Building a new beat

Since joining Cascade PBS and KNKX in Seattle through Washington State University’s Murrow News Fellowship, Western Washington University journalism alum Nate Sanford has built a beat covering the political issues shaping the lives of young adults in Washington.

Before joining the fellowship, Sanford covered Spokane city politics as a staff writer and city hall reporter for the Pacific Northwest Inlander.

His interest in political reporting began at Western, where he reported for The Front and freelanced for Cascade PBS.

At Cascade PBS and KNKX, Sanford reports on political issues affecting Washington residents ages 18 to 35.

Sanford described the beat as “a pretty broad and kind of a new idea,” focused on young adults and the political and power dynamics shaping their lives. He said the organizations created it because young adults remain an underserved audience in political journalism.

Even though his beat can lead him to lots of different places, Sanford focuses on things like labor organizing, housing, political participation and technology. Sanford said those issues impact everyone – people of all ages – but he thinks they’re especially salient for the younger generation.

That broad focus has led Sanford to report on emerging issues, including the use of artificial intelligence in government.

One of Sanford’s current projects examines how Snohomish County is developing policies for government use of artificial intelligence. The reporting builds on his 2024 investigation into ChatGPT use in local government, which relied on public records requests to obtain chatbot logs from government employees.

“That story had kind of a big reaction in a lot of ways,” Sanford said. “Some people in Snohomish County read that [story] and kind of had the feeling like ‘Snohomish County needs to create an AI policy for its government.’”

In response, Sanford said Snohomish County is convening a group of 40 randomly selected citizens for several weekends this summer. The group will work together to research issues involving AI, Sanford said, and then write an AI usage policy for Snohomish County.

“It’s kind of this cool experiment in direct democracy,” Sanford said. “I’ve been going to some of those sessions, and I’m covering that – I think it’s going to be a pretty fun story.”

Sanford said that his initial coverage last summer involved a fair amount of research. He filed a series of public records requests over the course of a year in a number of different jurisdictions, asking for information about the number of times someone had used ChatGPT on a government computer.

Sanford said that he wasn’t really sure what to expect from doing that. In some ways, Sanford said he was mainly testing the system to see this was possible under Washington’s public records laws.

“And it turns out it is,” Sanford said. “It’s super revealing and interesting, being able to get this snapshot into how government officials are using this new technology.”

What Sanford got back from these public records requests, he said, was thousands of pages worth of documents. These records showed government employees using ChatGPT for all sorts of things, Sanford said, including writing emails to constituents, drafting speeches, and even tweaking actual policy documents like comprehensive plans.

Sanford said he doesn’t consider himself an AI expert, but he sees the technology becoming increasingly embedded in government and public life. As more public agencies adopt AI tools, he expects questions about transparency and accountability to remain an important part of his reporting.