Ron Judd's column appears weekly; ronjudd@cascadiadaily.com; @roncjudd.
Guest writer: Under Trump, the global ‘Doomsday Clock’ creeps closer to midnight