History

This website was started in September 1995 as a one person political blog by John Servais to report and give perspective to local Bellingham public issues that the Bellingham Herald ignored or distorted to the benefit of the local powers that be. John's political junkie friends, Tip Johnson and Paul deArmond also wrote occasionally.

In 1998, NW Citizen provided the Whatcon Watch with its first online home as a section, with it later moving to its own website. Paul deArmond's “The Public Good” site was also given a home as a section of NW Citizen for several years.

In January 2008 the website changed from the simple hand coded website it had been, into a database driven site that allowed comments and multiple writers. By 2016 it had morphed into a venue for over 25 independent local citizen journalists, some regular writers and some occasional.

Since 2009, we hae hosted a weekly roundtable to enjoy libations and refreshments, and discuss issues, possible articles, general scuttlebutt and maintain cohesion as a group. These weekly roundtables are important to our maintaining the site, attracting new writers, and informing each other on what is happening in our fine town of Bellingham and beautiful Whatcom County. We are, after all, political junkies.

 In September 2018, John sold the site to Northwest Citizen LLC. The company was formed to ensure the site continues into the future, as John was then in his late 70s. He is one of the LLC owners, and continued to write.

In February 2025, the site was completely reprogramed with new code by Tenzing Kernan, a Bellingham web designer.  This has enabled much better searces for any of the over 3,000 articles and almost 200 wrirters.  We want readers to enjoy reading uncluttered articles and able to easily find any article they may value.  

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