Seattle loves to think of itself as an informed, engaged, "I-read-the-footnotes" kind of city. But what happens when the institutions we rely on to tell our stories are shrinking, consolidating, or vanishing altogether?
Join Marcus Harrison Green with Florangela Davila, Hannah Murphy Winter, and Naomi Ishisaka for a candid, no-spin conversation about the state of local media— and what it means for the future of civic life in Seattle. We'll dig into questions like:
- Who gets covered, and who only shows up in the news when something goes wrong?
- What does it mean when neighborhoods lose beat reporters, but gain police press releases and political mailers?
- How are grassroots, BIPOC-led, and community media stepping in where legacy outlets have stepped back—and what support do they actually need to survive?
- And how do everyday readers and listeners move from consuming the news to co-creating it?
Alongside Florangela Davila, of the South Seattle Emerald, Hannah Murphy Winter of The Stranger, and Naomi Ishisaka from The Seattle Times, Marcus will explore how we rebuild trust in news, fund coverage that actually reflects our communities, and resist the slide into a city where the loudest voices are the best-funded ones.
This won't be a nostalgia tour for the "good old days" of print. It's a conversation about what comes next—and how Seattle can choose a media ecosystem that serves people, not just profit.
Host:
Erica C. Barnett is a longtime journalist covering local news and politics, co-founder of PubliCola, and author of Quitter: A Memoir of Drinking, Relapse, and Recovery.
Panelists:
Florangela Davila is the Executive Director of the South Seattle Emerald and a longtime Seattle journalist whose work has centered on both race and the creative community. She's the former race and immigration reporter at The Seattle Times, former arts reporter at KPLU, former managing editor and host at Crosscut/Cascade PBS, and most recently, the news director at KNKX Public Radio, where she led the newsroom to more than two dozen regional and national awards during her four-year tenure.
Hannah Murphy Winter is The Stranger's Editor-in-Chief and writes about queerness, justice, the climate crisis, and the intersection between politics and the arts, usually not all at once.
Naomi Ishisaka is the social justice columnist and assistant managing editor for diversity, inclusion, and staff development at The Seattle Times.
Presented by Town Hall Seattle and The Stranger.
