Oregon Media Insiders

Would that be the gadfly-paper theory?

...on the transpo beat.

yeah, I got the memo finally. :)

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Lynn Siprelle * Fairy Blogmother

Because if you're telling me NONE of your compatriots care about being taken off longtime beats and put on others, you're nuts.

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Lynn Siprelle * Fairy Blogmother

Pompous ain't the half of it. One change I've heard about: former crime team head Tom Maurer has been exiled to west bureau in Beaverton.

It's primarily because TV people hang out here more than print people do, nothing more. My contacts are almost entirely TV and radio because that's where I worked in town--those are the people I know, and those are the people who give me info. Whenever print people give me info, I run it. If other print people don't respond to it, I don't really know what to do about that. I can only conclude they don't read it, and I can't make people read/participate. I give out all the print news I can find or am given. I only wish I had more time to research out more; I have very little.

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Lynn Siprelle * Fairy Blogmother

The newspapers are doing the reporting so the TV "news" people can read it on air.

:)

Sorry, couldn't resist.

Suzanne Pardington moves from a suburban team to the higher ed beat.

the TV folks are always on top of whatever PAC has to say

I post about O stuff late because *that's when I hear about it.* If something happens in TV-land, I sometimes hear about it before the station's newsroom hears about it--because readers make sure I hear about it first. I have little trouble getting info about WW or the Merc, either.

I'm one woman. One woman homeschooling two kids and running another blog that pays the rent for this one. (OMI on average makes less than $1/day total revenue, which doesn't even cover its costs.) I completely rely on you readers to help me figure out what's going on in this town; I've never pretended otherwise. It's too much to cover without your help.

Should I just give up and let someone else do it? I could. But I doubt that person or persons would have much more luck monetizing it than I have, relegating it to hobby status at best. And most other folks with media connections are still too dependent on them to make a living to make running OMI a safe thing for them to do.

So you tell me, and I'm completely serious: What should I do, given my few (read: no) contacts at the O? I pay attention as much as I can. If there's some one-stop for info that I'm missing, tell me where it is.

If you want serious discussion of print here, you're going to have to help me make that happen. If you don't help me make that happen, well, you don't really want serious discussion of print here.

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Lynn Siprelle * Fairy Blogmother

That's alls I can say. :)

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Lynn Siprelle * Fairy Blogmother

Who is the new Public Editor?

At least, listed.

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Lynn Siprelle * Fairy Blogmother

Here. It's not updated yet.

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Lynn Siprelle * Fairy Blogmother

He retired.

'I'm a vulture who's content to eat the stool of my evolutionary superiors, but there's not always enough protein in it to keep me alive. Shame on you! Shame on you all!'

Idiot....

The Oregonian is the major contributor to the AP in the state and maybe the region, and the use of its stories in other media is often predicated on that simple fact. A TV/radio writer pulling a story off the AP wire may not even realize that it's original to the Oregonian.

It's true the O gathers most of the news in Oregon, and it should, given it actually has a staff of gatherers. A long-ago KGW news director once admitted that the basic job of an ND in Portland was to rip stories out of the morning paper and hand them out to reporters. From my viewing, not much has changed in 25 years. except that maybe TV has fewer people to handle all those clips.
Back then the O relied on housewives -- some the equal of the fulltime folks -- radio reporters and other part-timers to gather, or at least tip the paper to, small town and downstate news, which then got to AP and around the state. That coverage was mostly dumped with a management decision to focus on the metro area the big advertisers, namely M&F, wanted to reach.

Anyone can read the Big O, only a handful of us can folo it up, like me. Or Lynn.

Years ago, a local businessman named Michael, who owns a very popular sandwich shop, was caught with a small marijuana grow-op in the attic of the store. Cops hauled him off to jail for a few minutes and Big O wrote it up.

Me, being a wide awake journalist at the KGW 8am story meeting, knew that dozens of hungry men and women would be lining up at Mike's for their favorite lunches, but would go away sad because he was still busy making bail.

I sent Jon Catton to do the "color" folo-up -- and guess who was outside a closed Mike's waiting for lunch? Tons of hungry people including cops, yes, even ol' Derrick F. was in line. They gave us the best quotes and were more than ready to forgive Mike, for one of his sandwiches.

Big O missed the folo, but gave us the idea.

There is copying and there is journalism.

Be a journalist. Please.

And if there is not enough news in Portland to fill an hour newscast, do a half-hour and run an old "Adam 12" instead. Your viewers will thank you.

Yes, Lynn, we worked together on a little show called "First At Four." You wrote with Tracy M. and Erin, making the producer, brought in from CNN and WUSA, look good. Very good.

You wrote some great lines, I may even have edited out a few, but I'll always remember Tracy's "First At Four" lead on the Milli Vanilli story.

"Milli Vanilli is... phony baloney."

Kathy Smith almost fell out of her chair after reading that one! Me too.

Signed,
S