On September 22, Cascade PBS announced it would cease production of its long-form written journalism. The company had been producing digital-first journalism since 2015, when Cascade PBS, formerly KCTS 9, acquired the digital nonprofit Crosscut.
The announcement followed Congress’ July vote to rescind previously approved funds for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB). Cascade PBS lost $3.5 million in federal funding, representing approximately 10% of its annual budget.
Crosscut was founded by Seattle Weekly founder David Brewster in 2007. The website transitioned into a nonprofit in 2008, with Brewster serving as the sole employee until grant funding was secured in 2009. The scrappy outlet was on the forefront of the nonprofit news movement, a business model that relies primarily on grants and individual donations rather than ad revenue.
Over its 18-year lifetime, Crosscut’s award-winning reporting covered: federal pandemic aid distribution; Washington lawmakers’ use of “legislative privilege” to redact public records; murky AI use by local officials; Central Washington farmworker rights; and the statewide housing crisis. The newsroom also produced original polls analyzing voter sentiment in partnership with public opinion researcher Stuart Elway and the only statewide Voter Guide from an independent news organization for the 2024 election.
Crosscut was a place journalists wanted to work. Reporters could focus on craft over deadlines, frequently delving deeper into complex topics than other local news outlets. In the community, Crosscut’s reporting catalyzed real-world impact, including state police reforms, stronger renter protections and internal investigations into issues like claims of racism at Seattle Children’s Hospital and dangerously deteriorating conditions at a local veterans’ affairs clinic.
As Cascade PBS shutters its digital-first newsroom, formerly Crosscut, current and former staff members share the stories they feel exemplify the impact of its reporting on the region.
“Context was one of Crosscut’s great strengths. Over the decades, our writers and editors so often strived to place news in its proper context with a few extra interviews and a few extra paragraphs. Sometimes that meant providing the pertinent background about a bill’s path through the Council or prior efforts by city leaders to enact similar policy. In the case of one of my favorite Crosscut stories, it meant diving deep into 1960s Seattle history.
“In 2016, voters around the Seattle region were asked to approve the third phase of Sound Transit’s light-rail expansion, known as ST3. The monumental (and monumentally expensive) ballot measure had striking parallels to Seattle’s Forward Thrust initiatives in 1968 and 1970, which would have funded the construction of a subway system in Seattle paid for mostly by the federal government.
“When reporting ‘How Seattle blew its chance at a subway system,’ I spent a lot of time in the University of Washington special collections library reading through Forward Thrust founder Jim Ellis’s papers and interviewed several other civic leaders from the time to help draw the lines between the region’s past and present.
Josh Cohen
“I still occasionally see this story shared on social media or on Reddit by people newly discovering and lamenting the choice by past Seattleites to reject nearly a billion dollars from the feds to build a real subway.
“In a city with so many transplants and in a moment where our attention is constantly divided, providing additional context is invaluable. Losing Crosscut’s approach to journalism now is tragic.”
Josh Cohen
Crosscut freelance contributor, 2014-2018
Crosscut Changing Region reporter, 2018-2019
Crosscut city reporter, 2022-2025
“All of Washington is short on the dogged reporting needed to maintain a healthy society. I appreciated Cascade PBS’s dedication to pursuing stories beyond the Seattle metro area.
“That included work by Farah Eltohamy and Mai Hoang reporting on a Washington-based company that bought mobile-home parks in Aberdeen, Yakima and Bellingham, and then raised rents and cut services. Brandon Block profiled the obscure state agency that decides whether clean energy projects get built around the state. Hal Bernton wrote on a woman from Port Orchard who has led a Kabul-based aid organization to help those on the margins of Afghanistan society.
Farah Eltohamy
“And I’m grateful that Cascade PBS made space for me to pursue deep-dive reporting on state government actions that affect all of Washington. That included stories revealing state officials weren’t enforcing a gun law passed by voters and documenting how a government official deboned the tiny oversight agency that oversaw Washington’s prisons.
“One series by myself and Shauna Sowersby revealed the state Legislature’s efforts to black-out and withhold taxpayer-funded documents like lawmaker emails and memos, after a state Supreme Court ruling held that they must be disclosed. Our reporting forced lawmakers to improve their disclosure practices and won the Kenneth Bunting Award by the Washington Coalition for Open Government.
Joseph O’Sullivan
“Rich people of Seattle, I beseech you: Fund newsrooms!”
Joseph O’Sullivan
State politics reporter, 2022-2024
“During my five years as news editor at Crosscut, our journalists produced hundreds of stories that helped our readers and our state. I am proud of all the work the news team produced because so many of their stories and photographs helped people better understand our world, the challenges their neighbors faced and sometimes changed government policies.
“One award-winning series by Melissa Santos on how bad cops were hiding in plain sight all over Washington was among the best journalism produced by Crosscut in its nearly 20 years of existence. Melissa used the Washington Public Records Act as well as her masterful interviewing and writing skills to uncover the way law enforcement was doing a poor job tracking cops with credibility issues. In reporting in 2020 and 2021, she found at least 183 police officers who had been flagged for issues such as dishonesty, bias and excessive force still working in law enforcement across the state.
Melissa Santos
“Her reporting also changed the way some county prosecutors did their jobs, made it harder for bad cops to get a new job elsewhere and forced some police chiefs and other law enforcement leaders to improve their internal notification systems so that an officer’s past misconduct wouldn’t slip through the cracks.
“The project involved more than a hundred public records requests, which is impressive on its own, but Melissa completed the work while also covering the Legislature, the 2020 election and lots of other stories of statewide interest. I share these details not to emphasize how amazing a journalist Melissa Santos is. She is great, but she was just one of more than a dozen fabulous journalists I worked with at Crosscut who were reporting and writing impactful stories every month of my time there.”
Donna Gordon Blankinship
News editor, 2019-2024
“I was hired as Arts and Culture writer at Crosscut in 2018, on what was supposed to be a yearlong grant. That job soon morphed into Arts and Culture Editor, and 7.5 years later I’m still covering arts and culture at Cascade PBS, writing the continuing newsletter and as host of Art by Northwest.
Cascade PBS Staff
“Early on in my Crosscut career I came upon a story that was literally in our backyard (when our office was at Seattle Center). It was the fall of 2018, and while I was taking my customary lunch walk around the campus I stumbled across some gargoyles lying in an alleyway.
“Having followed the demolition of the Mercer Arena in 2017, when the gargoyles were discovered entombed within the 1962 facade, I suspected this was where the concrete creatures had ended up: in a throughway between Seattle Opera and Memorial Stadium. Stacked on pallets, they were tucked under a tarp, but one of their telltale claws was sticking out.
“I enlisted staff photographer Matt M. McKnight to investigate further with me and sure enough, these were the same gargoyles that the City had said would be preserved. How did they get here? I had to find out.
“I knew the story was bigger than decorative griffins, and my editor Florangela Davila agreed. It was a story about how historic details get cast aside in a city rushing to build a shinier, sleeker version of itself. And it struck a nerve with readers, which made sense — there was something heartbreaking about those once-proud gargoyles now lying among rat traps.
“I don’t know that my gothic investigation changed the way the city approaches its archival ephemera (ask Vanishing Seattle), but it sure connected with readers, which was always our goal at Crosscut.”
Brangien Davis
Arts and culture writer, 2018-2019
Arts and culture editor, 2019-2023
Arts and culture editor at large, 2023-present
From prison reform to refugee communities, Pride parades and pandemic woes, Cascade PBS brought a human element to current events.
"Last spring I wrote a story about a Whatcom County public works director whom multiple women accused of sexual harassment. Instead of investigating those complaints or disciplining him, county leaders agreed to conceal the allegations, wrote him a favorable letter of recommendation and helped him get a new job. The county executive quietly settled one accuser’s lawsuit for $225,000 – without informing the County Council.
"My story caused a minor scandal in Whatcom County, in part because even Council members had been left in the dark. At a public meeting shortly after publication, Council member Jon Scanlon thanked “the journalists” for bringing the story to light. Since then, Whatcom County has launched its own investigation into HR harassment reporting practices, and proposed legislation to increase oversight over lawsuit payouts. I feel reasonably certain that without the story, none of that would have happened.
Brandon Block
"As local news jobs continue to shrink, public interest newsrooms like Crosscut only become more essential. Our focus on statewide accountability stories was unique. It meant that in parts of the state where the few remaining local journalists lack the resources to dig beneath the surface, we were sometimes the only ones reporting on issues like predatory mobile home park landlords or youth labor violations.
Brandon Block
Investigative reporter, 2022-2025
“Nearly a year after the 2024 election, people still tell me how much they relied on and appreciated that year’s Cascade PBS Statewide Voters Guide. We partnered with four other news organizations throughout Washington — The Columbian, the Salish Current, Cascadia Daily News and RANGE Media — to bring readers coverage of the statewide election, which included all Legislative districts, nine statewide races including the open race for governor, a city race in Seattle, all the Congressional races and one Senate race, plus several significant statewide initiatives.
“The guide involved the work of dozens of reporters and editors statewide, including everyone from Cascade PBS’s news and investigative teams. Our audience engagement team, led by Digital Content Manager Madeline Happold, and our digital design team also made sure the guide was in a reader-friendly format that was easy for readers to navigate. Unlike the (also vital and important) state-produced voter guide, our guide’s reporters and editors provided crucial additional context, including past news coverage, campaign finance information and links to ongoing news coverage.
“While the Harris/Trump presidential race might have dominated the headlines, local and state elections are critically important to Washington communities and deserve as much attention. By harnessing Cascade PBS’s resources and collaborating with our statewide partners, we were able to offer all Washingtonians some help through the 2024 election season.”
Venice Buhain
Education reporter, 2021-2022
Associate news editor, 2022-2025
“When the nation’s first COVID-19 case was reported in Washington state, Crosscut was on the story. We had plans to cover other topics in early 2020, but like seemingly every other human endeavor that year, those plans were quickly dashed.
“It was a time of deep unease, confusion and fear, but also one of invention and creativity in the newsroom. While editors were securing PPE for our journalists and figuring out how to run a news operation at a distance, Crosscut reporters and producers were bravely striking out into a suddenly unfamiliar world and tracking down stories.
“We prided ourselves on finding the personal dimension of the news, and our team’s ability to tell the story of this new virus through individual experience helped us quickly add to the larger understanding of its toll.
Sara Bernard
“Much of that reporting is contained in the first season of a podcast we called This Changes Everything. Throughout those 10 episodes, producer and host Sara Bernard interviewed Crosscut journalists about the pandemic’s impacts on everything from religion and art to politics and parenthood. It is a valuable time capsule of a moment that has faded into distorted memory.
“The most powerful episode tells the story of a woman who lost her job as a tattoo artist during the lockdown and transitioned into a role in the death-care industry. Reported by Margo Vansynghel, it is a sobering story that is unflinching in its portrayal of the most frightening parts of the pandemic, its ability to quickly take away a person’s livelihood and the reality of the death it delivered to so many doorsteps. And yet, it is also a deeply human and beautiful story. I remember crying when I listened to Sara’s first cut of the episode. I wept when I listened again this week.”
Mark Baumgarten
News and politics editor, 2018-2019
Managing editor, 2019-2023
Director of Digital News, 2023
“I lived through all of Crosscut’s incarnations and reincarnations, starting in 2006 as part of the developing site’s brain trust. I served as Mossback columnist, which eventually developed into the video series, but my reporting covered a lot of ground. ‘News of the Great Nearby’ was our original motto. I appreciate the way we got out of Seattle. One of my best experiences was in 2017 traveling along Highway 2 across the state with staff photographer Matt McKnight taking Washington’s temperature along our first Sound-to-Idaho highway. We found Obama-Trump voters in Sultan, we watched Aplets and Cotlets being manufactured in Cashmere, we talked to migrant workers and cherry growers.
Cascade PBS Staff
“I remember interviewing a wheat rancher in Grant County and asking about his politics. ‘I vote for the man, not the party,’ he said. I asked him who was the last Democrat he voted for. He thought a while. ‘Well, my dad voted for Sen. Scoop Jackson!’ That nugget told me a lot about the political mindset: Jackson died in 1983 in a less partisan time. Part of us always lives in the past.
“We picked huckleberries on Mount Spokane, we saw the Northern Lights above Steamboat Rock in Grand Coulee. I enjoyed the air, the history, the diversity of landscape and opinion. It reminded me, and I hope the readers, that the Great Nearby is rich and connected. Unfortunately, due to a technical snafu, the series of stories was lost on the Internet and vanished in a technical memory hole. This reminds me of just how ephemeral our experience, our words and our revelations can be. Hang on to those that make you wiser.”
Knute Berger
Columnist and editor at large, 2006-present
