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In these here modern times, it would be very easy for South King, Pierce and Thurston counties to become what's called a news desert.

But the News Tribune soldiers on in the face of some difficult times.

Tonight we're talking with one of the soldiers, Laura Hautala, the new opinion editor for the News Tribune.

Next on northwest now.

You.

I really can't do this program tonight without addressing just a strange and distressing collection of circumstances at the News Tribune.

When it comes to the untimely deaths of a number of the paper's most prominent and not at all elderly staff members, but in recent years, columnist Dan Vo Pal passed away, along with food maven Sue Kidd.

Same with longtime editor Randy McCarthy and reporter Craig Saylor.

Then, of course we lost Matt Driscoll in July of 2024, who was the youngest of them all.

While I don't have some great overarching point in mentioning this as background, I at least wanted to say their names.

So tonight we meet the new opinion editor, Laura Hautala.

Laura's job as the opinion editor is as the chief cat herder of the paper's editorial board, that produces consensus statements on the issues and candidate endorsements.

She's also the point of contact and moderator for letters to the editor and op ed pieces.

and finally, she's also a columnist who does her own work to produce opinion pieces under her byline.

It is a big job, and she's been at it for several months now.

Laura, thanks so much for coming to northwest now.

Great to have a conversation with the new opinion editor at the News Tribune.

Big job.

Start with a little bit about your bio, how you came up, where you were raised, and maybe, I think it's an interesting anecdote.

Your first contact with the News Tribune?

Sure thing.

So I was born right here in Tacoma and went to grad school here, and even got to tour the News Tribune offices and printing plant on a school trip during elementary school, and had lots of great teachers who, taught us about the news and developed an interest there.

So eventually I went off to college in Northern California and moved on to focusing on journalism and got my start down there in the Bay area and was in journalism for quite a while at various jobs before eventually moving back up here to be closer to family.

I want to go back to your education.

How did you know?

When did you zoom in on journalism?

I used to give newscasts in front of my family when I was a little kid.

For you?

When.

When did you say to yourself, you know something I want to write?

I want to be a journalist.

Yeah.

Well, I'd always wanted to be a writer of some kind.

And it didn't occur to me to try journalism until I got my first job out of college in social work.

I was working at a nonprofit and, helping people who were caring for elderly, loved ones.

And I was telling people some really helpful things, and I wished that I could put it in a place where more people could get that information.

And eventually I started thinking that maybe what I wanted to do as a public service was journalism.

And so I took it from there.

Talk a little bit about your time in Oakland.

I actually grew up, for a chunk of my youth in Fremont, California.

And you make the parallel that, the East Bay there.

Oakland is kind of a little bit to San Francisco as Tacoma is to Seattle.

Talk a little bit about that and how and how you tried to connect the dots down there a little bit.

Rhetorically in some of the work you did there.

Yeah.

So I lived in Oakland for about 15 years, and I did find a lot of commonalities with Tacoma, the way that it's a really cool city with lots of industry and arts and working class people.

And I think what we would call grit, and the way that it's sort of a little, a little sibling to the bigger city, San Francisco, it also kind of has a little bit of a chip on his shoulder about that as well.

And I think we in Tacoma here can understand that as well.

It's sort of a similar vibe arts industry, working class and kind of living in the shadow, not just of a beautiful mountain, but of a of a big city up the road.

I think the thing that Tacoma has, though, is that maybe I haven't lived in the barrier work down there, and it works in Sacramento for a lot of years to have been done there in a long time.

But I feel Tacoma, we're a little bit of a hidden gem now.

We're a little bit of the secret that people don't quite know.

I think Tacoma is the place to be in Puget Sound country as opposed to Seattle.

Did you have that feeling about Oakland or is Tacoma maybe a little more unique in that regard?

Well, Tacoma is unique in terms of, you know, sort of the beautiful nature and, the kind of variety of neighborhoods we have.

I would say Oakland is also a bit of a hidden gem.

And one of the big secrets is that it's much faster to get to downtown San Francisco for your day job from Oakland than it is from a lot of Cisco.

But I will say San Francisco is, of course, a lovely place to be, as in Seattle.

Talk a little bit about the, the period of time that you had between coming back to Tacoma and getting hooked up with the News Tribune.

You did some other work.

What was that like, and what was some of that experience?

Right.

So when I moved up here, it was 2020 and there was, you know, work from home situation everywhere.

So I continued my job from San Francisco that I had been working.

Okay.

I was working at CNet, the tech publication, and I had been covering, cyber security and online privacy for a while, about five years.

And then, after I had decided to move to Tacoma, the job for covering the Amazon and e-commerce meet opened up.

And so because I was going to be close by and had experience there, they offered it to me.

So I kept kept working for that company remotely, for a couple of years.

And then I moved into some more freelance work for a year or so before then moving to the news Tribune.

Yeah.

What was it like when you landed the job at the newspaper you visited as a kid?

It must have been a weird moment.

Gratifying, but also kind of strange.

Yeah, it was definitely strange.

It was mostly just really, exciting.

You know, I it was, you know, to me, the News Tribune is is where I got interested in the news.

I started, you know, I started out reading the comics and that sort of thing.

And as I got older, I got more interested in local news.

And it had a kind of larger than life feel to me.

And of course, I also had it the full, you know, Sunday edition spread out on the table growing up.

So it had this real sense of authority for me.

And I continued subscribing as an adult, too.

So I've been reading for many years, even down in Oakland.

So getting the job there was just a really wonderful and humbling experience because, you know, I had so much admiration for all the work they're doing there, and also just the role itself, the the way that it has, an ability to really serve people in the area, was just like such a wonderful opportunity to be offered.

Let's talk a little bit about that role.

You've got several areas of responsibility that I'm sure back in the day were their own individual jobs, but you're doing all of them newspaper editorials, candidate endorsements, managing hurting the cats for op ed and letters to the editor.

Oh, and by the way, also writing your own column under the under your own byline.

Talk a little bit about writing those consensus statements.

It seems like a little bit of a nightmare to me.

If I was in your role, I'd be trying to train I to do that.

Tell everybody to say what you think that I do, that while I'm doing my own column, my own thing.

I'm sure you can't do that.

But how do you approach all that?

That's right.

I can't do that.

I do have to do it myself.

You know, I approach it like I would.

Any news story where I'm kind of summarizing the opinions of experts, but in this situation, I'm summarizing the opinions of the editorial board and the.

The good thing is that at this point, we've all had a long discussion about the candidates that we're evaluating.

If it's, for example, and, an endorsement consensus statement and we do a lengthy interview with the candidates and then we talk among ourselves.

So I do my best to make it reflect the conversation we have about the candidates and why we come down the way we do.

And sometimes we don't agree on everything.

So it has to capture all of that, those kind of textures of the conversation.

So I'm going to ask you the question that I always try to ask questions for people yelling at the television.

I imagine them because, hey, I imagine my parents doing that.

Do you have access to any conservative voices there on the old editorial board at the News Tribune?

When it comes to candidate endorsements?

Yeah.

So we actually have a pretty wide spread of, viewpoints on the editorial board right now.

We, have somebody from East Pierce County, for example.

We have somebody who's in Tacoma but is a former police officer with Tacoma Police Department and is now, in the business of, police training, law enforcement training, and, myself.

And we also have, civil rights icon and former city manager, James Walton, as well as, Stephanie Patterson, who is our, president and editor of the newspaper.

What's the secret to getting in a letter to the editor?

Now, op ed, those are typically experts and people who are recognized in their field or their area of policy to to write an op ed.

So if you've got that, that credibility, I'm sure you can submit a letter and you'll find a space for it.

But for the average guy or the average person who wants to send a letter to the editor, what are they?

They need to make sure they do too, so that Laura likes them.

Well, I will say that the main criteria is length.

So, you know, as long as what you're saying isn't completely inappropriate.

We want to have a big, wide range of opinions and thoughts from the community.

So really, what you have to say is valuable.

And the main consideration is that it's hard to keep your thoughts short, especially when you really care about whatever topic is at hand in your local community.

So if that's if you can manage that, then go for it.

Give it a try, talk a little bit about separating news and opinion.

Then I want to talk about combining them as a columnists.

But you know, I'm sure you've heard of it 100 times.

Well, you know, your editorial board, you come out with this statement and you go in the cover of the news, and the two are definitely, you know, I can I can read right through it and see the connection.

I actually got a little bit sideways with somebody at the News Tribune in the past suggesting, you know, that there is some bleed through there.

And my view on that wasn't conspiratorial.

Some folks have a conspiratorial view of that.

Well, certainly they're in cahoots.

Mine was.

No.

I've worked in newsrooms, though.

I know we all drank at the same bar.

We all played on the softball team.

There's a culture and a little bit of a club, so I don't approach that so much as it's.

And something intentional that we're doing to try to influence the public.

But because we're all kind of cut from the same cloth, we work in the same newsroom, we're doing the same things.

It's a little in an almost be natural.

So how do you guard against that?

How do you how do you keep that, that, the the Chinese wall between editorial and opinion.

How do you approach that?

And and how are you laying down the law at the News Tribune?

That's a really good question.

And it's something that people really do wonder about.

And I think there's also just sort of, some for some people, a lack of awareness that there is a difference between opinion and the news side.

And I can understand why people, when they're reading my opinion, even though it's very clearly labeled an opinion, would be worried that that's kind of a larger reflection of how everybody at the newspaper feels.

I will say that, you know, having an opinion is my job.

That's that's the point of it.

And for me, I am taking what would have been previously analysis in my work where you know, as a journalist, you are doing your best to be fair, unbiased, but you are amassing a lot of knowledge.

And so you, you come to conclusions based on that knowledge.

And then the step forward to opinion is just kind of adding a little bit of that.

Okay.

And this is what I really think this means.

This is what I would be, you know, telling my close friends and family about this if they asked me about it.

And I think, you know, it, it can add something a little bit more interesting and relatable to those topics, but it is important to keep that separate from the news side.

Right.

And I think what's really important about that is that the, my coworkers on the news side know what their role is, and they know that they are keeping their bias out of it and that they are trying to be as fair as possible.

And the other side of that is that I have to have the autonomy to have my own opinion.

So even if I'm discussing the news, confirming details, checking my impressions with my coworkers, we do talk about the news.

They have zero input on what I say at the end of the day.

Right?

Right.

But I mean, they're going to if I get something factually wrong, they will tell me you and I appreciate that.

But, yeah, it's it's about me having autonomy and really just being a separate department of one.

You're you've gestured at this in your last, comment here, but I just want to put a put a, put a bird on it, to quote Portlandia, one of my favorite shows.

But, I think the best column writing, though two, is informed by the news.

So yes, I, you know, you can write a column and you do something about what a beautiful day or the hummingbirds are out or something where it's just you free flowing.

And it's a, it's a column in a small newspaper.

So the best stuff though, when it's your full time job, really taking a look at the news flow, what the important facts are out of there.

And then like you suggest, inner integrating that analysis that you come up with.

And at the end of the day, the conclusion that you come to.

But it's backbone, it's skeleton is in the news and affects that, that everybody agrees on.

You gestured at that in your last audience, your last, your last comment there.

But I wanted for the audience sake for maybe you to to put a point on that and, and talk a little bit about, how you go about writing a column.

Do you keep a clip file on all the things that might be relevant?

How do you do it?

Yeah.

I mean, essentially, yes.

I have a giant spreadsheet with topics that I think are important and I follow the news on them and kind of add them up until they turn into something with a, with a full story to tell.

I think that and this is how I went about gathering news as well, because when you write a feature story, you have to know kind of the trend of what's happening in addition to just sort of the latest news.

And so you you really have to keep track of how things are developing.

And then when you take all that information together, you have to get at the why, why do I care about this?

Why is this important?

Why is this affecting people?

And and why do I need to tell people about it?

So you take it from that topic to that sort of meaty, here's why this is important and why it might be affecting your life.

And then, like you're saying for the opinion piece that like the why do you care is where you really have to explore, how does this make me feel?

How does this make the people who are involved feel?

What does this tell us about our world?

And you know what's sort of the obvious thing that would be unsaid about this and a news story, in my opinion?

Have you ever been in a position it's seen that or or maybe when you're working where you've had to kind of wear the blowtorch has been pointed at you because that's part of a little bit of being a column writer, too.

Sometimes I'm sure, line reporters maybe get some email feedback about something, but it doesn't generally occur to people.

I'm going to I'm going to torch the reporter on that story, but they sure as heck think that about the columnists.

So have you experienced that before and how do you manage it?

Yeah, I mean, surprisingly, you would think that, internet security would be more of a technical topic that doesn't get people riled up, but actually, it really does.

And it involves a lot of, kind of, emotional topics, especially when you think about privacy, and how you feel about the government's role in, you know, intelligence gathering and, you know, even involved law enforcement and the, information that law enforcement gather through technology.

And so there's a lot of emotional topics there.

And anytime there's an emotional topic, somebody is going to reach out, especially in this day and age where it's so easy.

Get your emails right there in the byline.

So, yeah, I mean, I think that generally I maybe you relate to this.

I'm my go to is thank you for reading because if they're writing, they've read the story.

And I really appreciate that.

In fact, somebody yesterday commented on a story criticizing I word I used in the second to last paragraph.

And I was so happy.

But oh, you read the whole thing.

I really look at that engagement.

Yes.

And that to me is the point.

And, you know, I feel like it's you can tell what people care about in their comments.

And if you can speak to the heart of that in an answer that civil, then I think you can just have a good discourse.

Or maybe they'll never answer again.

And, you know, that's the end of it for them.

You wrote in, in one of your introductory columns that you really want to take a good faith approach to this whole thing and consider both sides.

And my immediate thought when I read that was if there were only two sides, what went that just be so handy?

And your point is well-taken there.

But, how do we just let's have a discussion a little bit about both sides ism.

There's always that trap that I think journalism can fall into where?

Well, we've it's fair because we've discussed both sides.

There is there are both sides to Pizzagate.

Is there a both side to Kim trails.

Is there a both side to certain crimes?

Not really.

So how do you how do you approach this idea of staying away from just wrote both sides ism and I discussed, both I'm good and and also evaluating the validity of of arguments.

Yeah.

I mean, I think that's one of the most important questions for journalists today is to ask, am I giving two sides equal treatment when I really shouldn't?

And I think journalists, because we need to show that we're not being biased and that we're being fair, can lean too hard on that.

I talked about sides and now my job is done.

Yeah.

But I think that, you know, readers can see through that.

Viewers can see through that, you know, the people who are consuming news, the are going to say you didn't address this side of things or you took that side too seriously.

That's not a serious argument.

And I so I don't think it's a service to people who are consuming news to, to do that.

I think it's really important, like you said, to get into the validity of a statement.

So if somebody is saying this, you have to also say whether it's like been discredited by a number of experts.

Yeah.

Or if something is, is, kind of, new, you have to say why you should be paying attention to it.

This.

I've never heard this, this argument before.

Okay.

Here's somebody really important who's saying it.

And, you know, you may not have heard it before, but let's pay attention and it might become more relevant.

One of the nice things about being a columnist, though, too, is you also have the power to sort of preempt some of the invalid discussions that might otherwise occur on a blog or on Reddit or somewhere.

You know, you can say, I'm not.

I'm not running a column on that because it's ridiculous.

Same here.

I'm not doing a show on that is a who cares what what the both sides are.

We're not talking about it because I have other more important fish to fry.

So being selective a little bit, not only story selection and news, but topic selection and column writing, I mean that that is a lever that you can definitely push and pull and make sure that you're talking about the good stuff.

That's kind of nice.

Yeah, it is nice.

It actually makes the job, a little bit more interesting for me because I don't have to, you know, I'm always thoughtful with the facts, and I want to be careful, but I feel a little bit more free, and it makes my expression just a little bit freer and easier when I can say, you know, I'm not really taking this argument seriously quite openly.

And here's why.

You know, I'm going to give you a good reason why, but I'm not going to kind of blunt it.

I'm going to be really honest about it.

You wrote in one of those introductory columns, two part of Loving Tacoma is wanting more for it.

Just a quick reminder.

You have been here for five years before you got this job.

So in and grew up here.

So I, I as opposed to somebody moving here from Tucson and writing a prescription for Tacoma, which I don't think would be valid.

I think you do have some valid views to share there.

So I so then I put that to you.

What is the what is the more for Tacoma.

What what does Tacoma need.

And is there anything that you can see out there that you might champion.

That's a really good question.

Yes.

So I think where that comment was coming from for me was this idea that plenty of people will criticize Tacoma from the outside, whether you're, you know, still believing in the aroma of Tacoma, right, that that is such a pet peeve of mine.

I'm like, dude, pay attention.

Yes, I can tell you haven't been here in a decade.

Go away.

Come back another day.

No, it drives me crazy.

I'm right with you.

And.

But others might make, criticism based on something that's beyond that.

You know, passing through I-5 kind of, remark.

But you really do need to, be from here and not just be writing Tacoma off.

And, I mean, even if you're not from here, you need to be here, and you need to genuinely care about the people here.

So that's my starting point.

And then in terms of what Tacoma needs, I mean, I think it's pretty clear all around us that, economic opportunity is what we need in Tacoma.

And, you know, how we get that?

And what that will look like to make sure that everyone has access to it and, that that opportunity is shared by all.

I don't have a specific prescription for that, but it's what I look for.

I'm going to whisper light rail to Tacoma.

I I'm really excited for that.

I'm not holding my breath because I know it's going to be a while.

Yeah.

I joke that I'll be able to visit my kids in college when it, finally opens.

And they're quite young now.

So what did you notice, though, with that said, what did you notice on your return?

Because the city and the south, and let's say the South Sound, changed substantially in those years between when you went to the school and when you came back.

Yeah.

That's right.

And I will say, of course, you always look at something differently as an adult, as as when you were a kid.

But I it the city has a different energy.

It has, I would say more energy, just more people kind of, I think inherently brings that.

But I've gotten to see more of the art side of Tacoma, more the creative side.

And just I feel, like there is a real will, among people who are trying to make it here, to really make it into a home, to make Tacoma something really great for everyone.

Looking at the business of journalism and what's going on with newspapers and ownership and news deserts and hedge funds coming into the mix and all those, those great topics.

And more fundamentally than that, when we talk about journalism, can journalism still make a difference?

Do you still believe in the power of a strong story?

Do you still believe in the power of newspapers?

Do you still believe in being able to, be a substantial voice in a community that needs change?

I think the answer is definitely yes.

I think there's probably the fact that the reach a smaller just by, virtue of the fact that fewer people are consuming the news, fewer people are reading newspapers and, and consuming other forms of news, which, is, is really unfortunate.

But absolutely, individual stories have a lot of power.

I've seen it, in every place that I've worked at, whether it's a small, website, a weekly, a legal newspaper and a, very widely read tech website.

You know, a story that point something out there, just something about saying, hey, here's the situation here, and getting into the details and why it matters just having that out there, it motivates people to do something about it.

And I'm going to give you a chance here.

This is just naked promotion and a chance for a naked promotional message.

What are you what are you working on?

Do you have any special projects you're doing?

Talk a little bit about your spreadsheet.

What's on your list of things that you're following?

Sure.

Yeah.

So, a pretty big range of things on my spreadsheet, of course, because my remit is all of Tacoma.

But, you know, in the short term, I'm looking at, at fire.

I'm sorry.

I'm looking at freight House square.

Because talking about light rail, it's been selected as the, as the location for the, light rail station, to go to up north and, you know, the condition of free House square until then, you know, as it attracted my attention because it's it could be, ten or more years until that happens.

And so here we have this building, that, you know, we could be enjoying, and it has a really interesting history.

So it's historically significance.

Exactly.

So there's so the question of what happens to it now.

Well, it's kind of in limbo.

And then the question of what happens to it after it becomes like a light rail station.

Can we preserve its character?

Can it still be, a business, like an area where small businesses can do their thing?

Start up?

Yes, exactly.

And, and, and like, you know, I think there's definitely some loss there to taking out some of what's inside the building and also the possibility of, of, you know, making it, something a little bit revitalized.

And I think that, you know, that's always that's kind of Tacoma writ large, right?

It's just like, you know, what can we do with this, this wonderful thing that has this historical significance that's charming, that we love, that we remember from our childhoods and, like, how can we make it into something that's really vital, super useful.

Yes.

Okay.

Well, Laura, thanks so much for coming in northwest.

Now, a great discussion.

I appreciate you coming.

Likewise.

Thank you for having me.

The bottom line tonight, it's nice to hear stories about people who have made the round trip from home to a wider world, and then back again.

I did it, and Laura did too.

And I'm sure her love of Western Washington will shine through in her work.

Whether you agree with it or not.

My thanks to Laura for coming to northwest now.

I hope this program got you thinking and talking.

You can find this program on the web @kbtc..org.

Stream it through the PBS app or listen on Spotify and Apple Podcasts.

That's going to do it for this edition of northwest.

Now until next time, I'm Tom Layson.

Thanks for watching.

Music.