Once Part of Pulitzer Prize Winning Team, Now Supporting Local Journalism

You’re about to read how one man tries to restore civility, trust and truth to our local conversations.  

But first, a bit about the man himself.  

Rick Seifert

Rick Seifert was part of the Longview Daily News team that won the 1981 Pulitzer Prize for its coverage of the 1980 Mount St. Helens eruption.

On “a drop-dead glorious spring Saturday,” Rick and staff photographer Roger Werth joined a group of cabin owners escorted by law enforcement as they retrieved their belongings from their summer homes on Spirit Lake. He interviewed them, owner of Spirit Lake Lodge Harry Truman (who held a Coke glass full of bourbon) and two Portland State University research students allowed to be in a restricted zone near the summit.  

The northern flank of the volcano bulged. A State Patrol plane buzzed overhead, standing by to radio the group of an imminent explosion. The ground trembled beneath the group’s feet.  

Three hours later, Rick climbed into his  Dodge truck and drove away to file a story “worthy of the people I interviewed,” he wrote years later. 

Twenty hours later, the mountain “blew sky high,” killing Truman, the students and 54 more.  

Towns that trusted their reporters

Rick’s voice and those of his daily news colleagues rang loud in the conversations of frightened locals. The facts they shared in 900 stories in 1980 led hundreds to consider evacuating ahead of the eruption, and federal, state and local officials to mitigate flood risks afterward, all because the community trusted them. 

“I was not just a reporter; I was a resident of this town,” Rick says. “And so was everyone else.” 

Today, Rick says, so many Americans don’t know who to trust, especially with the decline of local journalism in small towns and cities. The Northwestern’s Medill Local News Initiative estimated in 2024 that more than 3,200 newspapers have ceased printing or merged since 2005. Another 105 stand-alone digital sites and 10 culturally specific media outlets have shuttered. And most network news sites are concentrated in urban and suburban areas. 

What was once a conversation has become a shouting match, a development that Rick and others say does not bode well for democracy. 

Following his 'leadings'

That’s why he directs much of his giving through his Donor Advised Fund at Oregon Community Foundation to nonprofit newsrooms and organizations that support a safe, independent press and the First Amendment. Rick calls his fund The Leadings Fund, a nod to a Quaker term that refers to how the heart or spirit guides one to act or live. 

Rick doesn’t call becoming a journalist a leading. So here are the facts of his decision: It was 1967. Rick’s three-year Peace Corps stint was ending. He’d served in the American South during the spring of 1964, organizing ahead of the Freedom Summer, meeting John Lewis, James Farmer and Bob Moses and driving Fannie Lou Hamer through Mississippi, singing freedom songs to get through the night. From there, he’d served as a teacher in Kenya.  

“I was thinking about what in my 25 years I had most enjoyed doing. The answer was clear: writing and reporting for the Stanford Daily as an undergraduate. Besides, a couple of writing profs said I had promise as a writer. That set my course,” Rick said. 

Two years later, after teaching middle school near Santa Rosa, he was on his way to Columbia’s Graduate School of Journalism. From there came a career: as a reporter at the Longview Daily News and the Tacoma News Tribune, as a journalism instructor at the University of Portland, and as founder and owner of Hillsdale’s Southwest Community Connection for five years. Once he’d sold the newspaper and retired, Rick began to think about giving back. 

Giving is “a follow-your-heart question,” Rick says, and OCF can show the way to nonprofits that will put your heart’s desire into action. 

Rick hopes more donors’ hearts lead them to support nonprofit newsrooms, promote media literacy and restore civility, trust and truth to the national conversation, starting with local conversations. 

A trustworthy publication, he says, will be grounded in integrity and fact.  

“Sometimes, that pushes parts of the community against the publication,” Rick says. “There’s a certain amount of courage in this.” 

Like the courage it takes to stand on the flank of a trembling mountain, ask probing questions, bring the answers back home — and live to tell about it.