Issaquah has a new online news outlet aiming to fill the void created when its community newspaper, The Issaquah Press, closed nearly a decade ago.
The Issaquah Spotlight debuted last week with two part-time journalists and a motivated board that raised more than $70,000 to get started.
In addition to a website, it’s producing a weekly report that’s emailed to subscribers on Friday mornings. There are no plans for a print edition.
“Everybody has been thrilled to see that there’s now a local newspaper in Issaquah,” said Adam Pinsky, co-founder and publisher.
Pinsky recently retired as chief financial officer at Bayley Construction. His family has lived in the Issaquah area since the early 1990s and used to subscribe to The Press, as well as the Seattle dailies.
“When it shut down in 2017 I felt a real sense of loss, and I thought at the time, you know, maybe I’ll do something about this one day,” he said. “And (when) I’m getting ready to retire there was some discussion around town about needing a newspaper so I raised my hand and said ‘I’ll give it a shot.’”
Starting last fall, Pinsky worked with a group of volunteers, began researching how to proceed, formed a board of directors and started raising money. I was among his early calls but am not involved in the project.
One fan is Issaquah Mayor Mark Mullet, who sponsored legislation to support the local news industry when he was a state senator.
“I think it’s a great addition to Issaquah,” he said. “It took nine years, but better late than never.”
The Seattle Times owned The Issaquah Press and closed it during a painful period of industry consolidation and cutbacks that saw layoffs at the Times and other news outlets regionally and nationally.
Many surviving publications have stabilized, running leaner and building on new models that incorporate philanthropic support. Others are suffering from disinvestment by chain owners and debt from rounds of consolidation.
Despite the daunting backdrop, community news ventures have emerged and thrived in relatively prosperous suburbs around the country.
That doesn’t solve the larger puzzle of how to restore or strengthen journalism in less affluent and rural areas that weren’t able to sustain their local newspapers and became news deserts.
But people’s appreciation of local news remains. More startups are likely to emerge in places like Issaquah as their newspapers get thinner or close and engaged residents rally to start something new.
Regionally, that happened in Gig Harbor in 2021, Bellingham in 2022 and La Conner in 2025.
Ideally, these outlets become training grounds for rising journalists and create competition and audiences that spur regional papers to increase suburban coverage.
It’s more complicated than it sounds, though. Even the billionaire owner of the Minnesota Star Tribune is retrenching, laying off journalists and considering transferring the daily to a nonprofit, after it tried extending its reach far beyond Minneapolis and rebranding as a statewide publication.
Pinsky can attest to how hard it is, after spending nine months developing the Spotlight.
“A lot of things have to line up,” he said. “The people, and the money, and the community has to feel the need.”
As of Monday the Spotlight had around 1,200 people signed up for subscriptions. It’s using a model similar to public broadcasting, with free subscriptions and donations encouraged.
The Spotlight hopes to raise $100,000 by the end of June and another $150,000 by year end.
“That will give us some runway to build the reader-donor base, because we’ll need 500 or 600 people to be donating $15 a month and that just takes time,” Pinsky said. “But in order for us to be profitable and sustainable, that’s what has to happen.”
The Issaquah area has had other local news ventures, including blogs and Facebook pages with a feisty political bent. I wrote last year about the Sammamish Independent, an online news organization staffed by area students.
Pinsky said the Spotlight will focus on “greater Issaquah” but include coverage of the school district, which extends to parts of Sammamish, Bellevue and Renton.
He’s not interested in stirring up politics. The Spotlight will cover elections but won’t have an editorial page or do endorsements, he said. It couldn’t endorse candidates anyway without jeopardizing its nonprofit status.
“The community is really thirsting for an independent, trusted source of information,” he said, adding that the goal is to do professional journalism.
Pinsky noted that the founding editor, Maddie Coats, and reporter, Cameron Sires, both have newspaper experience including work for Sound Publishing’s local papers.
“This is not volunteers in the community just kind of figuring out what to write,” he said. “We want to be a real, respected newspaper. You don’t get that by venting your spleen about something.”
I wasn’t offended, despite being a professional spleen-venter, and wish them the best of luck.
Fellowship update: Newsroom applications opened Wednesday for the next iteration of the Washington state news fellowship program, which plans to place a journalist in all 39 counties over the next three years.
The program, now jointly operated by Washington State University and the Boston-based nonprofit Report for America, announced that it’s selecting 13 newsrooms to host reporters for two-to-three-year stints. Some will begin in January and some in July 2027.
