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In recent decades, many local newsrooms in Washington and nationwide have shrunk or disappeared.

Now, an effort to bring more journalists to Washington state communities has a new goal of placing reporters in all 39 counties over the next three years.

In 2023, the Washington legislature allocated $2.4 million to create full time journalism positions in newsrooms across the state.

The Washington State University Murrow Fellowship program placed 16 early career reporters in newsrooms over the last two years.

Local news is really what determines, you know, education for kids in our community.

Tax levies, all sorts of municipal decisions rest on reliable local information.

And so that is what we're most interested in supporting But in 2025, the state legislature cut the funding in half.

To keep the project going, WSU is seeking private funding and is also planning a new partnership with the nonprofit, Report for America.

Cascade PBS is one of the newsrooms that has taken part in the Murrow Fellowship program, which brought reporter Nate Sanford to our team.

He and the other reporters on the project have published more than 3,000 stories combined so far.

We're honest that we're not going to solve every challenge facing local journalism.

But I think the question is whether communities are going to be better informed, whether local governments are held accountable and whether individuals are engaged in civic life in their communities because of this.

All this week we'll be featuring stories from WSU Murrow Fellowship reporters across the state.

I'm Paris Jackson.

Thank you for watching the Newsfeed, your destination for nonprofit Northwest news.

Go to CascadePBS.org for more.