After more than 20 years at the Spokane Journal of Business, Editor Linn Parish has accepted a new job at Eastern Washington University.

Parish will begin his new role as the university's director of communications and media relations on Aug. 1.

Earlier this month, the Journal sat down with Parish to discuss his career at this newspaper, changes across the journalism industry, and the state of the Spokane business community.

How did you get your start in journalism?

I started working for my high school newspaper and really got the bug at that time, way back then. It was a lot of fun.

I remember there was one time I was writing a preview story for the basketball game with our crosstown rival. I was talking to one of the players and he said, "you know, so-and-so blew out his knee." I thought I had a big scoop, right? I thought I had some breaking news.

I didn't. Nobody cared. But it was kind of that first feeling of being able to tell people something they don't know about what's going on in their community. And that's what I've been doing for quite some time now.

Am I remembering correctly that you also worked as a paper boy when you were a kid?

Yeah, that's right. Starting in about eighth grade, I carried the Billings Gazette, in Billings, Montana, rain or shine or really, really cold. Morning route every day. And I did it all the way through high school.

Back then, almost every house got the daily newspaper. I delivered in my neighborhood and a few blocks over, and it was actually a really good experience for me.

You've held different roles in the newsroom here, as both a reporter and in various leadership positions. Was there a favorite news story or topic that you wrote about or that the newsroom covered while you were editor?

I have some stories that stick out in my mind, but it's more the reporting or different things that happen during the reporting process that I remember, than it is major events.

Mike McLean, who just retired here, he wrote about Ruby Ridge, this historic event in the Pacific Northwest that had implications for years. I never had a big, national breaking news moment like that. I just always really enjoyed telling people what was going on in our community and letting them know about things that they might not know about.

Super boring answer, I know. But that was always my mindset.

How vital is it for a community, and specifically a business community, to have consistent, reliable business news?

Well, obviously that's something that I feel strongly about.

The Journal staked its claim to that role back in the mid-80s and did a really good job of quickly establishing credibility in our market and trust from business sources.

That was largely, not exclusively, but largely thanks to our current publisher, Paul Read, who's been here the entire time. There were a lot of seasoned journalists who were involved at that time, but Paul was certainly a central figure in that.

We've really tried to carry on that tradition through the years of being a clear, objective source.

As the media landscape has changed, it's become more important for us to look at what role we can serve, where we can be of value beyond the straight business news. We do a little bit more with nonprofits these days. We do a little bit more with local government.

 Our market is well served by media. We have good TV stations, The Spokesman (Review). I don't know that everybody understands how fortunate we are to have The Spokesman, even though it's evolving right now.

And then we have some independent journalists or smaller groups that are doing a great job of reporting, in addition to the work that the Inlander does as our alternative weekly. We aren't anywhere close to a news desert, even though there aren't as many people working in our field as there once were.

You touched on this a little bit already, but how would you say journalism has changed over the course of your career?

The easy answer is the technology part, right? But I think it goes beyond that, because what really has changed is that people had limited sources of information before, and now they have an embarrassment of riches of sources. Because we all have our own publishing platforms right now, in terms of social media.

Now, is the quality of those sources what it once was, or is the quality of all those social media sources good? No, absolutely not. 

I would say the role that we play as an objective observer is more important than ever when so much of the information that is consumed is from a place of, for lack of a better term, biased perspective.

What are some notable changes that you've seen in the business community?

The biggest one, and I do see it as a source of concern in our business community, is how fewer organizations are controlled locally or have local ownership.

I think with local ownership, they're more likely to be more invested in the community and make decisions that go beyond the dollars and the cents.

A lot of longtime Spokane companies have sold over the years to where they're owned elsewhere or they've been moved elsewhere.

That's great for the owners. That's the dream exit strategy, right? Build up a business over the course of your career, sell it, and retire. But for the community, it can be a place of concern if there aren't new businesses growing and expanding and filling that void.

What were some of the greater challenges that you faced as a journalist?

The printed product is our core. Everything builds off of that. But I think at some point, a lot of our peers in other markets had to shift focus to more online features, toward events, and other revenue sources. And they did it out of necessity.

We have always had a strong core product, but at some point over the last 10 years or so, I really felt that we were getting behind, and I felt a sense of urgency that we needed to keep the focus on that core product, but expand into some other areas.

So we've been successful with our email newsletters. We have added events to our repertoire that have been successful. And obviously this podcast and the webcast that preceded it.

We're in a lot of places where we're meeting people where they are. I think that's been my challenge that I gave myself about eight years ago and I really think that we've come a long way in those ways.

What will you miss most about working at the Journal?

I don't know that I'll miss this, but I'm interested to see what it's like to not be living my life in two-week cycles.

And I don't know if it's better or worse, but you know, we go to press every two weeks and if you don't know, press day for us is all hands on deck. It's an event.

I feel like there's a very predictable path during those two weeks, where you kind of slow down after the paper comes out, and then you slowly ramp back up to a more fevered pitch. I've tried to even that out a little bit, so it's not as manic as it once was.

But it will be interesting to see what it's like to not be living in two-week cycles.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.