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THE WASHINGTON NEWSPAPER
Looking back: WNPA attends Golden Gate celebration Page 2
May 2017
Journal of the Washington Newspaper Publishers Association
BNC site to remain open until May 8 The deadline to get entries in for WNPA’s Better Newspaper Contest has been extended by three days. The contest is open and receiving entries at BetterBNC.com. The site will remain open through the weekend and close at midnight May 8. At wnpa.com you will find full instructions for entering the contest. Just click on the home page contest graphic or the 2017 BNC tab in the navigation bar and download the instructions you need. If you have questions about the rules, call WNPA at 360-344-2938 or email Fred or Janay at fredobee@wnpa.com or ads@wnpa.com. The entire contest is handled digitally at BetterBNC.com, a website developed by Small-
TownPapers, which is once again a prime sponsor of WNPA’s contest and convention. You can learn more about them at smalltownpapers.com. New this year – the ad of the year category is one you have to enter yourself. In the past, judges chose from among all the ads submitted. Also this year, there will be an open competition across circulation groups for sports writer, news writer, feature writer and photographer of the year. If you helped judge the Pennsylvania contest, you will get a $25 discount on your entries. So, get cracking. Collate your work and enter today! And don’t forget, entering the General Excellence competition is free.
Brian Kelly of the Bainbridge Island Review won first place in Group 2 for this color portait titled “Fresh song from a seasoned pro.”
Public notices under assualt across nation Maine Gov. Paul LePage dislikes the papers in his state so intensely he vetoed a bill last month requiring them to continue to post public notices on their own websites at no extra charge to the state. Overwhelming majorities in the legislature overrode his veto the following week. “I believe that it is good policy for legal notices to be posted online,” LePage explained in his veto statement (PDF). “However, I also believe that requiring legal notices to be printed in newspapers at a fee does nothing but prop up a dying, antiquated industry. The requirement is a taxpayer subsidy of the worst sort.” LePage encouraged legislators to “explore whether we may eliminate the mandate” requiring legal notices to be published in
newspapers. The bill LePage vetoed is similar to legislation in about a dozen other states that requires newspapers that publish notices to also run them on their websites and on their state press association’s statewide public notice site. The tide has turned in several other states where newspapers once appeared to be vulnerable to catastrophic public notice legislation. In Nevada, legislation that would have allowed broadcaster websites to publish notices died on April 14, the deadline for bills to be reported out of committee. This was the third straight session in which Nevada broadcasters pushed a version of this bill.
Publishers in Wisconsin breathed a sigh of relief early last month when the Joint Budget Committee removed language from the state budget bill that would have moved a significant category of public notice from newspapers to government websites. And Legislators in New York also removed a proposal in their own state budget last month that would have eliminated from newspapers bid notices for public works contracts. Meanwhile, several bills that slightly modify existing public notice law in other states either passed and/or were signed by governors in April: • Maryland: HB426 / SB311 exempts community colleges from posting bids in local
See LEGALS, Page 4
Staff changes in Sunnyside, Moses Lake Two Eastern Washington newspapers announced important staff changes recently. Sonya Lovin-Stace of Benton City, formerly a Johnson and Johnson product representa-
Lovin-Stace
Kirkpatrick
See CHANGES, Page 3
N
LOOKING BACK
FROM THE PRESIDENT
J.C. ‘Cliff’ Kaynor, publisher of the Daily Record in Ellensburg, left, and Fred ‘Pa’ Kennedy, WNPA’s first manager, are pictured outside the Hall of Western States at the Golden Gate Fair on Treasure Island in San Francisco. The 1939 exposition celebrated the construction of the Golden Gate Bridge.
By Don Nelson Lately I’ve had reason to think about a couple of things that distinguish weekly newspapers from dailies – what I call voice and presence. They are related but not identical concepts – and both can be challenging. My sense of how we view those challenges, based on experience and Nelson observation, is that it depends not only on the history and character of the community, but also on the perspectives of the owners, publishers, editors, reporters and sales people who represent their publications. In any case, staking out a meaningful presence in the community as an organization, and developing an effective editorial voice that readers value, are opportunities that require both thought and action. And, as I have learned, the way we approach those challenges is markedly different from how dailies interact with their communities – which can be to our advantage. Let’s start with presence. I describe our newspaper – a 114-year-old publication that has always been locally owned, and of which I am the sole proprietor – as being “of the community.” We are not a separate entity. We live, work, recreate and participate here. We buy things from, interact with, and sometimes write about our advertisers. We encounter our readers in many different settings. We are always known to the rest of the
Making ourselves known and heard in the communities where we serve
Officers: Don Nelson, President; Sandy Stokes, First Vice President; Michael Wagar, Second Vice President; Keven Graves, Past President. Trustees: Eric LaFontaine, Donna Etchey, Scott Hunter and Bill Shaw. 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. Staff Fred Obee: Executive Director: 360-344-2938. Email: fredobee@wnpa.com Janay Collins, Advertising Director: 360-344-2938. Email: ads@wnpa.com 2 The Washington Newspaper May 2017
community when we are out and about – I tell people that I am “never not the publisher/ editor” when I’m in public. And we are involved. Everyone on my staff is integrated into this community in one way or another – one is president of a local nonprofit board, another is on the town parks commission and is also a baseball coach, one plays in the regional orchestra, another is heavily involved in schoolrelated activities and coaches the “Math is Cool” team. Two of them are parents with kids in the local schools. My choice has been to be active in community theater. As a result, people get to know me in a different setting than “publisher/editor.” I get more grocery store comments about my stage roles than I do about the newspaper. I also am a Poetry Out Loud judge, take part in the annual Young Writers Conference for the school district, have been a board member of the local chamber of commerce, and volunteer to oversee or help with other projects in the community. Many of the things we do when we’re not in the office would be regarded as troubling conflicts of interest, or would be prohibited outright, at most dailies. In our communities, such standoffishness would be regarded with suspicion and distrust. Voice is related to presence by the way a newspaper speaks to its community through its news and feature coverage, and through its editorials and columns. Our attitude about content is that we always try to find a way to say “yes” to suggestions, submissions or requests. We can’t
always satisfy everyone, but we can always be receptive. I write all the editorials for the paper, plus a bylined column, and am acutely aware of how carefully they are parsed by readers. Most of the time, my editorials and columns are a combination of observation and commentary – I don’t tell people what to think, or what to do. It’s just my opinion. But of course, it’s more than that. People pay attention, and voice must be used prudently. Several times a year I crank it up a notch and come down forcefully, and more stridently, on a particular issue (always issues, never people). That gets readers’ attention. If I were screeching every week, after a while I’d have no credibility. To always be a smiley-faced cheerleader, or always a churlish critic, is not “voice.” Our readers think nothing of my role as a reporter who covers a town council, and the publisher who editorializes about it. It’s been like that for more than a century. They simply don’t see the distinctions that dailies enforce between news coverage and editorial commentary. That can be a double-edged sword – “I read it in the paper” can mean anything from an editorial to a classified ad. It’s all of a piece to our readership. All of this occurs within the context of producing responsible journalism and being vigilant watchdogs. Nothing else we do would matter if we weren’t putting out newspapers that people need to read. Don Nelson is Publisher of the Methow Valley News and this year’s WNPA president.
OPEN RECORDS & OPEN MEETINGS
Seattle Times counts the ways public records have an impact
The following editorial was originally published in the Seattle Times March 16, 2017.
they didn’t know if anyone had been released early from supervision. But Seattle Times reporter Joe O’Sullivan sifted When a citizen asks the through 1,500 pages of emails government for records, the and found that a senior official government officials must did in fact know about early comply, with some exceptions. releases, and that there were at They must comply because the least five of them. records aren’t the government’s • The state Department of records; they belong to the Health issued an emergency people. Former Seattle Times license suspension of pain maninvestigative reporter Eric agement specialist Dr. Frank Nalder calls those requests for Li, in part because 18 of his records the “people’s subpoepatients fatally overdosed. But na,” and they are powerful. former Seattle Times reporter This week is Sunshine JoNel Aleccia found through Week, a celebration of the public records that the DOH public’s right to know. Here is hadn’t really treated Li’s case a short list of facts the public like an emergency. Regulators learned in the past year, thanks were warned a year earlier to the Public Records Act: about overdose deaths and • A whistleblower tipped off knew the state workers’ comthe state Department of Health pensation program had blocked about inappropriate surgerLi’s prescribing authority three ies, rising rates of complicayears earlier. tions and infections and staff • As the University of Washcomplaints being ignored. The ington’s KUOW secretly preDOH spent just two days onpared to buy KPLU, UW offisite before closing the investicials maintained a “Fight Club” gation. Seattle Times reporters rule: the first rule of Fight Club Mike Baker and Justin Mayo is don’t talk about Fight Club. got those records and more, Seattle Times reporter Lewis and after a thorough investiga- Kamb got emails showing that tion, the Cherry Hill CEO and the UW followed the rule with a head doctor quit. The DOH intentionally vague meeting reopened its investigation, and agendas about the potential the U.S. Attorney also opened purchase, evading state openan investigation. meetings laws. KPLU support• When a review of the state ers — angry they hadn’t been Department of Corrections sex given a chance to put together a offender program found sysbid — stepped up and made the temic errors in how sentences station independent. were calculated, officials said • How much was that
Boeing tax break for the 777X manufacturing line really worth? Seattle Times reporter Jim Brunner asked the state Department of Revenue for the tax records. They said no. He appealed. Brunner eventually won, and the public found out. The special loophole passed by the Legislature saved Boeing $305 million in taxes in just one year. • When two Western State Hospital patients escaped in April, the Department of Social and Health Services said such incidents were “extremely rare.” But Associated Press reporter Martha Belisle got police records showing there had been 185 incidents of patients escaping or walking away over a 3½ year period. The hospital’s security was totally overhauled. • Seattle Department of Transportation director Scott Kubly worked for the bikeshare company Alta before joining City Hall, so he had to get special permission before negotiating a contract between Alta and the city for the Pronto bike program. Seattle Times reporters Daniel Beekman and Evan Bush, using public records, showed that Kubly failed to get a waiver — and he was intimately involved in the negotiations. Kubly was fined up to $10,000, and the Pronto program ultimately collapsed, at great expense to the city. Happy Sunshine Week.
CHANGES: New leadership Continued from Page 1
tive, is the new sales manager at The Daily Sun in Sunnyside, and Bob Kirkpatrick is the new editor of the Sun Tribune and Basin Business Journal in Moses Lake. “Sonya’s outside sales experience gives her a great foundation for working with the business community on their advertising needs,” Publisher Roger Harnack said.
Loven-Stace grew up in the Benton City area. Kirkpatrick spent 19 years as an outside salesman in the construction industry before returning to school to get a bachelor’s degree in communication at Central Washington University. He previously was editor of the Leavenworth Echo, Othello Outlook and The Daily World in Aberdeen. The Washington Newspaper May 2017 3
The apps newspaper staffs find most useful
By Keven Slimp In April, I was asked to speak on the topic, “New Tools for Newspapers” at an industry-related conference in Des Moines, Iowa. Taking the easy way out, I went online and asked newspaper professionals to share their favorite apps, programs and devices. I quickly learned editors, designers, photographers, ad reps and other folks at newspapers have definite favorites to help with their daily tasks. Let’s examine a few. PERCENTAGE CALCULATOR (FREE) Several ad reps wrote in about calculator apps. No one wants to pull out a pen and paper in front of a client to calculate percentages. Two apps, Percent Calculator and Percentage Calculator, were the most mentioned.
even nice enough to send a couple of samples. One was a photo of a postal carrier trying to deliver mail in the snow, with the words “No Mail Today” in bold red letters over the picture. Another reminded users a state of emergency was in effect for their county. TOUT (FREE) Several users wrote to tell me about Tout, an application which allows users to record, upload and distribute video using smart phones and tablets. Michael Smith, Aiken, South Carolina, explained his daily newspaper used Tout to record and upload videos from the field, while an editor examined and approved the material using a desktop version of Tout.
FAST SCANNER (FREE) Kristi Nelson Bumpus, a metro reporter in Tennessee, was the first to comment about scanning PHONTO (FREE) software. She noted that Phonto is a simple ap- her current favorite was plication that allows us- Fast Scanner, a free app ers to add text to pictures by Hang Nguyen. on their smartphones. Fast Scanner allows the Kim Shepherd, Dehi, user to take a pic on their New York, wrote that she phone, then quickly conused Phonto for weather vert the image to a highupdates online. She was res PDF which can be sent
directly from the app via email or messaging.
Lightroom and other editing applications are available from within ADOBE SIGN (FREE FOR Snapseed. ADOBE CC SUBSCRIBERS) Shadows & highAdobe Sign is another lights, dodge & burn, scanning application spot repair, tuning and with an important twist. more are available all Using their fingers, while working from a Adobe Sign allows usphone or tablet. ers to sign documents on their phone screens. CAMERA+ ($2.99 - $4.99) Documents can be Simply stated, scanned, converted to Camera+ is the best app PDF and signed, all in for taking pictures on one sequence. an iPhone or iPad. For In addition, Adobe photographers who want signature is legally total control over their binding, compliant with photos and wish to ate-signature laws around tain the highest quality the world.
reproduction, Camera+ is a must-have app. I use Camera+ almost daily to shoot RAW images on my iPhone 7, which uses dual lenses to produce RAW images. Compared to the camera app that comes built-in with the iPhone, Camera+ produces results which are far superior. SLACK (FREE) Nathan Simpson, Shelbyville, Kentucky, was the first to write to me about Slack, an app that allows teams to check off to-do lists
while working together on a project. I did a little research and found examples of sales staffs, designer groups and marketing teams using Slack to keep track of their progress while all working on the same project. I received dozens of suggestions, which made preparing for my session in Des Moines a snap. If you have a favorite app, I’d love to know about it for future columns. Send me a note at kevin@ kevinslimp.com.
INSTAPAPER (FREE) Instapaper is a favorite of reporters and researchers who need to search and save information on the Internet. A simple click allows users to save web pages and stories to a phone, tablet or computer. Creating archives of web pages related to a topic is a breeze with Instapaper. SNAPSEED (FREE) Snapseed may be the best photo editing application for the phone. Many of the tools available in Photoshop,
LEGALS: States tweak statutes Continued from Page 1
newspapers in favor of eMaryland Marketplace. • Michigan: SB129 requires newspaper notice of mining permit applications. • Montana: HB103 expands permissible notice of the appointment of boards created for the purpose of counting absentee ballots in an election, from newspapers only to radio or television broadcasts. • New Mexico: When
it was introduced, HB453 would have moved public notice of annual school district accountability reports from newspapers to school district websites. By the time it was signed last month by the governor, it maintained newspaper notice and added the requirement that it be posted on school district websites. • Oklahoma: HB1949 originally required local government units to publish news-
paper notice of impending votes on the issuance of bonds. Before it was signed last month by the governor, it was amended to require newspaper notice only if the government unit doesn’t have its own website to publish the information. This update was provided by the Public Notice Research Center. For more information, go to http:// www.pnrc.net.
The Washington Newspaper May 2017 4
WNPA JOB BOARD REPORTER The Daily Record in Ellensburg, Washington, has an opening for a full-time reporter. The position will focus on city and school district coverage in Kittitas County. Plenty of good stories await — the Ellensburg School District is working on the best way address crowded schools, and population growth is a hot topic right now. The job also will involve feature and enterprise reporting. Experience with photography, video and social media would be a plus, but we ultimately need someone with solid reporting skills and a strong writing background. The Daily Record is an awardwinning, a six-day-a-week newspaper in Central Washington. Ellensburg, population 18,000, is a lively community on the edge of the Cascade Mountains with lots of outdoor opportunities, including skiing, mountain biking and hiking. It’s about two hours from Seattle. It has a thriving, historic downtown, and is the home to Central Washington University. A bachelor’s degree in journalism or equivalent reporting experience is preferred. Send a cover letter, resume, references and 5 clips to: Joanna Markell, managing editor, jmarkell@kvnews.com. www. dailyrecordnews.com.
paid vacation, sick and holidays. No calls please. Send resume with cover letter, three or more nonreturnable clips in PDF or Text format and references to careers@ soundpublishing.com. EOE . Sound Publishing is the largest community news organization in Western Washington State. Learn more about about us at www. soundpublishing.com AD DIRECTOR The Daily Astorian is looking for a proven and innovative advertising director for multiple publications and digital platforms on the N. Oregon coast. We are seeking a strong, creative leader to inspire advertising staff and create sales campaigns, and to guide and grow our advertising sales efforts. You’ll need to have the ability to follow through on details while managing the big picture. You’ll oversee both display and classified reps. At least five years of sales management experience in the media field and a solid record of successful campaigns required. Send resume and letter of interest to EO Media Group, P.O. Box 2048, Salem, OR 97308-2048 or e-mail hr@ eomediagroup.com.
PRESS PERSON Press person needed at a Tuesday through Saturday morning newspaper in Pendleton, Oregon. In addition to East Oregonian newspaper, our operation prints an array of weekly, bi-weekly REPORTER The award-winning newspaper and monthly publications. To join Port Orchard Independent is seek- our team, you’ll need web press ing an energetic, detailed-oriented operation skills, an eye for color, mechanical ability, be a good general assignment reporter. communicator and work well with Experience in photography and others. Adobe InDesign preferred. ApMust be able to lift 50# and go plicants must be able to work in up/down stairs on a regular basis. a team-oriented, deadline-driven Pendleton is near the Blue Mounenvironment, possess excellent tains and has abundant outdoor writing skills, have a knowledge recreation. It is also a farming of community news and be able and ranching center and home to to write about multiple topics. the famous Pendleton Round-Up Must be a Kitsap County, WA rodeo. resident. This is a full-time, 40 Wage DOE plus benefits. hours per week, position that includes excellent benefits: medi- Benefits include Paid Time Off (PTO), insurances and a 401(k)/ cal, dental, life insurance, 401k, 5 The Washington Newspaper May 2017
Roth 401(k) retirement plan. Send resume and letter of interest to EO Media Group., PO Box 2048, Salem, OR 97308-2048, or e-mail hr@eomediagroup.com CHIEF OPERATING OFFICER We’re a fourth-generation, family-owned media company in Oregon with a portfolio of newspapers, magazines and digital products. We win national and regional awards for our journalism and business innovation. Our most recent honor was for Best New Digital Initiative, presented by Local Media Association. We’re proud of our 109-year heritage of publishing and the creativity of our managers and employees. If this sounds like the company you would like to lead, we welcome your interest. Our Chief Operating Officer is retiring. To guide us in the coming years, his successor will require a strong background in business, with an emphasis on sales – both advertising, commercial printing and audience development. The successful candidate should have a successful track record as a strategic thinker, with a bias toward action. If you fit this description, send us a cover letter and resume along with salary requirements to Human Resources, EO Media Group, PO Box 2048, Salem, OR, 97308 or hr@eomediagroup.com. More information on our company can be found on our web site www. EOMediaGroup.com. FREELANCE REPORTERS Have your byline appear in the Snohomish County Tribune Newspapers, community newspapers that thrive to go above and beyond. The Tribune is seeking paid freelance reporters to add to its roster. Familiarity with newswriting and local government preferred but not exclusionary to contribute. Please email clips and resume to editor.tribune@snoho.com. Only local applicants need apply for this position.
Have a legal question? WNPA is ready to help If you have a question about access to public meetings or records, the WNPA staff can help. Call 360-344-2938 For questions beyond government access -- if an attorney has served you with a demand letter, or if Earl Hubbard you need emergency review of a story, letter or ad -- call or email our WNPA attorney, Michele Earl Hubbard. (206) 801-7510 or email
michele@alliedlawgroup.com