Odd Lots, Leftovers, War Surplus
Further thoughts on Therese's slow fadeout,, pols who won't share a secret lest it disturb the cheering crowd, deflection forever, and a loathsome but expensive creature.
Therese, Redux
One of the hundreds of stories that have appeared (often for no discernible reason) on The Oregonian’s front page has stuck in my mind—amazing, since the paper of record doesn’t usually traffic in dispatches that are best described as memorable.
This one stood out…
…over there on the right, upstaged by a prediction of what turned out to be an average snowstorm. It was written by Laura Gunderson, one of the troika of women at the top of the O’s masthead, which always gets me thinking of a famous Grant Wood painting1…
The Oregonian scored a weird sort of exclusive with the story; no one else, except for Oregon Progessive Broadcasting followed it.
No one.
Odd, since the soon-to-be-retiree was arguably one of the town’s most powerful people—and had been, in various degrees for decades. If Therese Bottomly thought something should be covered (the ultimate journalistic power), then it was covered.
If not—well, what do they say about trees falling in the forest?
Partner Pam Fitzsimmons did a most interesting filleting of the editor—the only reporter among dozens of local journos to deal with Bottomly’s legacy.
Still…The Oregonian’s story had a kind of Kremlinological appeal, interesting for what it didn’t say (and who didn’t say it). It had just two sources—both of her local bosses, who may (or may not) have had a hand in Bottomly’s announcement—or, to be more accurate, abdication. Note that Bottomly’s replacement will come after a “national search.” Doesn’t bode well for her immediate underlings.
Gunderson’s lede (which any first-year journalism student would tell you should stress the most important facts) said…
In her 42-year-long career, Bottomly has earned a reputation as a consummate journalist and a champion for governmental transparency.
…at which point I can hear a grizzled city editor yelling, “What’s that ‘consummate’ crap—something in a bowl?” It went on to relate that Bottomly had steered…
…The Oregonian/OregonLive through one of its most tumultuous periods as the staff in 2020 navigated coverage of the pandemic, nightly protests in Portland following the murder of George Floyd and Oregon’s deadly wildfires.
“Navigated.” Interesting word. If anyone has a different opinion about the Oregonian’s coverage of the Antifa antics, Gundersun didn’t include them.
Bottomly wasn’t quoted in the Gunderson article—another oddity. It remained for the OPB’s reporter to get a statement…
“I’ve dedicated my life to trying to open up government records, trying to hold the highest principles of journalism,” Bottomly told OPB. “And now I’m ready to go travel and explore the world and relax a little bit.”
…which, if you have an ear for corporate parlance, has an echo of the “resigned to spend time with his or her family” trope. Who knows? For a business that insists on government “transparency,” it’s a closed black box.
What really got me thinking, though, was what was left out of Gunderson's bye-bye (which, if you’ve ever edited news stories for a living, had the ring of thoroughly massaged copy).
This…
…a Very Big Deal multi-part expose of how utterly racist and rotten the 19th and 20th century Oregonian had been. It was well-timed during the season of white knee-taking in the wake of the BLM riots and widely thought around town to be the Oregonian’s bid for a Pulitzer Prize. (The last one the O got was in 2014 for a deep dive into the state’s pension system—which remains underwater.)
Bottomly conducted a full-blown struggle session with herself in print…
As editor of The Oregonian, the current leader of the newsroom, I unreservedly apologize to our readers and our community for the racism in this newspaper and the legacy it leaves.
…and promised, in keeping with the riotous times, to get serious about “equity,” (never defined) and…
While our newsroom is predominantly white, we are working toward building a staff that reflects the diversity of our community — a longstanding goal and one of our greatest challenges. (A quarter of our newsroom staff is racially or ethnically diverse and half are women.)
How did that work out?
A quick flip through the staff lineup pages indicates one POC—a high school sports reporter—and a smattering of possible Hispanic/Asian folks. As for women: 12 are listed as an editor (out of 18, give or take, since the paper has new-agey titles such as “Director of Audience Development”).
I reread the self-flagellation…and, to be sure, there were some awful moments back in that period of history. But it’s creepy to say—without elaboration—that it left “a legacy.” In a city long de-segregated2 and with blacks ascending to multiple political seats. How, exactly?
And then there’s Bill Hilliard. The Oregonian’s (rightfully) “legendary” editor and a person of color (as we hadn’t been browbeaten into saying back then). The first POC in the paper’s history—hired in 1952, which one does not recall as a great year, civil rights-wise.3
He’s buried deep in the “Whitewashing Albina’s Destruction” article, a meticulous dissection of I-5s construction through the Albina neighborhood. (With no mention of Urban Renewal projects that decimated the city’s Jewish neighborhood and places housing “single old men;” nor about whites displaced on the east side before the Mt. Hood freeway was defeated.)
The reporter, Rob Davis (who is now on staff at Politico), handled the legendary Oregonian editor’s hiring thusly…
The newspaper deliberately hired its first Black employee, William “Bill” Hilliard, in 1952. It was progress, but the newsroom remained the domain of white men who decided which stories and communities to cover.
“Deliberately” is left unexplained.
Hilliard, who had just graduated from Pacific University in Forest Grove, started as a copy aide running errands under the supervision of a high school student, then became a sports reporter in 1953. He was for years the lone Black person in the newsroom, becoming executive editor in 1982.
… whereupon Hilliard, after nine brief paragraphs, disappears, with no mention that while working as a copy boy, as well as a redcap at Union Station, Hilliard founded and published his own newspaper, the Portland Challenger; nor did it detail how he made it to the top of the masthead; or what he did as the editor. It didn’t mention that he somehow endured working for the Oregonian for 42 years, nor that he became president of the American Society of Newspaper Editors when he retired, nor that he was inducted into the Oregon Newspaper Hall of Fame in 1998—an honor that has thus far eluded Bottomly, who joined the paper when Hilliard was editor; one assumes he had a hand in her hiring. And he didn’t stop her march from the copy desk to the top job.
See how that works? Funny thing about history. And white guilt.
Episodes of Mendacity, Chapter Umpteen
So there were county chairperson Jessica Vega Pederson, County District three councilor Julia Brim-Edwards, and Dan Field, head of the newly renamed County Homeless Services Department glad-handing at the opening of the latest county bum-dump, Oak Street Village, which we wrote about here…
…a happy day shared by the denizens of Homelessness Inc.™ And they all knew that the very next day this would pop up…
…and none of them…
Stopped grinning
Let us in on their little secret.
And revealed if any of them are going to take a pay-cut. Just to help out the helpless.
Meanwhile, They Have Fun With Numbers
We are in receipt of a county press release…
…which involves a bankrupt wing of Homelessness Inc.’s™ odious program known as “deflection.”
Quick history: when the Oregon public got fed up with Measure 110, the folks at the Corporation scurried around in a transparent effort to…
Keep jobs
Create new ones
Coddle the addicted
Keep the “social justice” freak flag flying
Find new ways to funnel big bucks to nonprofits.
The rear-guard action was passage of wrist-slap laws that cops to transport dopers to a location in a nice neighborhood (with a daycare place nearby) where they could, well…be deflected. They could warm up, sleep it off, be presented with “wrap around”4 services and then sent back to the streets.
Our streets.
Yesterday the county bragged about this nonsense. To quote the PR release…
Multnomah County today reported that in the first four months, 212 individuals were referred to the new deflection program that connects people to appropriate treatment options instead of being arrested for possession of illegal substances. Law enforcement partners made 221 referrals, including nine repeat referrals. Of the 212 individuals referred, 67% of participants engaged in the program and more than 24% of those who engaged successfully completed the program.
Spend a minute or two parsing that. It’s a bamboozle called, “Keep changing the numbers.” From those 212 “individuals” to 221 “referrals” (Gee, some got more than one…wonder why?)
Then switch quickly to percentages—always the first refuge of mathematical scoundrels. You’ll have to whip out your calculators now…and wonder, “How come those well-paid corporation members just tell us how many people out of the 212 went on to get “connected” to treatment? And—golly! of the 67-percent (142.04 people, according to Googlecalc) who took the offer, 24-percent didn’t wonder off—Google says that 34.08 people (well, drugs tend to disassociate the mind, but bodies?) actually got into a program.
Did it “wrap around?” Who knows?
Then there‘s the fine print.
Let’s start with who doesn’t get into this wonderful new project. Says the county’s website…
They have no other outstanding warrants;
They were not committing other offenses at the time of the law enforcement encounter; and
Are not experiencing a medical emergency or experiencing a mental health crisis; and
Can knowingly and voluntarily agree to deflection.
Homelessness Inc.™ only takes the very best. Prime cuts.
The cops drop off the selected doper, who gets a checkup and a plan, no doubt crafted by a well-paid nonprofit professional. Then—sayonara. Off to…somewhere.
The doper is given 30 days to actually get wrapped around by…whoever. (You can be sure local, state and even pre-Elon federal money is involved). As the county says…
In order to successfully complete deflection, the individual must access at least one referral listed on their care plan within 30 days of their entry into the program (i.e. date of deflection). If it is verified that a person accessed a referral, then the individual has completed deflection and remains eligible for deflection in the future.
We love our repeat customers.
Blow off the plan and the clock starts ticking…things could get tough.5
The doper has 30 days to stay out of the cops’ clutches (a piece ‘o’ cake). Whereupon the druggie is once again…eligible for another…
Wrap-around plan!
What a merry dance. And just think: it’s a bargain at $3.8-million. Please—for the love of god, don’t compute the cost-per-doper to run the show for four months.
No wonder officials “cautioned against making conclusions” in the PR release. Predictably, the town’s media weren’t deflected from falling for it…
Elon, call home.
Hey! We’ve Got a Couple of Statues To Offer!
With Abe Lincoln and Teddy Roosevelt still crated up in a secret location somewhere in town…
…shipping costs will be de minimus!
Elon Alert! $8-Million for Creepy Creatures!
The Oregonian, its heart bleeding, led its front page with this stop the presses news…
…and that’s not all that bleeds, since the hellish creature…
…makes its living by attaching to fish—salmon mostly—then chewing a hole in the hapless Oncorhynchus and riding along for a tasty blood-feast. The paper hastens to reassure readers that the parasite doesn’t kill its host…usually. It depends on your point of view—but how come the Oregonian (and the feds) sympathize with these creepy creatures? Especially since the Oregon Health Authority has put the nix on eating the suckers?
“Daughters of Revolution,” 1932. “Wood painted Daughters of Revolution in reaction to a conflict with the Daughters of the American Revolution. In the late 1920s, Wood had been commissioned to make a stained glass window for the Veterans Memorial Building in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. Because he was not happy with the quality of glass available to him in the United States, he obtained the glass from Germany. When the local branch of the DAR heard about the German glass, their protests kept the work from being dedicated until many years after Wood’s death.” —From The Vintage Traveler.
To the point the Charter Commission couldn’t carve out a district for minorities, as we have often quoted here.
That was two years before the landmark Brown v. Board of Education Supreme Court ruling, the first stepping-stone to ending segregation.
If you can define this please write. I have asked professionals in the corporation this and have yet to get an intelligible answer.
Just kidding.
“Note that Bottomly’s replacement will come after a ‘national search.’ Doesn’t bode well for her immediate underlings.”
Actually, it might. Various Oregon and Portland institutions have been known to announce “national searches” and then settle on someone local. Perhaps it’s a way to reassure themselves that they truly are special.
If The Oregonian’s decision-makers were smart, they would try to woo Aaron Mesh from Willamette Week to be the next editor. Willamette Week, with a much smaller staff, beats The O on a regular basis. Would Mesh want to give up the fun and freedom of Willamette Week for a larger staff that appears to be permanently constrained by Portland’s progressive culture?
Willamette Week will occasionally annoy the progressive sheep. The O plays it safe and boring.
Then there’s Oregonian alumnus Anna Griffin, news director at OPB. She can be counted on to put the progressive in Oregon Progressive Broadcasting. But perhaps her keepers have noted the public’s embrace of Trump’s threat to cut funding for public broadcasting. Getting rid of her and replacing her with someone who is more of a nonentity would allow them to look like they are being responsive to public concerns (even though OPB is wealthy and can continue to move in lockstep with Portland’s “values.” Griffin has even been quoted talking about those values as if she were a spokesman for the city’s soul.)
She would be bossier than Bottomly and more obnoxious.
There is also Erik Lukens. He was editorial page editor when his team won the Pulitzer Prize for a collection of editorials about Oregon’s public pension crisis. As you note, that Pulitzer didn’t carry much sway with the state’s politicians. Did any of them read or care about The O’s PERS coverage?
Lukens went on to be editor in chief of the Bend Bulletin and is now communications director for Oregon Business and Industry.
The Oregonian may not be a particularly attractive career move for anyone. Look at the nanny scolds in that Grant Wood painting. Who wants to work with that bunch?
What The O needs besides a new editor is a way to turn a profit. But profits are not very progressive. They are a sign of greed. Ask Portland City Councilors Candace Avalos or Angelita Morillo.
Keep up the good work. I just wish I wasn’t surrounded by so many sheep.