How RANGE decides what to cover

In our four years of existence, RANGE has been told many times — in comment sections, emails and by politicians — that we’re biased. Some people think we’re left-wing radicals. Other people think we’re conservatives trying to jam up the government.

To be fair, RANGE is biased — we’re biased for our community.

This won’t shock readers who remember us selling very cute stickers last year with that saying on it, but to those who missed that epic drop, we want it to be crystal clear: In everything we do, in everything we cover, we are looking for stories that will empower the most people to take action in support of their community’s needs and make Spokane a more representative and better place for all.

As we continue to build RANGE and work to make us sustainable through our community, we wanted to tell you about the values that guide our actions. These values came straight from the people at the heart of RANGE. As a worker-owned newsroom, we have the power to decide what we want to be, but we realized that while we all intuitively knew our principles, we had never codified them — we were operating on vibes. So our team recently came together to set out what parameters we’ll set around our work to stay on our mission to serve you, our community.

These values will guide what we cover, how we report, what we will prioritize and how we will grow. They aren’t exhaustive and will likely evolve as we bring on new worker-owners to the team (because that’s how worker-ownership works!). Let us know what you think by emailing us .

And if a newsroom whose values are transparent is something you want to get behind, you can support us by becoming a member at $10 (or more!) per month or $100 (or more!) per year.

We report for the overlooked

Saying we are biased for our community is a halfway-edgy way of saying something we believe should not be controversial at all: we report for and center the people most affected by whatever issue we are covering. We start with them, talk to them directly and spend time with them.

On the West Plains that means rural folks on private wells contaminated by forever chemicals , not just the activists fighting our elected leaders for change. It means speaking first with a worker who was exploited by their employer and then strung along by the state before ever reaching out to the state, so we can carry his words to powerful people he wouldn’t otherwise have access to. With the closure of Spokane’s only strip club , us talking to the dancers about their hopes and fears gave you a window into the economics of an industry that can pay better and give more flexibility than other service jobs.

As journalists, we know what a great story looks like, but we don’t all spend our lives in the many different communities that make Spokane the increasingly vibrant place it is. For us reporting with confidence begins with humility. We choose to always ask, rather than assume we know what communities need.

We make information accessible

If information is power, it needs to be accessible to everyone. This is why we don’t put our work behind a paywall. We believe that everyone should be able to access news that impacts them, whether or not they can afford it. (But this also means we really need people who can afford it to support us voluntarily by becoming members!)

Paywalls aren’t the only barrier to information though: jargon, legalese and complicated processes are also huge barriers. News should be understandable, so we make sure to explain how things work. We even make boring but important information interesting and, when appropriate, fun — even funny. We should also always be on the lookout for new RANGE stories and new stories to take our RANGE angle (aka “RANGle”) to.

We empower everyone in our community toward change

Information is power and our job is to provide our readers with information you can act on. We want our work to empower people to get involved in — or start! — actions that improve their lives and the lives of their communities. This means keeping readers abreast of important political decisions that impact them and giving people time to get involved. We do this every week in CIVICS with municipal meetings and in much of our additional reporting. We want you to be able to take action before decisions are made for you. We also want to reach the youth and empower them to build the Spokane of their future.

Empowering our community also means letting people tell their own stories and giving them agency, showing solutions and impact and helping people find hope.

We are fair and accurate

Though we’ve established that RANGE is not unbiased, we are explicitly non-partisan, and we strive to always be fair and accurate. We will always represent quotes and positions accurately, explain what we don’t know, provide transparency and explain how we interact with sources.

Fairness also means doing our work in the context of power structures and it doesn’t necessarily mean we give equal time to all sides. Our job is to level the playing field for unheard or silenced people, so we often spend more time with a community member to understand their needs than we spend with the professional Public Relations Manager trying to spin an institutional failure.

Likewise, our goal is to give time and space to a wide range of viewpoints (it’s in the name, after all), but we explicitly do not platform hate. Fairness should not cause undue harm.

We critique and shed light on those who wield power in our community

You’ve likely heard that famous adage, “journalism should comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable.” At RANGE, we’ve tweaked it. Our job is to look in the dark corners, shine a light on imbalances of power, point out institutional failings, human failings and draw lines of accountability.

Institutions don’t always want to talk, and silence is a tool used by power to discredit and ignore real problems. That’s why — although we are scrupulously fair and give all sources multiple opportunities to explain themselves — we don’t kill stories just because powerful institutions and people refuse to talk to us.

That way, people can advocate for their own change. Electeds can choose not to talk to RANGE, but they can’t duck the people.

That’s why we say RANGE exists to empower the afflicted and afflict the powerful.

So there it is. RANGE’s real agenda.

If you want to support local, independent, worker-owned news with a very clear bias for our community, please consider becoming a member so RANGE can survive and continue providing biased news for years to come.

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