The New Big Girl v. the Pirates

Media won't talk about itself; but that doesn't mean there isn't a story behind the Oregonian's bland bit of news.

I force myself to read the Oregonian every damn day—like a mendicant whipping his bare back in hope of salvation—but damned if I didn’t miss a significant story a week or so ago…

…which announced the arrival of the new Big Girl at the Oregonian. It came in the form of a story that was brief, obviously vetted, and grossly underplayed—13 short grafs, no byline,¹ quotes only from the guy who promoted the new editor, plus remarks from Laura Gunderson herself…

Like never before, Oregonians need a news source committed to fairness, precision, humanity and impact. We are that source and will continue striving to deliver unique and hard-hitting stories to Oregonians, wherever they find their news.

If you parse that statement like a CIA analyst interpreting some Russian communique, you’ll get a hint of hubris—”We are that source”—and a bow toward the “wherever they find their news,” meaning the paper’s half-hearted mismash on the web.² As for the “fairness” stuff, some may differ.

Perched above the story was a picture of the boss with the sort of smile that might preceed a little chat with a reporter slipping on their story-count.

While the O’s publisher rattled off the usual cliches…”natural leadership, strategic clarity, and deep experience,” the story gave no hint about any of the actual reasons she was selected, if there was any competition, what any local observers (or victims) of the paper’s coverage decisions under her rule as managing editor might think, no mention of the actual challenges she’ll face in an era of legacy press erosion, no quotes from any ex-employees, disgruntled or otherwise (hello Phil Stanford!), no inside-the-bubble dish or rumor or even feel-good anecdotes…nada.

The only “leak” from within the bubble known as the Oregonian newsroom was…

…Gunderson’s promotion leaves open the managing editor’s slot…well, a guy can dream.

The inattention of other local media—both legacy and pirate—wasn’t unexpected, since the great unwritten rule of journalism is: We won’t write about you if you don’t write about us.

This club sets the agenda, decides what’s “news” and what’s not, creates the running narrative for the city’s sense of itself, makes or breaks anyone³ who doesn’t get Christmas cards from the editor….all without the scrutiny of other editors who tend to have their own sets of deficiencies.

Like it or not, she is one of the town’s genuine power-players, far more important than any of the crazies on city council, or the capon-mayor, or the local barons of foreclosed businesses. Mayors come ‘n’ go, but editors don’t face elections, don’t have to gladhand, don’t have to explain themselves (except to the owners in New York), and are as opaque as a wall of fog.

So what to make of the new occupant of the Big Chair…?

She’s never worked anywhere other than the paper, came straight out of a local college—journalism major—did some reporting, rose through the ranks, ran the paper’s editorial board, then popped across the hall into the managing editor’s job, producing the product that is, poor us! the city’s newspaper of record.

She’s what Harvard University would call a legacy; her grandfather was the Oregonian’s managing editor in the ‘70s; her grandmother also worked at the O and then drifted off into city politics and wound up as mayor.⁴

In giving the prize to a lifer, the people who own the Oregonian said, tacitly, that in the whole wide world of American journalism, this is the best they could come up with and that…

• The bench of possible editors is rather thin these days, with anyone who’s really competent is toiling on Substack or other social media…

• …any hotshot interested in a declining publiication in a static city with bad PR and a crazy cost of living might be a top-dollar recruiting headache…

• …while the parent corporation’s geriatric heirs seem more interested in events, sports leagues, and diversification…

…and will hold onto their relic-newspapers until, well…it’s time to wring out the last dollars. (The hapless Tribune, sold to bottom-fishers, is in “will the last person please turn out the lights” mode. Which must give the O’s publisher the willies.)

How she and the former Big Girl at the paper—Editor Therese Bottomly—got along is a deep mystery. The Gunderson announcement barely mentioned Bottomly; and since the article was no doubt thoroughly vetted, some of its word-choices seemed to bend the arc of history…

…she was in charge when the COVID-19 pandemic forced reporters and editors to leave the newsroom and work remotely. She also oversaw 150 nights of Portland protests and riots in 2020, as well as the historic wildfires that devastated parts of Oregon that year…

Add to that this odd statement…

Under her leadership, The Oregonian/OregonLive produced “Publishing Prejudice,” a deep examination of the newspaper’s racist history. After that, she organized a newsroom effort to meet with community groups on a regular basis.

Forgetting that it was editor Bottomly taking the knee and writing the paper’s lengthy mea culpa. Which, beyond being an embarrassment, didn’t get the paper a Pulitzer Prize. As for all those minority hires…well, look for yourself.

As for other aspects of Gunderson’s legacy as managing editor…well, it depends on what they covered and, perhaps, covered up…

The Oregonian lagged far behind on Covid, acted mostly as a dumb governor’s mouthpiece, never questioned the naifs at the Oregon Health Authority, and has never, to this day, run a retrospective report on why the state blundered so badly.

The Oregonian’s coverage of the riots—sorry, they were “protests’—was besotted with the “take the knee” craziness of the period, lacked any deep reporting on the thugs behind the masks, and left a strong odor that the cops were the bad guys.

They blew the biggest political story in the city’s recent history: radicals crafting the new city charter to produce the spectacle we now see in city council. They never reported on the sinister alliance with the Coalition of Communities of Color and the plays run in by the City Club, never reported on the early phases of the four districts/three councilors craziness, never examined ranked choice voting until it was too late. And then told us to vote for the mess.

They beatified certain candidates out of the dozens running in the last election and pushed Keith Wilson into position to win. They clean. missed the triumph of the Democratic Socialistas. Their coverage of council sheanigans is strictly by the book, which means that nut-jobs like Angelita Morillo and Mitch Green get away with murder. Meanwhile, councilor Loretta Smith is untouchable, especially when giving away $8.5-million to people with no real claim on the city’s fisc. ⁵

Meanwhile, Gunderson obviously has no interest in other topics…

• The “gender affirming” controversy, as close as the clinics at OHSU and Legacy…minors getting powerful experimental drugs…Dr. Peters’s vagina-making machine…with no reference to growing skepticism about gender-transition worldwide…

• The metastasizing nonprofit-government money laundry, with NGOs shamelessly politicking (logos to the highest bidder)…

• The idea that giving big developers oodles of money to build “affordables” will make homelessness go away…while the number of feral grows in tandem with city and county expenditures…

…which brings us to one of the strangest recent appearances by an Oregonian reporter…

…trolling readers for help doing her job; to which my question is:

Ask your bosses why they don’t hire the greatest local reporter of homelessness, Kevin Dahlgren.

The question is, of course, preposterous—as is the prospect of Ms. Hughes crawling through bum camps, stepping lightly among the needles and feces, actually talking to the feral, occasionally dispensing Narcan, and never attending a chummy ribbon-cutting by pols patting themselves on the back for finding a new place to spend Other People’s Money.

That’s the basic problem of the Oregonian—and other legacy media. The mores of local journalism have locked them into over-cautious, self-limiting ways of reporting. Sourcing is thin and tends to default to the “official.”

Reporters have to “feed the beast,” and “fill” the daily bottomless pit—but a glance at Oregon/Live’s slapdash pages displays over-coverage of easy items and recycled press releases. There’s sly editorializing, infra-digs, and readers rightly suspect hidden agendas. And no one—but no one—will get real about race.

Meanwhile, staff reductions spread talent thin; the replacements, cranked out by J-schools, are typical prooducts of American education where ignorance meets arrogance.

Local journalism doesn’t have to be that way. Increasingly, it isn’t.

I can’t prove it, but the disorganized, juddering climbdown of the Democratic machine on the “Titanic Tax Bill”(a name invented by Oregoncitizen) wasn’t prompted by legacy media’s plodding coverage; instead, it came after a full-court press by newfangled (and mostly unpedigreed) pirate journalists…

…such as Jeff Eager’s Oregon Roundup, the PDX.Real duo, Oregoncitizen, and others who kept pounding away, daily or more often, at the machine’s arrogance. Which is a pretty good definition of “hard hitting.”

The pirates don’t play by J-school textbook rules…or Gunderson’s either. They’re passionate and outraged and shoot to kill. Most of all, they blur the border between readers and properly pedigreed reporters—in fact, the best pirates have had no classic journalistic training.

What they do have, beyond energy, is email.

Which brings us to one of Therese Bottomly’s most disastrous decisions: killing the “Disqus” bolt-on that allowed mere readers to talk back to the Oregonian’s cosseted journalists. That channel now belongs to the pirates; it’s their rocket fuel. No pirate has to go on Instagram to appeal for helpful questions—they get ‘em by the hundreds, along with ground-level reporting and whistle-blowing.

The interlopers now have the numbers and reach to get on pols’ nerves. Their raw numbers may lag, slightly, the Oregonian’s claims—but they’re increasing inexorably. In three years, they’ve all grown exponentially—no marketing budgets, just word of mouth and internet curiosity-clicks.

This is all considered far beneath the dignity of legacy media. The pirates don’t follow entrenched rules, which leaves the Oregonian increasingly stuck within its carapace of arrogance, self-satisfaction, and custom. Which isn’t the sort of existential challenge a lifer thrives on.

The media world is different. It ain’t your grandfather’s game anymore.

1. It was “authored by The Oregonian/OregonLive.com; the URL lands one on this page…

…which must be an inside joke.

2. The Oregonian wears its heart on its sleeve when it faithfully sends out facsimiles of what its front page would look like if they actually printed it.

3. The Oregonian has been pounding the bejabbers out of the portly execs at the Clean Water Services (CWS) sewer agency in Washington county, leading with—the horror!—a $255 tab for “short ribs, wontons, pot stickers, fried rice, vegetables and four orders of pork and crab xiao long bao soup dumplings” on a recent trip to a nice place.

4. Connie McCready was the last Republican mayor of Portland.

5. If one guy sitting next to his fishtank could dig up the damning documents, where was the O’s city hall reporter?