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THE WASHINGTON NEWSPAPER
Golden Quill entries due by Feb. 1 Page 5
January 2022
Journal of the Washington Newspaper Publishers Association
Keep political ads organized for inspection
Coalition to pursue lawsuit in trial court
Public has a right to see files on all political ads published Newspapers are required to keep records of published political ads and make those records available for inspection if someone asks to see them. This right is rarely invoked by the public, but every now and then issues arise and newspapers should be prepared to let the public inspect those records. This issue arose recently when a WNPA paper got a request from an incarcerated individual for advertising records. The publisher seemed to think this same individual was also a person who sometimes made random public records requests in the hopes that
a government agency would err and fines could be collected. Unlike the requirements for governments under the Public Records Act, you are not required to search the last five years of invoices and send people records. Under RCW 42.17A.345, you are required only “to maintain current books of account and related materials … that shall be open for public inspection during normal business hours during the campaign and for a period of no less than five years after the date of the applicable election.” The records should specify: See ADS, Page 2
Droplets collect in some lupine leaves. This photo by Al Camp, was published in the Omak-Okanogan County Chronicle and took home a second place award in last year’s Better Newspaper Contest.
PLU professor Cliff Rowe passes away
By Fred Obee WNPA Executive Director Cliff Rowe, a long-time journalism instructor at Pacific Lutheran University in Tacoma and a deep well of knowledge and wisdom, died Jan. 5. He was 84. I first encountered Cliff in the mid1980s when I was a freshly-minted editor at the Whidbey News-Times in Oak Harbor. It was at a WNPA event, I’m sure, perhaps a winter meeting in La Conner, when Cliff offered to critique our news-
papers and put us on the path to something better. “Just send me three copies,” he said. I took him up on it. I picked three copies I was proud of and sent them off. At the time I was Rowe struggling to get my editor shoes to fit. I’d never been in a management position before
and getting the staff to perform the way I wanted it to was a struggle. I thought the reporters should be doing a better job editing their own copy, hitting deadlines and illustrating their work with quality photos. I waited patiently for Cliff to give me ammunition I could use to whip the staff into shape. After several weeks, the papers returned. I pulled them from the envelope and noted that scrawled messages See ROWE, Page 3
The Washington Coalition for Open Government will pursue in Thurston County Superior Court its open meetings lawsuit against the Washington State Redistricting Commission for flagrantly violating state transparency laws. The Washington state Supreme Court recently declined to bypass the trial court and hear the case directly. The question before the state’s highest court was a matter of venue rather than the merits of the case. WashCOG sued the Redistricting Commission to protect the integrity of the state Open Public Meetings Act, hold the commission accountable and seek remedies that prevent future commissions from similar violations. Citizens need to see commission deliberations to understand how public officials arrive at their collective decisions, WashCOG believes. Only then, they say, can citizens determine whether officials acted wisely on the public’s behalf. The lawsuit argues that in its meeting Nov. 15 the Redistricting Commission engaged in secret negotiations to draft and come to agreement about proposed legislative See SUIT, Page 2
SUIT: Supremes deny direct appeal to the high court
Continued from Page 1 and congressional district maps. The commissioners’ private action and public inaction violates the OPMA and should be voided, the suit says. WashCOG says its concern remains that the commissioners convened an open business meeting, only to do business and take action in private and not on the public record. The coalition says its purpose is to ensure public participation and transparency, not redistricting or any redistricting outcome. The group had hoped the state Supreme Court would take original jurisdiction, which would save time and taxpayer expense. WashCOG also had asked the Redistricting Commission itself to recognize its mistakes publicly through an Administrative Procedure
Act petition for declaratory relief. Commissioners voted to decline that request, saying the commission had no authority to enforce the Open Public Meeting Act. Ironically, the commission deliberated over the issue behind closed doors and ratified it in open session without any public discussion. WashCOG is reviewing the Redistricting Commission’s decision, and is weighing all of its options. The Washington Coalition for Open Government is a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization founded in 2002. It is an independent, broad-based advocate for public records, open meetings and informed citizens. To learn more about the organization, visit the website at https://washingtoncog.org.
Officers: Steve Powell, President; Michelle Nedved, First Vice President; Donna Etchey, Second Vice President; Caralyn Bess, Past President. Trustees: Roger Harnack, Heather Hernandez, Teresa Myers, Rudi Alcott, Sean Flaherty and Matt Winters. THE WASHINGTON NEWSPAPER is the offical publication of the Washington Newspaper Publishers Association. It is published monthly by WNPA, PO Box 389, Port Townsend, WA 98368. Fred Obee: Executive Director: 360-344-2938 Email: fredobee@wnpa.com Janay Collins, Member Services Director: 360-344-2938. Email: ads@wnpa.com 2 The Washington Newspaper January 2022
FROM THE PRESIDENT
Putting aside New Year resolutions in favor of wishes for things to come By Steve Powell It’s that time of year again. For resolutions. Not for me. I do wishes now instead. Until about a decade ago, I did resolutions for the New Year, like most people, I think. I’d try to come up with new ones, but year after year it was the same one. Lose weight. I’ve tried every Powell diet. Weightwatchers worked best, especially when I did it at The Everett Herald and had co-workers to keep me honest. There were weigh-ins and prizes, etc., and that motivated me. But like always, I ended up putting the weight back on. The last one I tried, Ideal Wellness, also worked well. Again, there was accountability with weigh-ins, etc. But the food, or really packets of powder, was so expensive it was ridiculous. So as soon as I lost the weight I wanted to, I quit. And, as always, it returned. I tried lots of low-carb diets, along with Atkins, South Beach, cabbage soup and grapefruit diets - you get the idea. The only thing that finally worked was a surgery that took out two-thirds of my stomach. I did it not for looks but because I’m diabetic, and I want to live long enough to see my grand-
daughter get married. It worked. I’m down 60 pounds from my highest ever a few years ago. Down 40 since I decided to get the surgery about a year ago. I’m still overweight but no longer obese. That’s an ultra-long introduction to my wishes for the new year. Since this is for the WNPA I’ll keep them newspaper related. 1. I wish that COVID-19 and all of its variants would go away. Since the 1960s this is the most scared I’ve been about our country. Back then I was a kid worrying about Russian nuclear bombs and Civil Rights riots and assassinations. But I was a kid so maybe I didn’t have a good perspective. But as an adult now, almost 65, I have lots of perspective. And COVID and all the other crazy things going on in our country now scare me. 2. In a related matter, I wish the Marysville Globe and Arlington Times would go back to being published. They have been shut down for two years because of the economics from COVID. While I really do love being editor of the Bainbridge Island Review and North Kitsap Herald, I miss covering the community I live in. I don’t know what’s going on anymore. “I’m outta touch,” as Hall and Oates sang. 3. I wish we could find more journalists. Again, COVID related. Just like every other business, we’re having a hard time finding workers. I can’t find a sports reporter right now,
and I had a hard time finding a reporter. I know other papers are in the same boat. Sound Publishing, I know, has been looking for a Central Kitsap reporter for a really long time. We hired one, but she quickly got another job. Pay seems to be increasing all over, but not in our business. 4. I wish newspaper advertising departments would sell more 2 by 2 ads for the WNPA paper. Fred Obee has been pushing these for years. They really are a great buy. And ad sales folks get a nice little check when they sell one as an incentive. So everybody wins. 5. I wish we could have our WNPA convention in 2022. We had a great one planned last October. I’ve always felt we have too many speakers from larger dailies that have no clue about what it’s like on a weekly. I know I didn’t as I worked for dailies for 30 years before getting on my first weekly job eight years ago. We basically are planning the our convention next year with talented local speakers giving us better news we can use. It will be one you won’t want to miss. Well, I’ll stop there. I think my word count is about up. Like most writers I don’t like my stories cut. I wish you all a Happy New Year.
Continued from Page 1 the names and addresses of who placed the ads, extent of the services rendered and the total cost and the manner of payment for the services. This law is part of the Fair Campaign Practices Act and is enforced by the Public Disclosure Commission. So if the incarcerated individual was hoping to collect fines from the newspaper, he or she would be out of luck. Only the PDC can issue fines
and only after a complaint is filed and an investigation takes place. There’s lots going these days in this area of the law. The PDC is currently suing Facebook for failing to disclose political campaign records, and the PDC is pushing for a high level of detailed information from Facebook. That probably won’t translate into new legislation soon that affects newspapers, but the PDC might respond to almost any complaint right now to
show they are not selectively punishing Facebook. Toby Nixon, former President of the Washington Coalition for Open Government offered this advice: “Before spending a lot of money making copies to send to an inmate, the newspaper should have legal counsel (or PDC staff) determine if they’re in compliance if the records are available at their office for in-person inspection, so they don’t have to copy the records and send them to the inmate.”
Steve Powell is the editor of the Bainbridge Island Review and this year’s WNPA President.
ADS: Keep political records well organized
ROWE: Long-time PLU journalism professor passes away
Continued from Page 1 appeared on every page in red ink. As I read, I swallowed hard. “The editor should have fixed this,” one note read. “How did the editor miss this?” another asked. It was hard to miss the centraI message. I thought to myself: “You mean it’s all on me?” Indeed it was. That critique changed my entire approach to managing a news staff. After reading Cliff’s feedback, I realized it was up to me to create the environment where everyone could thrive and grow. It was clear I had to up my game.
Over the years, I had other encounters with Cliff. He was always good natured, interested in people’s personal stories and always, always, willing to listen. Cliff came up in the business rung by rung in the traditional way. He started his career at the Oregon Journal in Portland as a reporter. From there he went to the Chicago Sun-Times as a copy editor and then became managing editor at Paddock Publications in Arlington Heights, Ill. He came back to the Northwest in 1969 to join the staff of the Seattle Times where he worked until 1980 in
a number of positions, from copy editor, to city editor for urban affairs to assistant managing editor. In 1980, he joined the faculty at PLU. He was an Associate Member of WNPA for decades and served on Board of Directors from 1994-97. He also served on the WNPA Foundation board for many years. Beyond WNPA, he had his fingers in virtually every important professional journalism initiative west of the Mississippi. He served as a writing coach for papers big and small, and he was the primary writer and editor of “The
SPJ Ethics Manual (1st version),” published by the Society of Professional Journalists in 1989. He was in demand for lectures, panels, inquiries, conventions, committees and colleges all over the Northwest and of course he was heavily involved in PLU’s internal committees dealing with a broad range of issues. The awards are too numerous to publish all of them here. Some that stand out include being named the Nation’s Outstanding Teacher of Journalism by the Society of Professional Journalists in 1996, and in 1987
he was the National Bronze Medalist for the Professor of the Year Program presented by the Council for Advancement and Support of Education. Also in 1987, he was presented the Distinguished Service to Journalism Award by the Western Washington Chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists. Rowe retired in 2010 but remained a presence around the university for the next five years. He was married for 63 years to wife Jille, and they had three children. Sadly, Rowe outlived two of them: daughter, Petra, died in 2020 from a COVID-19 infection,
and son Scott, died from brain cancer in 2005. Cliff invited me to speak to one of his classes after a story I wrote at the Port Townsend Leader absolved a young man of a criminal conviction and freed him from prison. I found Cliff there, decades after he critiqued my paper, still sharply focused, open and inquisitive. I’ll never forget how he set me straight early in my career, and I count him among the most influential people I knew in the newspaper business. I owe him much. I will miss him, as will the profession he loved.
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The Washington Newspaper January 2022 3
Here’s how you can make some extra money Every year, cities and counties hand out hundreds of thousands of dollars to nonprofit organizations to help promote tourism and community events. How much of that money are you getting? Are they helping pay for the visitor guide you produce and distribute? if not, why not? The law that allows cities and counties to collect lodging taxes supposdly favors expenditures that reach outside your market to bring new business in. Putting heads in beds, as they say in the hotel business, is supposed to be the main goal, but every year cities and counties spend those tax revenues on playgrounds and parks, because the law allows expenditures on “tourist related” facilities. Some of these expenditures are justified, but others stretch the purpose of lodging tax collections to the limit and you need to be part of that discusssion. If you have not already, you should ask your city and county governments (each has separate funds) for a report on where the loding tax money is going, and then propose a marketing plan that benefits newspapers. WNPA ads should be a
part of that marketing plan. They are a perfect match for boosting community events because you can choose to advertise regionally or statewide. We know cities and counties rely heavily on web traffic to promote events, but WNPA ads can play a role there too, directing affluent and well-educated newspaper readers to tourism websites. We have a million readers. That’s some pretty nice exposure. Here’s how the WNPA program works: • You sell the ad to a local organization to bolster tourism. • You charge your client for the full cost of the ad, and send an insertion order to WNPA. WNPA then invoices you for half the cost of the ad, splitting the revenue on the ad sale. The advertising sales person gets their regular commission on the sale and $50 direct from WNPA. • WNPA uses our share of the money to provide your legal hotline, professional services, Legislative Day, the Better Newspaper Contest and the annual convention. • We keep the price to the client affordable by asking all member newspapers to publish the ads
sold by other newspapers for free. Potential customers include festivals, fairs, resorts, real estate offices, state agencies, statewide or regional political candidates – anyone who desires a cost effective regional or
statewide campaign. Because member newspapers publish these ads for free, we can only promise that they will run as black and white ads. If you include a color version, many papers will use it instead, but there is no
guarantee of this. The ads are small – just two columns wide by either two or four inches tall. One column by four or eight inches is also OK. They need to be produced in two different widths, to accom-
modate different column widths. Need more information on how you can get your share of the lodging tax dollars? Contact Janay at WNPA by emailing ads@ wnpa.com or by calling 360-344-2938.
Earn $50 plus your usual commission by selling WNPA ImpactAds • ImpactAds are 8 column inches max. • They run in WNPA papers statewide or by region. • Great for events, real estate, recruitment, festivals, fairs, golf courses, wine tours, casinos, car shows, whale watching boats, tourism activities. • Sell as a stand alone ad buy, or as an upsell for an ad you are selling locally. • Sell any time. Commission is paid when the ad runs. • Full price of the ad is split between your paper & WNPA. • See wnpa.com under Advertise Statewide for full details. Questions? Call 360-344-2938 or email ads@wnpa.com
The map above shows the regions for Impact Ads. Sell the whole state, or choose a region. 4 The Washington Newspaper January 2022
JOB BOARD
NEWS EDITOR The weekly Inlander newspaper in Spokane, Washington, is looking for a full-time news editor to join our team covering the vibrant life of a booming region in the beautiful Inland Pacific Northwest. Our family-owned publication has grown along with the community since 1993, and in 2016 was named one of the country’s “10 Newspapers That Do It Right” by Editor & Publisher. Now we’re looking for someone to lead an
award-winning news staff to uncover and craft great long-form stories, deliver timely breaking news and have fun doing it. The Inlander is dedicated to diversity in our workplace and journalism as a whole, and encourages applicants of all backgrounds, representing a diversity of thought and experiences, to join our team. What we’re looking for: A passionate journalism professional excited to work with our reporters to make their stories sing, and to lead a team of hard-charging news pros
and enthusiastic young journalists through group projects, long-form stories and weekly news coverage serving the readers of Eastern Washington and North Idaho. You’ll also manage the freelancebased Commentary section, with a mix of one-off pieces and rotating columnists. You’ll report and write, too, and help explore and adapt our news presence to find the best ways to deliver great stories in 2022 and beyond through our weekly print newspaper, website and other Inlander-related
publications. As news editor, you’ll lead brainstorming sessions, schedule weekly assignments, do long-term planning for cover stories and ongoing news series, and nurture our reporters’ best writing. You’ll coordinate with the editorin-chief on team projects our news crew undertakes alongside our culture team, work with our art director and photographers to best illustrate your team’s work and help identify areas of coverage we want to focus on going forward. Our readership stretches from the ski mountains of Sandpoint, Idaho, to the agricultural college towns of the Palouse (University of Idaho, Washington State University) while being centered in booming Spokane and Coeur d’Alene, where the Spokane River connects the hearts of both cities. A few minutes’ drive in any direction will get you into incredible wilderness. Our office is located in Kendall Yards, Spokane’s vibrant new mixed-use
district, just a quick walk to downtown, with shops and restaurants all overlooking the river. The Inlander has paid time off, the opportunity to participate in an employer-matched Simple Savings Plan and health/ optical/dental coverage. Send your resume, cover letter and three samples of work you’ve edited or written to newseditor@ inlander.com. Please, no phone calls.
about 17,000 residents, and home to several wineries and breweries. Email your resume to info@sunnysidesun. com. Sunnyside Sun Media LLC is proud to be an Equal Opportunity Employer.
GENERAL MANAGER/ EDITOR We have an immediate opening for an experienced General Manager/ Editor to join our news REPORTER team in Colville WashThe Sunnyside Sun, ington at the Statesman local newspaper in SunExaminer and the Deer nyside, Washington, is Park Tribune. seeking an enthusiastic We are looking for reporter to immediately an individual that has join our newsroom. We’re experience working with looking for someone who community newspapers can write clearly and tell along with an understandthe stories of our commu- ing of local government nity, small businesses, and and building relationships life in the Lower Yakima in the community. Valley. The right candidate The successful candihas excellent people skills, date will be responsible a great attitude, and a pas- for writing news stories, sion for storytelling. editing content, assignThis is a full-time posi- ing and working with the tion. Perks include paid staff reporters, working holidays, sick time, and with the pagination team vacation. to design the newspaper Sunnyside is a city of Continued on Page 6
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The Washington Newspaper January 2022 5
JOB BOARD What happens to your archives when newspapers consolidate? Sometimes the selling publisher will retain ownership, sometimes the archives are passed on to the new owners. In either case, it is important that all parties agree and understand what is going to happen with the bound, loose or microfilm archives.
Historical stakeholders will continue your stewardship! There’s no downside to scanning your newspaper's archive but there is a singular hurdle so daunting that most publishers simply cannot foresee any way to overcome it – cost. Luckily, there are organizations determined to help. ArchiveInABox works with historical societies and museums who can provide funding to digitize and index small-town newspapers, while publisher retains all ownership and rights.
ArchiveInABox can help you: Carry on Stewardship Mission Maintain Ownership of Copyrights Digitize Archives for Community Access
ArchiveInABox.com 6 The Washington Newspaper January 2022
Continued from Page 5 and staying current and updated on social media. Experience with InDesign and Photoshop a plus. This position will also oversee the operations of the newspaper along with a weekly shopper. Managing Editor will work with the sales team to generate new ideas and opportunities for the publications. If you are results driven and enjoy local news and writing send a copy of your resume including writing samples to: dcoder@hpinc.us REPORTER The Nisqually Valley News in Yelm, Washington, is looking for a reporter to lead its local news coverage. We’re looking for an energetic self-starter who can take ownership of the coverage area, enterprise stories and maintain the position of the Nisqually Valley News as the primary source of news and information for the community. We cover the communities of Yelm, Rainier, Roy, McKenna, the Nisqually Tribe and Tenino in addition to Mount Rainier National Park and surrounding areas. The Nisqually Valley News is a family-owned newspaper with 100 years of history. Experience with basic photography, general assignment reporting and sports coverage is valued. Recent college graduates are encouraged to apply. To be considered, please send a resume, cover letter and at least three writing samples to CT Publishing Regional Editor Justyna Tomtas at justyna@yelmonline.com.