Listening Survey 2023

What we heard you say

The Daily Herald seeks to better serve our community and support a healthy democracy through local journalism that covers what matters most to Snohomish County. To understand what’s important to you, we asked readers, subscribers and others interested in the Herald’s news to participate in a brief survey.

Nearly 1,400 individuals responded to our Listening Survey in July, compared with 1,000 last year. We asked only five questions. Two of those questions gave you the chance to fill in the blank.

Your feedback has given us much to consider, and we are encouraged by many of your responses.

Here are a few of your comments that made our day:

“The Herald is part of the social glue that holds our community together. Great paper!”
“The Herald is like the mac and cheese of my world, comforting...”
“Please, please, continue what you are doing. We are a better community because of your efforts.”

To all of you who took the time to take the survey – thank you!

A summary of the results is shown below.

QUESTION 1: The value of a local newspaper

Top 2 roles: Tells our community's stories, provides information to make informed decisions

A strong local newspaper can help a community thrive. We asked you what roles you think The Daily Herald fulfills in Snohomish County. You could select as many responses as you felt applied.

Answer choices	Percentage of responses
Tells our community’s stories	83%
Provides information to make informed decisions	82%
Helps people understand issues	77%
Serves as a community watchdog	70%
Records our history	68%
Explains how to participate civically	61%

QUESTION 2: Focused on public service journalism

Top 2 areas we do well: Amplifies positive stories, gets the facts right

The Daily Herald is committed to upholding the strong values of public service journalism that founded the newspaper more than 120 years ago.

To help us understand how well we are serving our community today, we asked you to rank our work in each area as:

Not important to me
Below my expectations
Meets my expectations
Above average
Very well

For our analysis, we combined rankings of meets my expectations and above. Four areas topped the list with a rating of 80% or higher.

Our work	Percentage of responses that include rankings for “meets my expectations” and above
Amplifies positive stories	86%
Gets the facts right	85%
Keeps people informed about public affairs	85%
Provides information people can use in their daily life	84%
Reports the local news without bias	78%
Gives enough attention to the most important issues	75%
Holds local leaders in politics, business and other institutions accountable for their actions	71%
Reports on how problems can be solved	71%

QUESTION 3: Topics that matter most

Top 2 topics: Government accountability, civic information

The Herald can’t cover everything that goes on in Snohomish County, so we asked you to rank several topics according to how much it matters to you to read local stories about it in the Herald.

Each topic could be ranked as

Not important at all
Somewhat important
Important
Very important

For our analysis, we determined the percentage of responses for each topic by combining rankings of important and very important. Of the 14 topics, 2 had percentages of 90 or higher; 11 had percentages of 70% or higher.

Topic	Percentage of responses that include rankings for “important” and “very important”
Government accountability (use of public funds, city and county planning)	91%
Civic information (elections, voting, candidates, major issues, public meetings)	90%
Crime and public safety	87%
Education (quality of local schools, decision-making processes)	80%
Business and economy (economic development, employment)	75%
Environment and climate change	72%
Traffic (transportation systems, infrastructure)	72%
Regional and national news	72%
Health and wellness (physical and mental health, access to and quality of care, spread of disease)	71%
Housing and homelessness	71%
Equity and social justice	70%
Social services (community support and assistance)	62%
Arts and entertainment (local events)	59%
Sports	42%

QUESTION 4: Is anything missing?

We asked if there is a topic the Herald should be covering that we currently are not. We didn’t require a response in order for you to complete the survey, but 468 filled in the blank.

We found several common themes in your responses. The six themes rising to the top with 23 or more related comments included:

Regional and national news
Government accountability
Sports
Fair and balanced reporting
Arts and entertainment
Kudos for the Herald

QUESTION 5: What else would you like us to know?

This open field asked for additional input. Again, we didn’t require a response in order for you to complete the survey, but 599 of you had something to tell us.

We found several common themes in your responses, just as we did in your responses to question 4. Sometimes one response had multiple themes, so we parsed each one into a separate category.

Three topics garnered more than 100 responses, far outweighing the remaining categories with 25 or fewer comments. They included:

Kudos for the Herald
Delivery concerns
Fair and balanced reporting

What are we going to do with this information?

The information you shared in the 2023 Listening Survey will inform the Herald’s local journalism going forward.

Herald Executive Editor Phil O’Connor and Publisher Rudi Alcott have read every comment you made, and we hope to launch a series of virtual community conversations next year to learn more.

In the meantime, you can continue to play an important role in local journalism that makes our community better. Here are a few ways to do that:

If you have a story idea or a news tip, send an email to [email protected].
If you feel strongly about something, share it with the community by writing a letter to the editor. Send letters by email to [email protected].
If you want to support the Herald in providing Snohomish County with valuable local news, can donate to one of our community-supported journalism funds. Learn more at heraldnet.com/local-news-impact.