Public records win funds more investigative journalism at WA college

Here’s a roundabout way to get public support for local journalism.

But it depends on the generosity of young journalists and boneheaded decisions by state officials.

This happened last week Bellingham, where three Western Washington University graduates donated $42,000 to establish an endowment supporting students’ investigative journalism.

The graduates and former editors of the student newspaper The Front — Erasmus Baker, Asia Fields and Julia Furukawa — were reporting on the university’s handling of sexual assault and misconduct.

In 2018 they requested records of students found responsible for misconduct and harassment — not to publish names but to understand how cases were being handled by the university, Fields said.

Their work followed several federal investigations of Western