Here’s a roundabout way to get public support for local journalism.
But it depends on the generosity of young journalists and boneheaded decisions by state officials.
This happened last week Bellingham, where three Western Washington University graduates donated $42,000 to establish an endowment supporting students’ investigative journalism.
The graduates and former editors of the student newspaper The Front — Erasmus Baker, Asia Fields and Julia Furukawa — were reporting on the university’s handling of sexual assault and misconduct.
In 2018 they requested records of students found responsible for misconduct and harassment — not to publish names but to understand how cases were being handled by the university, Fields said.
Their work followed several federal investigations of Western in 2015 and a similar effort by student journalists at the University of North Carolina.
The school redacted key information from records it provided and refused to budge. Students named in the records also fought to keep the information secret.
The journalists sought help from the Student Press Law Center. That led them to the Washington Coalition for Open Government and to Seattle attorney Bill Crittenden, who agreed to represent them on a contingency basis.
In 2019 they sued Western for violating Washington’s Public Records Act and prevailed in a Whatcom County court.
But the defendants fought the case to a state appeals court. At one point the state offered to settle for $5,000, which the students rejected.
At the appeals court, a judge penalized the recalcitrant officials $111,780 in May 2024, five years after the case began. The case was settled last fall.
Crittenden said it was “really quite an eye-opener” to see the state attorney general’s office fight aggressively against students who had shown the records were not exempt from disclosure.
After paying Crittenden, the students were left with $44,000. They donated $42,000 to create the permanent endowment supporting student investigative journalism.
“We are so thrilled and honored by the establishment of this endowment,” Brian Bowe, a professor and chair of Western’s journalism department, said.
“Throughout this case, Asia and Erasmus and Julia, they provided a compelling real-life illustration of public-service journalism and it’s provided a rich topic for in-class discussions throughout, since the day the case was filed,” he said.
“Their willingness to challenge institutional secrecy right at the start of their careers speaks to their deep commitment to press freedom, and their steadfastness and tenacity throughout the court case was really inspiring to watch.”
Additional donations can be made through the Foundation for WWU & Alumni, by specifying that gifts are for the “Student Investigative Journalism Fund.”
The initial donation may not seem huge, but $14,000 apiece is a lot for recent college graduates, especially journalists.
“I tried my darndest to explain to them that nobody expected recent graduate journalism students to donate a damn penny but they did it anyway,” Crittenden said.
Fields said they never intended to profit from their work to make the public records accessible.
“There was never any doubt for us we would donate this to support student journalism,” she said.
That decision was “partly on principle, because we didn’t want anyone to say this is driven by us wanting to get a paycheck or something from the university,” Baxter said.
“Having $14,000 in my bank account, you know, I was definitely, like, wow, this would go a long way for me,” he said. “But we made a commitment and we wanted to honor that commitment.”
They all graduated before resolving the case.
But the endowment is “kind of a continuum of the legacy of what we were doing, you know, with our reporting and being kind of a thorn in the side of the administration and trying to hold people accountable,” Baxter said.
Providing resources for students “to continue keeping an eye on things now that we’re gone, well, it’s more valuable than the short-term financial gain, I think,” he said.
After graduating in 2018, Fields was an intern, metro reporter and then investigative reporter at The Seattle Times. She is now an engagement reporter at ProPublica, a national investigative journalism organization.
Furukawa is now a host of “All Things Considered” at New Hampshire Public Radio.
Baxter interned at The Seattle Times and worked at Phoenix New Times, but said he burned out during the pandemic. Lately, he’s been writing freelance articles and delivering pizza for Pagliacci on Capitol Hill.
The group decided to spend $2,000 of the settlement on one emergency expense: The exhaust system failed on Baxter’s car and he needed a replacement to keep working.
Baxter’s mulling whether to return to journalism.
“It is kind of a sad comment on the state of the industry that I’m actually making more an hour now than when I was working as a journalist,” he said.
That drives home how generous it was of Baxter and the others to donate their settlement to create the endowment.
As I said, this is also an indirect form of public support for local journalism. A tax-funded institution ended up paying because it tried to keep secrets. It’s a small price to pay for more transparent and responsive government.
Mostly, though, it’s poetic justice that the penalty will help future student journalists pursue big stories, watchdog officials and keep public records public.
