The Olympian needs your support to continue tapping resources that expand coverage

The Olympian, along with its sister papers in Tacoma, Bellingham and Tri-Cities, is adding a reporter to cover indigenous communities in Washington state.

Report for America fellow Natasha Brennan starts June 1. Her coverage will focus on tribes in the state of Washington, and their role in local communities, management of natural resources, preservation of their culture and more.

Brennan comes to the state after earning her master’s degree from the University of Southern California. She’s written stories for PBS Native Report and Indian Country Today. You can follow her on Twitter at twitter.com/natasha_marie_b. She’s a member of the National Association of Hispanic Journalists and Native American Journalists Association.

“To cover Washington’s vibrant Indigenous community is an incredibly important task I’m honored to be chosen for,” Brennan said. “I’m ready to get to know Washington’s tribes and Indigenous people, and help the state of Washington get to know them better, too.”

Brennan said she became inspired to specialize in writing about Native American culture and issues as a child visiting her father’s family on the Cahuilla Reservation in southern California.

This is the second community-funded, full-time position serving Olympia. The Olympian added Brandon Block last spring to cover housing and homelessness in Thurston County and beyond. I hear from readers every week about how much they appreciate what his work has brought to our community.

Brennan and Block are added to our staff in partnership with Report for America, a program of the nonprofit GroundTruth Project that is placing about 300 journalists in more than 200 newsrooms this year and simultaneously working with those newsrooms to develop their philanthropy efforts. RFA pays a portion of the reporters’ salaries; local newsrooms and their communities must cover the rest.

That’s where we need your help. Through community fundraising, we need to raise money to support these two positions. So we’re launching our spring fundraiser at TheOlympia.com/donate. Donations are tax-deductible through the nonprofit Journalism Funding Partners and directly support these two positions specifically.

This kind of support does wonders for the morale of The Olympian’s small team of dedicated, professional journalists who work so tirelessly to provide as much meaningful coverage of this community as they possibly can. And the work that results from these kinds of partnerships can make a huge difference as this community navigates its way through complex issues.

So, if you can, please support the two existing reporting positions held by Block and Brennan through our spring donation campaign.

If you prefer to send a check, make the check payable to Journalism Funding Partners and in the notes field on the check, write The Olympian. Include your email address to receive a tax donation letter. The check then needs to be mailed to: McClatchy P.O. Box 15779 Sacramento, CA 95852. The Journalism Funding Partners’ tax ID number, it is 84-2968843.

And some sad news

Sara Gentzler, who was The Olympian’s intrepid state government reporter during the just-ended legislative session and covered Thurston County for more than a year before that, will be leaving us Friday, May 7.

Based on her excellent work here, the Omaha World-Herald offered her a job as one of their legislative reporters. Since she’s from Nebraska and has been missing her family during this pandemic lockdown, it was an offer she couldn’t refuse.

Gentzler arrived at The Olympian almost two years ago with good skills and great smarts, and she took every opportunity to learn from her work. She quickly garnered a reputation for digging deep and being fair, for relentless fact-checking and for her integrity. She really hit her stride in the past month of the legislative session, deciphering an overwhelming number of complex, high-impact bills.

Omaha will be very lucky to have her, and we will most definitely miss her.

Please feel free to wish Sara well by sending emails to sgentzler@mcclatchy.com.

This story was originally published May 2, 2021 at 5:00 AM.