Ten years of environmental news, and still growing

She saw good environmental reporters being let go from major news organizations, like Robert McClure at the Seattle Times, Andrew Revkin from the New York Times and Michael Milstein from The Oregonian. “They closed all those departments, but they kept the sports,” she recalled. “And I thought, God, there’s a housing crisis. There’s an environmental crisis going on about that time. So I thought, well, you might do something.”

Once, environmental issues were a major driver of politics and public policy in the Northwest. “You go back to the period of people like governors Tom McCall or Bob Straub and environment was really one of the foremost issues of this part of the world,” said Buck Parker, Columbia Insight’s former chairman, current board member and a near-lifelong resident of Oregon. Partly driving that was good environmental news coverage.

“We are missing now, in part, the journalists and the stories and the regular news coverage that drove public policy during that period,” Parker said. Columbia Insight meant a chance to bring back some of that coverage.

It took a year, in 2013, to organize all the technical needs. Then Hess began hiring freelancers. “You can’t just be one voice,” she said.

The first article went out in early January 2014. Columbia Insight has seen slow but regular growth since, while many other local news media are struggling, in an economy where just 15% of Americans pay for local news, although most read and trust it, according to Pew Research Center. Local news businesses are selling, print publications being dropped.

So what’s Columbia Insight’s secret?

Their consistent growth in subscribers, Parker thinks, is driven by a real need and desire for environmental news. Local media is struggling, not because people don’t want news, but because it’s “very hard to figure out how to make it work economically. It’s expensive.”

The challenges of Columbia Insight are the challenges all journalism organizations face, now. “It means being able to pay people, good people, a wage that makes this job worth their while,” said editor Chuck Thompson. “It means cutting through all of the behemoth that is Google and social media to get your message out there.”

So what does it cost to publish one story? About $1,500-$2,000, he estimated.

That covers liability insurance, internet fees and provisions, paying editors, freelancers, photographers and support staff.

Some stories might take just days. Others, “you work on for two or three months at a time, waiting for the right sources to come around, doing a Freedom of Information Act records request that takes two, three months to get fulfilled, working on various drafts, waiting to see if a committee in the Oregon State House is going to pass a piece of legislation or not ...” Thompson said.

With oversight from the board, Hess and Thompson hold weekly editorial meetings, and find story ideas which Thompson parcels out to his stable of “stringers” or freelance journalists, who work all across the Pacific Northwest. Usually they publish two stories each week, choosing among the most urgent issues and breaking news.

Donations supply most of the nonprofit’s budget, making up 73% in the last fiscal year. The rest comes from grants — no subscription fees, because everything’s offered free; and no advertising, yet. Nonprofit news is relatively new, but it’s gaining steam and Columbia Insight has gotten some good grant acceptances, staff said.

Two or three years in, the project was still a lot of hard work. “And I thought, the environment’s a hard push,” said Hess. She started an advisory council to share the work between more resources and people, and it voted to become a nonprofit in 2018. For eight years, Hess volunteered all her own time and funding.

Asked why she committed so much effort, Hess said, “I was walking along Wasco Street, and I went over to pick up a plastic bag. And this guy behind me says, ‘You know, you’re not gonna save the world that way.’ And I thought, ‘Well, no, but I can save that one plant.’” Columbia Insight was another way to help save little pieces of the world.

Measuring its impact is hard. The free stories are grabbed by news aggregators, reprinted by major outlets, and spread far and wide. “Each one of those stories, it’s like throwing a rock into a pond, where the ripples just kind of keep spreading out,” said Tracy Tomashpol, director of membership and outreach.

Most major papers in the Pacific Northwest have picked up at least one Columbia Insight story. Most state representatives and senators in Oregon and Washington, or their staffers, subscribe, along with fish and wildlife agencies and organizations.

“Our goal is really to become a driver of public opinion and public policy by making more people aware of the issues,” said Parker.

Readers mostly come from Oregon and Washington, but a diaspora of former Pacific Northwest residents read from across, even outside, the states — even from Japan and Canada, through Associated Press. “Columbia Insight punches above its weight,” said Thompson.

Future goals include being able to pay skilled freelancers a better wage, building a strong social media presence and video content — like, perhaps, shorter Instagram reels or YouTube videos — to better reach those under 35.

“If it engages them enough, a tiny percentage of them may go and read the story, reach out to someone, share it with other people, pick up that piece of trash,” Tomashpol said.

That’s the hope: That providing great environmental journalism will, once again, get environmental issues at the forefront of life and policy in the Columbia Basin.