The 2026 legislative session is scheduled to end next week in Olympia, but as teaching professors of journalism at the University of Washington, we are thinking about the beginning.
On the Friday before the opening gavel in early January, reporters gathered in a Capitol hearing room to engage in pregame analysis with legislative leaders and the governor.
Of the 25 or so people spread around the center of the room, more than half were either current UW journalism students or alumni of its legislative-reporting class, colloquially known as the Olympia Program, which this year sent six fresh recruits to cover the session for news outlets around the state.
In addition to the six, the 14 included three reporters representing UW‘s The Daily student newspaper and four full-time government watchdog reporters who once were student journalists themselves in the UW Olympia program.
Yes, the number of full-time, professional reporters covering state government has plummeted in the past 20 years. And to some, the large proportion of students in the room is a reminder of that industry contraction.
But we see long-term, good news here: Young people are still drawn to meaningful, difficult work, and some of them are learning the craft in the most important rooms in our state’s democracy. Initiatives like UW’s 53-year-old Olympia Program are not extracurriculars — they are civic infrastructure.
Read more on the Olympia program from Teaching Professors Andrea Otáñez and Caley Cook at The Seattle Times.