Briefs

Joseph O’Sullivan, Shauna Sowersby honored for watchdog reporting

the Bunting Award

The Washington Coalition for Open Government’s Bunting Award presented to Joseph O’Sullivan and Shauna Sowersby. (Donna Gordon Blankinship/Cascade PBS)

Cascade PBS is honored to share that our state government reporter Joseph O’Sullivan has been honored by the Washington Coalition for Open Government for his work covering state lawmakers’ efforts to hide information about their work from the public using what they say is their “legislative privilege.”

O’Sullivan and his partner in the reporting project that spanned 2023, Shauna Sowersby of McClatchy, were given the Coalition’s prestigious Bunting Award at a ceremony on Friday at T-Mobile Park, although O’Sullivan was unable to attend.

“The Kenneth F. Bunting Award recognizes journalists and media outlets for work that uses or advances Washington state’s open government laws, or educates citizens about them,” according to their website. The Coalition said this was the first time they had honored journalists from two different organizations who collaborated on a project. O’Sullivan and Sowersby worked together on their reporting for more than a dozen stories published in their respective publications. Crosscut also won this award last year for investigative coverage. 

Sowersby and O’Sullivan used public records and dozens of interviews to tell the story of how lawmakers were silently exempting everything from deliberative documents to embarrassing content, why they decided to use “legislative privilege”; and how the exemption was crafted and used. They also uncovered how powerful lobbying agencies can influence transparency laws and how at least one executive branch agency secretly had a “legislative privilege” policy on their books. That agency has since rescinded the policy.

Cascade PBS to record live podcast at Seattle Town Hall on Friday

Lana Ikelan and Noga Bar Oz

Lana Ikelan is a Palestinian journalist, and Noga Bar Oz is an Israeli musician who conducts an orchestra for Arab and Jewish children. (Tomorrow’s Women)

This Friday, Cascade PBS will take part in an event highlighting the voices of two young women from Palestine and Israel travelling together to share stories of war, strength and hope.  

Lana Ikelan and Noga Bar Oz from Tomorrow’s Women met at a camp in New Mexico in 2016 organized by the 20-year-old nonprofit organization. Tomorrow’s Women aims to train “women from Palestine, Israel and the United States to be strong, compassionate leaders who partner to resolve conflicts and inspire action that promotes equality, peace, and justice for all.” 

They have left their deeply divided homelands for a series of events in the U.S., including a program this week at Town Hall Seattle at 7:30 p.m. on March 8. They will both share parts of their stories, and afterward, Cascade PBS podcast producer Sara Bernard will host a Q&A that will be broadcast as a future episode of Northwest Reports (formerly Crosscut Reports). 

Ikelan and Bar Oz will also participate in an event on Sunday morning March 10 at Seattle First Baptist Church. 

The Seattle events are part of a short tour that includes similar events at UCLA and a Jewish Community Center in Los Angeles later this month. 

Crosscut has long been known for its in-depth, long-form reporting and multipart investigations into broader issues facing the Pacific Northwest – from levees in Aberdeen to affordable-housing issues in Spokane. Each published story takes a lot of behind-the-scenes beat reporting that often gets left on the cutting-room floor. 

The Crosscut newsroom has decided to start picking up those pieces by launching briefs. They’re just as the name implies. Briefs will be shorter reads that provide continuing coverage of the issues our readers are interested in – from affordable housing to Indigenous affairs to climate – as well as emergent news of the day, including breaking news from Olympia, arts events happening around town and agriculture reports.  

Our long-form content isn’t going anywhere – we will still publish daily stories that provide the same nuanced reporting that is the backbone of Crosscut. And each Wednesday we will continue to produce our long-form features alongside our weekly Crosscut Reports podcast. We just will also offer a few more brief stories each weekday afternoon, as well. 

So we’ll keep it brief. You can find the latest briefs on our homepage, or go to crosscut.com/briefs to find more.