Washington will lose 3% of its remaining newspapers next week when four South King County papers are consolidated into one.
Carpenter Media Group, an Alabama-based chain, is combining its weeklies in Renton, Kent, Auburn and Federal Way into a single publication called the South King Reporter.
“We feel this gives the readers their local content plus additional content from other areas in King County that is relevant to them,” John Carr, Carpenter’s regional executive in Bend, Ore., said via email.
Carr declined to answer my questions about whether layoffs will result. There’s not much left to cut at the papers, which have just a few remaining reporters, including some who already cover multiple communities.
The move will result in savings and offset rising operating costs, Carr said.
“Designing and printing one product rather than four is much easier for the staff to plan, design, print and distribute,” he said. “This results in savings that help us control rates.”
Washington has 99 remaining newspapers, including 17 dailies and 82 weeklies, according to a new tally by Northwestern University’s Medill School. It will have 96 next week.
Medill’s State of Local News 2026 report found nearly three newspapers a week closed nationally over the last year, with 170 papers lost to closures or mergers. (Disclosure: I wrote an article for Medill that accompanied the report’s release.)
The report found 164 news organizations in Washington, including 26 digital news sites. Among them is a network of eight community news blogs in South King County published by broadcast veteran Scott Schaefer.
Carr said the Kent Reporter, Renton Reporter, Auburn Reporter and Federal Way Mirror will continue to have individual, “community branded” websites.
Kent, Renton and Federal Way are three of the 10 largest cities in Washington but their local newspapers have dwindled for decades.
South King County used to be served by a Kent-based daily, the King County Journal. It was sold in 2006 to Black Press, a Canadian chain that closed the Journal in early 2007.
Black’s Sound Publishing subsidiary owned newspapers around the Puget Sound region. But acquisitions and declining revenue left the parent company deeply in debt.
Facing bankruptcy, Black was sold to a consortium of lenders and Carpenter, the operating partner, in January 2024. That June, Carpenter laid off 62 people across its Washington papers, including more than half the newsroom at The Daily Herald in Everett.
The latest closures come as state Sen. Marko Liias is working on a new version of legislation intended to help sustain local news organizations.
In 2025 the Edmonds Democrat proposed a tax on large tech platforms that would generate more than $20 million a year for news outlets. The policy called for distributing proceeds based on the number of journalists employed, a model used by other states using tax credits to support their local news industries.
Asked if the South King County closures might affect efforts to advance the measure during the upcoming legislative session, Liias said in a message that “I think it only makes the case stronger.”
First Amendment lawsuit against Trump: President Donald Trump was sued on Monday by a coalition of media groups over his administration’s policy of restricting access of journalists doing work he dislikes.
The suit was filed “on behalf of individual citizens who rely on White House reporting” by the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University and the Media Freedom & Information Access Clinic at Yale Law School.
“The First Amendment protects the public’s right to know what its government is doing. The White House cannot decide what information Americans receive by punishing critical reporting,” Katie Fallow, deputy litigation director at the Knight Institute, said in the news release.
“When the White House expels reporters because of their coverage and threatens others with expulsion, it isn’t just the press that suffers — the public loses access to independent reporting and gets something closer to government propaganda.”
Meta criticism: U.S. Sen. Adam Schiff is urging Meta to abandon controversial new commercial terms taking effect Nov. 20.
The terms will require publishers using Meta platforms like Facebook and Instagram to allow Meta to ingest their content.
The California Democrat sent a letter asking Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg how the company will address concerns about the terms, NiemanLab reported Tuesday, after Schiff’s office announced his involvement.
“Meta must not nullify federal IP protections and fair market competition through the unilateral insertion of fine print into terms of service contracts,” Schiff wrote in the letter. “A free, independent, and economically sustainable press, as well as a thriving creator economy, is indispensable to our country, and dominant platforms should not use market leverage to operate outside of the boundaries of fair licensing.”
In a social media post today, Meta Vice President Andy Stone said the company “heard publishers’ feedback,” will consult with “industry groups and leaders” and may delay changing the terms.
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