SPECIAL OFFER: If you GaveBIG! on May 2 as part of The Seattle Foundation’s campaign to help ALL non-profit organizations in our community, then you can GetBEER! any day in May (M-F, noon-6 pm) at the WNC office above the Pyramid Alehouse across from Safeco Field. The Washington News Council is offering ONE FREE BEER to [...]

On Saturday March 31st, 2012, The Washington News Council had a hearing on the Vitae Foundation v. KUOW case involving a story on Vitae’s youroptions.com website. You can read about the results of the case and watch the hearing in its entirety below. Also feel free to check out some of the “press” surrounding the case. Part 1 – [...]

Watch the hearing video in its entirety National coverage from CPB Ombudsman Joel Kaplan National coverage by Mike Janssen of Current.org National coverage by Valerie Richardson of The Washington Times Local coverage from Mark Griswold of Sound Politics Local coverage from NW Daily Marker’s Bryan Myrick Local coverage from PubliCola’s Erica Barnett

The Washington News Council (WNC) held a three-hour public hearing [...]

The Washington News Council is accepting applications for two $2,000 scholarships to be awarded in 2012 to Washington state students planning careers in communications: •    The Dick Larsen Scholarship will go to a past graduate of a Washington high school currently enrolled in a public or private college/university in this state. NOTE: Application deadline is June [...]

***UPDATE*** we now have the hearing video and full set of documents involved with the complaint as a downloadable PDF. We also have national coverage by The Washington Times and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting’s Ombudsman . Plus local coverage in Sound Politics and the Northwest Daily Marker .

The Washington News Council’s Board of Directors has set a date for a hearing [...]

The Washington News Council has just been awarded two new grants to sustain our operations in 2012: A $100,000 matching grant from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. This is the third year of a Gates challenge grant, which the WNC matched by raising more than $100,000 from other sources in 2011. A $10,000 community activities grant from [...]

Chris Stein of The Pacific Northwest Inlander gave The News Council a little coverage in an article about Spokane Police ombudsman Tim Burns. The article says:

When police ombudsman Tim Burns laid out his ideas for reforming the police department to a Spokane City Council committee last month, he also had a few choice words for the [...]

From time to time we receive correspondence from fellow news junkies outside of Washington State, and sometimes overseas as well . As the last fully operating news council , we’re starting to show up in search engines for people who need answers on accountability in the news media. A fellow named Bill Santagata wrote to us asking for advice on [...]

Watch it on the Seattle Channel Visit the photo album from Team Photogenic

The Washington News Council’s “Toast and Roast” of Dale Chihuly at our 13th Annual Gridiron West Dinner on December 15 at Fremont Studios was a smashing success. About 400 people enjoyed a raucous and rollicking evening of comedy, songs, videos, slideshows and affectionate “toasts” of Dale [...]

by John Bowen and Kathy Schrier from the Washington Journalism Education Association to the Student Press Rights Commission blog

Principals will not have a chance to prior review Seattle School District journalism students because the school board recently withdrew its proposed and controversial policy change. “As a former journalism teacher, it is important for me — as I [...]

In my first post on the Seattle Interactive Conference , I went over some locally developed tools designed to make information more relevant and insightful. Mobile apps like Trover, which allows geo-discovery through photos, and Evri, which organizes ~15,000 news feeds into a friendly iPad interface, are useful on an individual level. But my concern is: How can they scale to community [...]

Journalists have always covered the tech industry as a section of the newspaper, but now, due to the personal media explosion, the very existence of the trade is dependent on conversations and decisions that happen at events like this year’s Seattle Interactive Conference . #SIC2011 had many of the same trimmings as the now messianic #SXSWi (South By [...]

Hackathons are getting trendy. Not just in journalism, but health care , education, entrepreneurism, crisis management , mobile tech , government, and other arenas. Yes, it’s another technology buzz word, but one that hopefully sticks around and evolves into a combustible formula. Bringing together software experts and social leaders who sprint together to solve big challenges is a remarkable thing, especially when there’s a $10,000 prize [...]

We’re pleased to announce the details of our 13th Annual Gridiron West Dinner A “roast/toast” to the one and only DALE CHIHULY The Gridiron Dinner is our signature fundraising event, which allows all our vital programs to continue, and is seriously a romping good time. Last year we had the mayors in stitches, and this year we’ll be shattering a [...]

Amy Meyer , who is studying journalism and visual communication design at Eastern Washington University in Cheney, was awarded the Washington News Council’s $2,000 Dick Larsen Scholarship at a reception June 10 in the WNC office in Seattle. In an essay submitted as part of the scholarship application, Meyer wrote: “Journalists are agents of accountability to government, corporations [...]

Mozilla is best known for Firefox, the open source darling loved by millions which showed us that a browser is more than just a way to load websites, it’s a way to customize your experience of the web itself. Under new direction from Mark Surman , Mozilla is growing new legs to go beyond Firefox. They recently [...]

(cross posted form the Seattle Journalism Commons ) Part two of the #NewsNext series brought to us by the Online News Association/Society of Professional Journalists collaboration featured a lively discussion with Cory Bergman ( msnbc.com, breakingnews.com, Next Door Media ) and Ben Huh ( Cheezburger Networks ). As the owner of the largest humor network in the world, you’ve probably stumbled upon one of his many [...]

As you may have heard, we are keeping up the fight as the last fully operating News Council standing in America. This has perked some attention from others who do the kind of work we strive for, to create a world of honest, accurate, news. The Art Science Research Laboratory was founded by the late Stephen [...]