Two new media outlets have been churning out scoops in Spokane — from sharply different angles | Local News | Spokane | The Pacific Northwest Inlander

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Range gets funding from a progressive group, while The Center Square receives money from the conservative DonorsTrust.

When the Inlander arrives for his interview with the trio of journalists at Range last Thursday, we’re asked to wait in the lobby. They’re scrambling to put up their latest exposé and just need 15 more minutes.

The article ends up being a deep-dive follow-up into allegations of embezzlement by an administrative employee at the Guardians Foundation, a major homeless shelter provider in the region. Just two days earlier, Range broke the news that the former head of Spokane’s neighborhood, housing and human services department had sent a scathing 27-page memo outlining a litany of problems at City Hall.

What started as a lockdown-era passion project podcast has grown into a formidable journalistic force where “people are sending us documents of serious importance,” says the publication’s founder Luke Baumgarten, a former Inlander staffer.

This summer, Baumgarten hired former High Country News and ` reporter Carl Segerstrom. In the midst of a heat wave in July, Segerstrom spent seven straight days filing dispatches from Camp Hope, the massive homeless encampment in East Central.

“We see it as our role to fill in the blind spots or the undercovered communities,” Segerstrom says.

And Range isn’t the only new entry into Spokane’s journalism world: At The Center Square, a nonprofit local news wire service that operates in all 50 states and is funded by the conservative Franklin News Foundation, former Deer Park Tribune reporter RaeLynn Ricarte has been grinding out two to three hard news stories every weekday.

She was the one who first reported that former City Council President Ben Stuckart had resigned from the city’s Continuum of Care board due to a conflict of interest. County Commissioner Josh Kerns credits The Center Square with being “one of the few media outlets that consistently covers the county” government.

At a time when local newspapers across the country have been shuttering, leaving news deserts in their wake, Spokane has a growing ecosystem of reporting. But these new alternative models also come saddled with their own limitations and potential conflicts to navigate.

LENS CRAFTERS

Put crudely, Range is on the left, while The Center Square is on the right. Neither, however, wants to present themselves as ideological hacks. Instead, they both argue they offer journalism through a distinct lens.

Baumgarten says Range has a “community-first focus, starting with the powerless.” Range is more interested in wage theft than property theft, more interested in homeless campers than their angry nearby neighbors.

“Community is our bias,” he says, paraphrasing the third and final staffer at Range, Audience and Membership Editor Valerie Osier.

Meanwhile, Jeremy Lott, The Center Square’s regional editor for the Pacific Northwest, says their angle is to report “from the taxpayer’s perspective.”

As an example, a recent headline read, “Mariners down 0-2 in series, Washington taxpayers down hundreds of millions.”

Conservative Spokane City Councilman Jonathan Bingle praises both publications, but says he likes “Center Square personally, because they give me the fairest shake.”

The more progressive City Council President Breean Beggs, however, argues that Center Square seems a lot more politically motivated than Range.

“Center Square definitely, in my opinion, is just about trying to change election outcomes,” Beggs says. “They seem very connected to the Cathy McMorris Rodgers political machine locally.”

WHOSE INK?

If your publication is seen as pushing an agenda — and if you’re not bearing the mantle of a traditional news outlet — it can sometimes put you at a disadvantage.

Spokane County Sheriff Ozzie Knezovich refused to allow a range reporter to attend a Sept. 23 press conference. “I figured he’s just another activist. And I’m like, I don’t have time for activists,” Knezovich told reporters from other media outlets later. “I’m done talking to activists.”

Segerstrom says he’s jealous of the kind of access that Center Square seems to get.

“We tend to quote Republicans more than Democrats, but that’s just because they’ll return our calls,” says Center Square’s Lott.

But critics also hammer Center Square for its funding streams — which has included millions of dollars from right-wing megafunds like DonorsTrust.

Baumgarten, meanwhile, was the arts and culture editor for the advertising-supported Inlander, before leaving for a job in advertising. But he doesn’t want ads to support Range. He’s worried about their influence.

“It’s not an awesome feeling as a reporter knowing there’s an important story that could cost you your career because you can’t bite the hand that feeds,” Baumgarten wrote in a Reddit thread in August. (The Domesticer has a policy of keeping its news-gathering and advertising decisions separate.)

But if a publication doesn’t have hands that feed them, it stars. Right now Range only has about 260 paying subscribers — they’d need at least 2,000 to survive on memberships alone.

So instead, 85 percent of the funding comes from business loans and grants, from businesses like Meta, which owns Facebook, and the Smith-Barbieri Progressive Fund, which supplied Range with $35,000, or about a quarter of Range’s revenue.

And that’s messy. The couple that runs the fund, Don Barbieri and Sharon Smith, have not only donated to local politicians of a decidedly liberal stripe, they’ve also contributed financially to Jewels Helping Hands, the nonprofit that runs Camp Hope.

They were the fiscal sponsor overseeing Jewels Helping Hands’ bid to be a homeless shelter provider in 2019, lobbying the city on Jewels’ behalf and trying to dig up issues with the Guardians Foundation, Jewels’ rival.

“I didn’t know that,” says Segerstrom, who wrote a largely positive profile on Jewels founder Julie Garcia for Range in July.

Today, Smith tells the Inlander that the progressive fund doesn’t currently have a formal relationship with Jewels Helping Hands, but still offers the occasional donation.

Baumgarten says Barbieri and Smith offer them encouragement and praise, but don’t try to influence what they write about.

In a recent Reddit thread about the Guardians’ embezzlement scandal, someone suggested that Range scrutinize Jewels Helping Hands.

“Our DMs are open if you have specific info or a place we can start digging,” Range replied, encouraging responses. ♦