Last month, a series of severe floods impacted rivers and lowlands in the Pacific Northwest, particularly in Western Washington. As part of an ongoing effort to support news organizations covering natural disasters, the Institute for Nonprofit News (INN) and Google News Initiative (GNI) awarded 12 Washington newsrooms $10,000 in unrestricted funds.
The news organizations include:
The Wahkiakum County Eagle
Lynnwood Times
Northwest Public Broadcasting
The Chronicle
The JOLT News Organization (INN member)
Cascadia Daily News
NCEC-KDNA
KUOW Puget Sound Public Radio
Point Roberts Press, Inc
The Port Townsend & Jefferson County Leader
Oahe Publishing Corporation, dba Northern Kittitas County Tribune
La Conner Community News (INN member)
“Newspapers are local institutions not because they print paper, but because they know where to go, who to ask, and how to demand answers when it matters most,” Kari Mar, publisher of La Conner Community News, wrote in her most recent Substack post on the floods and vanishing newsrooms in Northwest Washington. “We translate evacuation orders. We pressure officials. We show up soaked and persistent and accountable to the people who live here.”
INN has worked with state-wide press associations, as well as other journalism support organizations like Tiny News Collection and LION to help share the Disaster Response Fund opportunity with their respective members. While INN members are invited to apply for the fund, the opportunity is open to all independent newsrooms in affected areas.
With extreme weather events on the rise, INN and GNI piloted this approach to supporting local news coverage during the California wildfires in January 2025, made a second round of grants to news organizations covering the March floods in West Virginia and Kentucky and a third round following the July 4 flash floods in Texas. In October, following Typhoon Halong, which struck Western Alaska, INN provided $10,000 grants to three Alaska newsrooms: KYUK, KOTZ and Northern Journal. With the Alaska and Washington relief grants, INN and GNI have now supported 64 total news publications through the Disaster Response Fund.
