Short staffed, over worked, and having to cope with a deadline at something like 9:15 pm, which is a significant problem if you are trying to cover evening meetings like the City Council's. (Somebody told me this is because the paper's now edited in Tacoma, though I'm now clear why that should make a difference about the production timeline.) I don't know what the exact consequences of ongoing budget cuts are, but I assume that those must affect the resources available to reporters, and their working conditions.

I'm not sure, but it seems to me this morning that it's difficult in more or less the same ways that the lives of other workers in traditional occupations are difficult under the conditions of modern globalised capitalism. I think it's hard in fundamentally the same ways that things are hard for people committed to trying to make a living in independent bookstores, or local farming, or in companies making good furniture in the United States. (Some of the proposed solutions are pretty much the same too... though so far very few people seem to be willing to pay for really excellent local news in the way that they're willing to pay for, say - really excellent local baked goods like the Bread Peddler's, or for a subscription to regular delivery of really excellent local produce from a CSA.) I don't know what the subscription levels for Olympia Power & Light or Einmaleins TV:Olympia's Internet broadcast network have been, but I certainly don't have the sense that they're high.