Randy Stapilus: State help may be best hope for community newspapers
Two big slices of news about Oregon newspapers fell shortly after Memorial Day, sending shock waves across the state.
One was the sale of the largest Oregon newspaper group — Pamplin Media, which publishes more than 20 weeklies, including the Portland Tribune. The other was announcement of major cutbacks and a prospective future sale at the second-largest — EO Media Group, which publishes a combined dozen dailies and weeklies, including the Bend Bulletin and Pendleton East Oregonian.
Both show the urgency for finding a way to rescue community news in Oregon, and sooner, not later. Among other things, the Oregon Legislature urgently needs to take up the subject next session.
Consider where Oregon newspapers were just 12 years ago, when Steve Bagwell of the McMinnville News-Register and I co-wrote a book, called “New Editions,” about the recent history and prospects for newspapers in the Northwest.
We counted 82 paid-subscription, general-circulation newspapers, 16 of them dailies. The dailies were serving Portland, Eugene, Salem, Bend, Medford, Albany, Corvallis, Pendleton, Astoria, Ashland, Ontario, Coos Bay, The Dalles, La Grande, Roseburg and Baker City.
Since then, an economic hurricane, a perfect storm, has swept through the ranks of those newspapers. Many of the papers that published six or seven days a week now publish three or four days a week — or even fewer — if they’re not gone completely.
Of the large office buildings they occupied, nearly all have been sold, along with nearly all the presses that printed them. An increasing number of newspapers now consist of one or two reporters working out of their homes, with no office support at all.
Several Oregon newspapers have been sold to investor groups with no demonstrated interest in journalism. Those still in print are far smaller now and feature correspondingly smaller staffs.
That has largely been the case with the Pamplin Media Group, encompassing 22 newspapers from Prineville to Forest Grove and Madras to Portland, more than any other operator in the state. Their operations and staff have diminished, but they have continued to publish on regular weekly schedules with reports about their communities.
On June 1, all of those papers were sold to Carpenter Media Group of Natchez, Mississippi, which, until recently, had focused mainly on southern-state newspapers. Pamplin is not its only major recent purchase, however, even in the Northwest.
Last year, with the backing of two Canadian investment companies, it bought 150 newspapers and other media from Black Press Media of Surrey, British Columbia. The roster included dozens of Washington state newspapers previously owned by Sound Publishing.
As a result, Carpenter is now the largest newspaper owner in the Northwest — by far.
It appears to be operated by former executives of Boone Newsmedia, which owns dozens of papers in the southern U.S. But other than reports about Carpenter’s many purchases, little public information has emerged, and even less on where the money for all these massive buys is ultimately coming from.
Carpenter has been buying large papers as well as small, including dailies in Honolulu, Hawaii and Everett, Washington. What that means for Oregon’s largest collection of newspapers is far from clear.
The development with EO Media Group doesn’t involve a change of ownership — at least not yet — but does mark a drastic change in operations.
EO Media, which takes its name from its original flagship, the East Oregonian in Pendleton, publishes a dozen newspapers. It is particularly strong east of the Cascades.
Operated by the Forrester family of Astoria, it has been a rescuer in recent years of struggling community newspapers. In 2019, it bought The Bulletin out of bankruptcy and kept it running in Bend. When the daily Mail Tribune of Medford shut down, EO launched a replacement paper there, the Rogue Valley Times.
But EO said June 3 that it planned to cut its 185 employees by 28, end print editions at La Grande, Hermiston, Baker City, John Day and Enterprise, and reduce the number of editions per week at Medford, Bend and Pendleton. In fact, the once six-day East Oregonian will publish only once a week in print.
The areas in Oregon that are news deserts — or at least extremely arid regions — are expanding rapidly. And considering the scope of these recent large developments, the collapse of Oregon’s newspapers seems to be picking up speed rather than slowing.
Oregonians need news reports to decide how to vote and participate in their communities, and the businesses that have made that possible are dissolving rapidly. This amounts to a real, immediate crisis for the government and society in Oregon, as it does in many other places.
The answers are far from clear.
The Oregon Legislature did devote some attention to the problem last year with House Bill 2605. The aim was commissioning a study of the situation, but it never reached the point of a floor vote.
Still, that represents a start. Next year, it ought to devote serious time and attention to figuring out how to help Oregon citizens keep up with the news around them, so the system of self-governance we have had for generations can continue to function.
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