There is no democracy without journalism

GUEST OPINION

Currently, I live with a view of the Muckleshoot Casino and see its fireworks displays advertising their “Boom City” and heralding their upcoming end-of-June fireworks. With Independence Day and the freedoms it celebrates just around the corner, I can’t help reflecting on the many challenges we have faced as a nation and continue to face, and the role of our newspapers in that ongoing transformation. Washington State saw its first expression of the constitutionally enshrined Freedom of the Press 37 years before the state’s creation. When the First Amendment was being drafted, this coast was still being charted by explorers and settlers moving through the lands of sovereign tribal nations.