A new journalism fellowship to increase local news coverage in Washington will be established with money from the state budget. 

The Washington Legislature allocated $2.4 million over two years for the new fellowship program. Under the program, which could start as early as 2024, eight recent college graduates will be sent to news outlets statewide each year for two-year reporting stints. 

Local news coverage nationwide has been dwindling in recent years. Nearly 2,000 newspapers closed nationwide between 2004 and 2018, according to data from the University of North Carolina,

Several news outlets in Washington have closed or scaled back operations over the past two decades. The Seattle Post-Intelligencer became an online outlet after closing its print operation in 2009. Recently, leadership at the Seattle Chinese Post announced it would cease publication after more than four decades. 

“I know what it means for the press corps to hold elected officials’ feet to the fire, and it’s an important part of our democratic process that we can’t let slip away in towns around our state,” said Sen. Karen Keiser, D-Des Moines, in a news release from Washington Senate Democrats. 

Keiser, a graduate of the University of California Berkeley who worked as a broadcast journalist in Denver, Portland and Seattle, led the effort to fund the program with Sen. Marko Liias, D-Everett. 

The Edward R. Murrow College of Communication at Washington State University will operate the program, modeled after the California Local News Fellowship operated by the University of California Berkeley. Half of the participants selected will be WSU graduates, and all who complete the fellowship will receive a certificate in digital media innovation from the university. 

A bell rang 94 times, once for each worker in Washington state who died on the job last year, as their name was read aloud Thursday at the 2023 Worker Memorial Day ceremony in Tumwater.

Officials reported the most dangerous industry continues to be construction, which in 2022 accounted for about a third of the state’s workplace fatalities. Three of those workers died when the trench they were in collapsed. The second highest number of deaths, 26, resulted from exposure to toxic chemicals.

Thursday's event also honored 35 workers who died before 2022, but had not received recognition in previous ceremonies.

“As we hear each name read, it’s important to remember these are not just names. These are not just statistics. They’re our neighbors. They’re our friends. They’re our co-workers. They’re families. They’re our community,” said Joel Sacks, director of the state’s Department of Labor & Industries

On-the-job homicides also increased last year, rising from four deaths in 2021 to 11 in 2022 – all but two by gunfire. These deaths included Justin Krumbah, an Instacart shopper shot at a Fred Meyer in Richland.

In both 2020 and 2021, COVID-19 proved the leading cause of work-related fatalities, claiming 24 and 26 lives respectively. In 2022 that number dropped to 13.

Gov. Jay Inslee told attendees that a recently passed bill is intended to increase the safety of state highway workers by authorizing the use of speed safety cameras in work zones. 

“We got the legislature to do something to increase safety for that one group of employees, and we’re always looking for things like that, to try to allow people to come home safely,” he said.

The state’s fatality rate ranks third-lowest in the country with 2.1 deaths per 100,000 workers, according to the AFL-CIO’s 2023 Death on the Job report released this week – below the national average of 3.6 deaths per 100,000 workers.

The Washington Supreme Court says a group of Richland School Board members were appropriately subject to a recall by voters after they violated state law in two different ways.

The Court says three of the five members of the board disobeyed Gov. Jay Inslee’s statewide mask mandate when they voted to make face coverings optional in Richland schools. And they violated Washington’s Open Public Meetings Act because there was evidence that a quorum of the board had debated the issue via text messages before the panel met in an actual public meeting.

After the school board’s actions, a group of Richland voters filed a petition to recall the three members who, at a Feb. 15, 2022 meeting, had voted to remove the mask mandate, more than a month before the governor lifted the mandate for public schools. A superior court ruled that the recall petition was factual and legally sufficient to appear on the ballot. The three board members appealed the Court’s order in May 2022. The Washington Supreme Court dismissed most of their appeal in a unanimous decision issued on Thursday.

The decision, written by Justice Sheryl Gordon McCloud, also points out that the school board members proceeded with their efforts to remove the school mask mandate after being advised by several attorneys that they did not have the authority to do so.

Michael Fong will start as the newly appointed director of the state Department of Commerce on May 8. Gov. Jay Inslee appointed Fong to the position earlier this month.

Kendrick Stewart, Commerce’s deputy director, has led the agency since the departure of former director Lisa Brown earlier this year and will continue in that role until Fong starts. 

Commerce oversees more than 100 programs related to community and economic development efforts, including housing, business and international trade. 

Fong comes to Commerce from the U.S. Small Business Administration, where he served as regional administrator for the agency’s operation in the Pacific Northwest, overseeing programs that provided small business owners emergency pandemic relief funding, capital access, business development counseling and government contracting opportunities. 

Fong has served in various city, county and national public-sector roles for more than two decades. The Spokane native started his career as a policy analyst and legislative aide for the Seattle City Council and later was the city’s senior deputy mayor from 2017 to 2021.

In early March, Brown stepped down as Commerce director after leading the agency for four years. Later that month, Brown declared her candidacy for Spokane mayor, running against incumbent Nadine Woodward. 

Brown has lived in Spokane for more than four decades and represented the area for two decades in the Washington Legislature, eventually becoming the first Democratic woman to serve as Senate Majority Leader, and was Chancellor of Washington State University Spokane’s health sciences campus.