Take 20 affiliated news outlets dedicated to covering their respective state houses and staffed with seasoned journalists and editors, including seven Pulitzer prize nominees and winners. Add funding from organizations including the Google News Initiative Journalism Emergency Relief Fund, AFSCME and more than 7,300 contributions (and counting) of less than $500.
For a bit of seasoning, mix in a national news bureau that covers how decisions in D.C. may affect the states, high standards of journalism and editorials that are both decidedly progressive and openly labeled as opinion, not fact.
The result is States Newsroom, and it might just be part of the answer to a collapse of local media outlets that experts say threatens our democracy, and the subsequent rise of right-wing propaganda programs disguised as local news.
“I have always maintained that state government and state politics—state government, especially—those [governments] are where the decisions are made that affect people’s lives, [while being] covered and understood the least by the people whose lives are affected,” Chris Fitzsimon, the director and publisher of States Newsroom, told Blue Tent.
Fitzsimon worked as a local North Carolina broadcast journalist for nine years before going on to serve first as the special assistant for policy and communications for the speaker of the state’s General Assembly, and then working as the founding director of two advocacy organizations before eventually founding NC Policy Watch in 2004, a news and commentary site covering North Carolina’s state government and politics.
States Newsroom’s growth shows a hunger for real news
NC Policy Watch, which is now a partner organization of States Newsroom, was the inspiration that led Fitzsimon and his partners to expand the model to other states in 2017. Today, States Newsroom has two other partner news organizations—Main’s Beacon and Maryland Matters, already-established organizations that joined and are supported by the States Newsroom network, along with 17 affiliates created by the national organization. The most recent States Newsroom affiliate, the Daily Montanan, was launched in January.
While Fitzsimon wasn’t ready to discuss his organization’s specific plan for further growth, he did say there are plans to expand “into some new states” in 2021. He was also very happy to talk about the accomplishments of States Newsroom outlets and the advantages of having 20+ experienced editors who are able to focus on their respective states and collaborate with each other.
Each newsroom, Fitzsimon explained, has “significant freedom” in choosing what to cover.
“We never presume to fly in and tell people in Michigan what they need to care about. We have Michiganders who do that for us.” The Michigan Advance is headed by Susan J. Demas, an 18-year journalism veteran and an expert on state politics who was the editor and publisher of Inside Michigan Politics for five years.
Funding for States Newsroom mainly comes from small individual donors. But a few institutional backers are also on board, including Google, AFSCME and the Wyss Foundation.
Putting top-level professionals in charge
If awards are any indication, other States Newsroom outlets are staffed by equally experienced, equally skilled editors, photographers and reporters. In addition to having past Pulitzer winners on staff, the organization’s outlets have won 91 journalism awards since 2018.
States Newsroom journalists, Fitzsimon said, are “people who are really well-known in their communities who are desperate to continue to do their job as professionals that play such an important role in our society.”
The ability of States Newsroom editors to collaborate with each other and with the organization’s D.C. bureau most recently led the “Battle for the Ballot” project, a collection of stories about the battles over ballot access and the complications that COVID added to voting in the 2020 election. Because of their close affiliation with each other, Fitzsimon explained, an Ohio reporter could do a story about the situation in that state and reach out to other affiliates to get quotes from those states, as well.
The result was a package of stories that allowed readers to see that voting and COVID issues were prevalent all over the country, not just in their individual states.
“Part of the issue is, sometimes when things are happening that are unusual in a state, people think they’re all alone,” for example, when having trouble accessing COVID vaccines or deciding whether or not it’s safe to stand in line to vote in person.
“I think there’s real value in people sharing those experiences and understanding that we have these common problems, and there are all sorts of solutions being offered that they should have access to,” Fitzsimon said.
Spreading facts—and “sanity”
Ultimately, Fitzsimon explained, the goal of States Newsroom is to “get some sanity back into the debate” about the issues of the day by providing accurate, fact-checked information to readers. And by hiring experienced journalists and editors and holding them to normal standards of journalism, States Newsroom stories can travel well beyond an individual outlet’s website and social media accounts.
States Newsroom stories are free “to anyone who wants to publish it” with proper attribution. So other outlets, including those that can’t afford to subscribe to the Associated Press or to send a reporter of their own to a statehouse, to reprint States Newsroom articles.
Local affiliates have also had an impact on national news. Recently the Washington Post quoted from an interview published in the Ohio Capitol Journal with one of the insurrectionists who attacked the Capitol in Washington, D.C., on January 6.
“Part of what we’re excited about is that the stories in the states are being told by people in the states, and then that triggers more national debate and dialogue based on what’s actually happening instead of somebody in Washington or New York having to make phone calls when somebody in Columbus or Lansing or Des Moines is there and can explain it,” Fitzsimon said.
Having local journalists explain issues in the states “leads to more understanding of what’s actually happening, because all these national issues and problems don’t just appear out of nowhere in Washington. States play just a gigantic role in our democracy that’s often overlooked.”
