Two Bellingham Herald reporters among nationwide McClatchy layoffs
Bellingham Herald said goodbye to housing and homelessness reporter and editor Rachel Showalter this week, and Jack Belcher — who covered transportation, environment and breaking news — will work his last day on Oct. 11.
Showalter and Belcher made up a third of the Bellingham newsroom. After the layoffs, the Herald is left with senior editor Scot Heisel and four reporters, down from six.
The two journalists were among 90 across the country recently laid off by McClatchy Media Company, which is owned by New Jersey-based hedge fund Chatham Asset Management. Of these, 17 were reportedly laid off at the Idaho Statesman, Tacoma News Tribune, Tri-City Herald, The Olympian and Bellingham Herald.
On Sept. 10, McClatchy representatives gave Showalter and Belcher the news of their dismissal from Bellingham Herald via video call.
“I definitely was caught off guard by it,” Belcher said. “Unfortunately, it’s been a dark couple of years for journalists across the country, so it’s not completely surprising.”
“I didn’t anticipate being laid off,” Showalter said, “but the writing on the wall has kind of been there for a long time as it pertains to corporate media. In general, I think the corporate media industry is struggling to keep the lights on, and newsrooms are constantly being asked to do more with less as the industry tries to make a profit.”
McClatchy did not respond to a request for comment, and Heisel declined.
“These are journalists who investigated local hospitals, served as watchdogs over state and local government, showed up at every high school game, jumped in to cover breaking news like wildfires, covered news in overlooked communities and monitored development in one of the fastest growing regions in the country,” the Pacific Northwest Newspaper Guild, who represents Belcher, wrote in a press release. “One of these papers will no longer have a dedicated reporter covering city hall. Another will no longer have anyone dedicated to covering the state capitol.”
Despite the blow, the Herald will carry on, Showalter said.
“It’s definitely a hard moment for our newsroom to lose the longer-term and in-depth reporting that I was doing on those issues,” Showalter said. “I have full faith that all the reporters in our newsroom have the capacity and desire to continue that reporting, but losing our staff members in a newsroom that’s already kind of pushed to its brink as far as capacity makes it harder for folks to continue doing really critical coverage.”
In May, the Herald’s Pacific Northwest Newspaper Guild members conducted a one-day strike, calling for higher pay and protection against AI. In the bargaining session that followed, McClatchy agreed to guaranteed raises, a $52,000 minimum salary for current employees, a ban on AI replacing staff and more.
While Belcher was one of the organizers of the strike, Showalter is not a member of the Pacific Northwest Newspaper Guild and did not strike.
Belcher graduated from Central Washington University and started working for the Herald in September 2022, almost exactly four years before he was laid off. Showalter graduated from Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo and spent nearly four years working in broadcast journalism before joining Bellingham Herald in August 2022.
“My heart is kind of broken right now for the journalism industry as a whole,” Showalter said. “This is a really hard time for a lot of people. It’s a hard time for reporters, it’s a hard time for newsrooms and it’s a hard time for communities who really deserve and rely on good quality journalism and reporting. I have hope for the industry. I hope things will level out, but it’s definitely a dark time and, just aside from my personal experience, as a whole, it’s sad for sure.”
While Showalter and Belcher said they will take some time to reevaluate, both will continue to pursue news jobs, they said.
“I’m so excited and hopeful for what journalism can be,” Showalter said. “I am proud of the work that I’ve done so far. I don’t plan on leaving Bellingham. I don’t plan on leaving Northwest Washington, so my goal is to stay in news if I can make it happen. In any capacity, storytelling is something that I’m passionate about, so I’m trying to keep doing it.”
In the press release, the newspaper guild wrote that McClatchy favored short-term profits for a hedge fund over the wellbeing of the communities that its newspapers serve, and that model will ultimately fail.
“I still believe that Bellingham Herald’s going to put out a good newspaper,” Belcher said. “I just think that people working there are going to have to work even harder than they already are. They are some of the hardest working, best people I know and I’ve had the pleasure of working with.”
—By Sam Fletcher