Subject Expert
Research Your Community
First step is to know more about your community. What's the average income in your community? How many children under 5?
- Spokane TrendsPortal to economic, education, housing, etc. data for Spokane County. A joint project of: City of Spokane, Community Building Foundation, Eastern Washington University, Greater Spokane Inc., Spokane Regional Health District, and Spokane United Way.
- Census Bureau QuickFactsQuick tables on population, age/race, income, housing, income/poverty, disability and health insurance for towns with at least 5,000 people.
Just type in the location and a table will be generated. Can type in another location to compare results.
Looking for how many existing business there are in the area? The official count is done by the Census Bureau's County Business Patterns. But the latest compilation is 2016, and it's only down to the county level. I'd supplement with Google searches and news articles.
- Greater Spokane Inc. Economic DevelopmentWebsite for selling the Spokane area to businesses. Has some nice infographics, but note the sources carefully and ignore the ones from Applied Geographic Solutions. (Their business counts make no sense!!!)
Local News
Local news articles are your best bet for a more subjective take on what's going on in your community.
Easy way to get a sense of news articles is to do a Google search, then limit to News.
- Spokane Journal of Business (ProQuest) 1991-presentFull text articles from this regional business bi-weekly newspaper.
- Spokesman Review (ProQuest) 1994-presentKeyword search or browse by date.
- Spokesman Review OnlineOnline edition of the Spokesman. Can do a number of searches before you encounter a paywall.
- Pacific Northwest InlanderFree weekly newspaper for the Inland Northwest
- Seattle PIThis Seattle newspaper went online-only back in 2009.
- OlympianNewspaper for Olympia, WA
- StrangerAlternative weekly Seattle newspaper
- Idaho StatesmanBoise newspaper
- Boise WeeklyAlternative weekly newspaper