📰 Inside CDN 04/06/26

From the editor’s desk: Last week’s Inside CDN poll question, like many appearing here, served as a sort of temperature check. (Not a pulse check; that is CDN Health Reporter Owen Racer’s popular newsletter!)

The poll subject was Ski to Sea, an event CDN puts a lot of time and effort into covering every year. The Memorial Day weekend multisport race from Baker to Bellingham Bay is Whatcom County’s biggest annual event, drawing tens of thousands of participants and spectators. That alone makes it a large news event.

It’s also, in my mind, a quintessential “sense-of-place” happening: people recreating outside in our world-class living space, with approaches ranging from deadly serious to simply fun, is what NW Washington is known for. (This year, look for our special advance coverage online and in print in mid-May.)

But at CDN, our top-to-bottom Ski to Sea race day reporting serves two additional, important purposes: First, it’s a team-building exercise. We put our entire staff out in the field on race day, and run a live, daylong update stream on our website. Everyone works together, literally handing off our coverage the way racers hand off a timing chip. It can be challenging, but it’s also fun.

Secondly, it’s great practice for how we would similarly cover a large, dramatic news event, such as (god forbid) a plane crash, public violence, fires or natural disasters. While the subject matter would turn from fun to perilous, our tools of reporting and production — the gear we use, the way we organize constant, breaking updates, how we incorporate multimedia — are the same.

We’ve already reaped the benefits of these test runs in covering events such as the Bellingham Terminal Fire of 2023, the floods of this past winter (especially), and other ongoing stories. So when you see us out in our black, white and red-all-over CDN gear on race day, know that we’re training as well as watching.

Results from last week’s poll suggest our readers also like the coverage. The vast majority of respondents picked the first answer: “A great sense-of-place event that draws the community together, deserving of deep coverage.”

A sampling of written responses from readers in all camps about the event:

“Traditions are meant to be kept, and this a good one. The whole region looks forward to Ski to Sea.”

“We have found that attending the event is more of a hassle than it's worth. There are big crowds and few places to just hang out and enjoy the atmosphere. At the same time, it is a cool race that draws people in from elsewhere.”

“I am brand new to Bellingham having moved from the other Washington (DC), so had never heard of it.”

Thanks to all who responded. Additional Ski to Sea story ideas can be sent to
[email protected].

I mentioned here previously my own standards for writing personal opinion pieces about community institutions, focusing on a recent pointed piece about PeaceHealth. Strong opinion pieces of that sort are traditionally published with the hope of long-term gains in public accountability by the institution in question.

Back channel talk from the many, many local folks working to make the community relationship with PeaceHealth more transparent are that such messages — columns, letters and guest commentaries — have, in fact, been heard on high, and might be making a difference.

To wit: Last week’s community meeting on the PeaceHealth campus, which concluded with an interview opportunity with top officer Charles Prosper by CDN, was noted and appreciated here. A very strong step toward the sort of public openness the community expects.

Thanks to our web and newsletters team, logged-in CDN subscribers can now find an archive of this missive and the five other subscriber-only newsletters on this website. This is a great new feature in case you miss one, it gets devoured by your Spam filter, or you want to refer back to something appearing in one at a later date.

While we’re on that subject, another plea for reader input:

Thanks for supporting your independent local free press. It matters!

Ricksteves.com: “The Traveler and American Democracy,” lecture in Edmonds, Jan. 30. Taking notes for my interview with Steves at his CDN-sponsored April 11 appearance at Mount Baker Theatre. Ticket info here.

The Atlantic: “Is AI Going to Turn Us All Into Middle Managers?” (gift link) by Charlie Warzel. God, I hope not. Am I confident? No.

The Conversation: “Silence: A brief literary history” by Kate McLoughlin, University of Oxford. A fascinating exploration, from my favorite public-facing academic site, into what now surely qualifies as a novel concept.