Oregon Media Insiders

but I'll miss it...even though I never bought one.

You can't fight fashion, though, that's true.

Samuel John Klein, a/k/a ZehnKatzen
samuel.klein@gmail.com or zehnkatzen@gmail.com
graphically involved at http://zehnkatzen.blogspot.com

Well...this also indicates an increasing problem with declining revenue at the paper. Newspapers themselves are becoming increasingly irrelevant. The days of high ad revenues are over for papers like The Oregonian. In the last couple of years, they replaced their in-house advertising director with a new hire from outside the company. He in turn has brought in new salespeople and set tough new sales goals for the retail department.
Another factor to consider is the steadily declining, or flat circulation numbers for all newspapers.
I wonder how long it may be until The Oregonian decides to sell the headquarters building on Broadway. With the new high rise condo going up directly across the street from their building, I would think The Oregonian block is getting very very valuable.

when I helped put it out, we used to speculate it existed only to discourage someone else from starting an afternoon paper. If it did it probably save some poor dreamer from going broke.

dunno if advance cares that much about a one-time property deal. the location is good for reporters who can walk to courts, city hall etc. i think the O will continue to gather and sell news, but some day perhaps only for electronic distribution in one form or another. it still gets a huge hunk of the local ad dollar, last I heard. Somebody on here who sells radio time probably has a better idea of their total ad sales.

The O isn't even distributed in much of rural Oregon. They stopped delivering on the south coast and in much of eastern Oregon over a year ago. It's sad, but they're quickly becoming irrelevant.

In early 2007, the publisher of the New York Times, Arthur Sulzberger, stated publicly that he was unsure if, and that it did not make any difference to him whether, printed newspapers would still exist five years from now.

We are on the cusp of medias' tipping point - print / radio / broadcast TV..... and as horses gave way to autos, as ships gave way to planes, old media will give way to new electronic media in our lifetimes.

Just another sign that the BOREGONIAN is slowly sliding into irrelevence.

I won't miss it or be sad.

The Big O continues to slip down the hill to being a nothing paper.
When they 'retired' all the higher priced reporters right after Christmas the paper became two things: (1) mostly AP wire stories and (2) someway to refer
readers to OregonLive.
There is nothing to read in the paper anymore--Used to love to sit down with Sunday paper and spend several hours going thru it. . .now it is about a 20 quick trip. Business section is a zero and the sports is often only four-five pages.
It is awful and don't know how much longer our household can continue to subscribe.

Seriously, The Columbian is awful, they pretty much get the county/city/state line on everything and don't do ANY investigating. The ONLY example I could think of where The Columbian actually dugg some dirt up. http://www.columbian.com/news/localNews/2008/01/01192008_Tapes-suggest-d...

On top of that they took the link to the commented stories off the front page. Guess they didn't like those negative comments or public interaction very much.

somebody asked for a list of who has left the oregonian. so this is a long post and i will break it up in case there is a length limit.

I can’t say for sure who simply retired and how many took early out deals, but here is a list of recent retirees, from the paper’s employee pub, of people you might know or names you might recognize.

Nick Bertram – who walked from his home in NE Portland to The O just about every day and transplanted from writing sports to the news side. Readers will know him best as the key – only – editor of the screamer street edition. Great guy.

Jerry Boone – the west metro columnist someone asked about. He had several interests, did auto racing news and suburban coverage, among other things. Started at the Journal. Very well liked by co-workers.

Ted Mahar – at the Oregonian forever (44 years), loved writing about movies, in the smaller staff days also did drama (there must be half a dozen people now doing what he once did solo) was displaced in a makeover but just kept plugging away. Very smart, incredibly patient with people who wanted to tell him what they thought about a movie. Wrote tons of stuff. Employee pub says he will write on a freelance basis.

Bob Hicks - theater critic and arts for most of his career, and therefore expert on Portland stage scene. Easy going, well-liked and respected.

Julie Tripp – as a reporter she covered the only big air crash in Portland history, and state social services, but most will know her as a financial matters columnist for business. Great sense of humor.

Richard Hill – hard-working science writer who made a lot of technical stuff fairly easy for the general reader to digest. Went from general news to winning prizes from science groups

Bill Monroe –outdoors, hunting and fishing. Knew he had a great job, and was well-liked in the newsroom even by those perplexed by the idea of hunting. Known by thousands of readers who could not name any other editor, reporter or columnist.

Norm Maves – started in sports, had a special knack for dealing with young athletes, did general news and the “Back Fence” column for a time, and went back to sports. Knew everybody.

Joel Davis—a photographer who worked mostly nights and whom some of you may have met at shootings, protests and Blazer games. Sort of a 60s guy, and well liked.

Less known by readers but important to the newsroom: Jack Hart, who held numerous titles but was mostly the writing coach who helped reporters like Tom Hallman and Rich Read get into the Pulitizer competition; Stan Horton, detail-oriented TV editor, TV trivia expert and Three Stooges fan, who put out TV Click and weathered the huge growth of listings that came with cable; Sally Cheriel, an editor who improved and broadened health coverage, and Gail Hulden, the newsroom’s chief researcher. Gail, who has a national reputation for researching for newsrooms, taught reporters who still missed typewriters how to Google and spreadsheet, and her name often appeared at the end of stories in tiny italics that said she had contributed to the story. In many cases it should have said “Many of the actual facts in this article came from Gail; she also found the source the reporter got a lot of the information from.”

Some of these people I only worked with, others I knew fairly well. And if we can take a break from all the anti-Oregonian stuff, there is no one on THIS list -- there were exceptions along the way -- who did not do their best to give the reader a fair shake. Maybe some of us did not meet your standard, but we did sincerely try.

Also gone in the past year, that I know of:
Steve Carter, education, politics
Fred Leeson, though still filing city development stories
Randy Gragg, former architecture writer, now editor of Portland Spaces (pre buyout?)
Spencer Heinz, Portland reporter
...Sara Perry? Maybe...I can't remember
Steve Engelberg, managing editor, to Politico (did Gabrielle Glaser go as well?)
Sue Hobart? Former travel section...don't see her listed
Barbara Durbin, FOODday

others?
Add to this the fact that the paper is now publishing glossy mags (Ultimate Northwest, Mix, a home and garden piece, maybe more) w/o add'l staff, and adding blogs (even if you can't find them) and video and online breaking news.

but the newsroom -- now rooms in fact -- must still have 100 more people than it did before the Journal merger, and many more than post-merger. a lot of them do what the backshop used to do, but there are still way more reporters than there were before sandy rowe.

Re: The list of departures. That is a very sad list of people who have gone. They ARE what made the paper what it was. I wonder how long until we can add Sandra Rowe (The Editor)to that list? Apparently, management is trying to rid the paper of the older and costlier employees. I have heard that the same thing has occurred in the advertising departments. Like so many companies today, management prefers to get the job done with YOUNGER, cheaper and usually part-time status employees. Of coarse management always exempt themselves from any decrease in their salaries, or benefits packages. This scenario seems to be the preferred way of doing business in the corporate world of 2008. If the infrastructure is negatively compromised, there will be a steady decline in the quality of the product being produced. And that may explain why there were so many negative comments about the content of the paper on this blog.

Sarah Perry is a freelancer, and last I looked at the Sunday O section, she's still writing for it.
Yes, Sue Hobart took the buyout.
Randy Gragg left before the buyout.
So did Steve Carter, but because of the timing of his retirement, he got the same deal as the others.
Two that haven't been mentioned from sports: Ron Olson and Sherm Bucher, both of whom had been around for 40+ years and put the section out five nights a week. They are missed.
Also, Dana Olsen, photographer. And Marie Lewis, librarian.
Yes, Gabrielle left when her husband, Engelberg, did.
And Jeff Wohler, Journal alum, former sports editor.

A lot of experience has gone away in the last few months.