De-pressing news

Yesterday was a rough day for those old-timey media outlets that used to be called newspapers. Particularly here in Oregon.

First and foremost, presses are being shut down and staff is being laid off at several smaller-town papers around the state.

The media group that owns a dozen newspapers in mostly rural areas of Oregon and southwest Washington is cutting 15% of its staff and consolidating its print publications.

EO Media Group told staff Monday that 28 of the company’s 185 employees are being laid off this month, and 19 more will see their hours reduced in July. The family-run media firm owns the Bulletin based in Bend, the Rogue Valley Times in Medford, the East Oregonian in Pendleton, and others....

Starting in July, the company will stop print editions for the La Grande Observer, Blue Mountain Eagle, Hermiston Herald, Wallowa County Chieftain and the Baker City Herald. Subscribers to those papers will instead get a copy of the East Oregonian, which the company said will include news from the communities losing their print editions.

Yuck.

And the "big city" of Portland isn't immune from journalistic turmoil, either. Bob Pamplin, the timber heir who at one time had a pretty sizable media empire going here in town, just sold the whole kit and kaboodle to an outfit from – I am not making this up – Mississippi.

Pamplin has sold Pamplin Communications, which includes the Portland Tribune and 23 other Oregon newspapers, to Carpenter Media Group, a Mississippi publisher that owns 180 papers across the U.S. and Canada. The transaction, which closed June 1, was first reported by the trade publication Editor & Publisher. Terms were not disclosed.

The folks at the Weed, who have always been pretty nasty toward their competition, are delighted to keep their spotlight fixed on Pamplin's financial woes.

Pamplin raided The Oregonian for talent and hoped to knit the suburban papers with the Tribune and radio stations into a media giant that could compete with The Oregonian’s then highly lucrative hold on local and regional advertisers. The strategy never worked.

As WW has reported, Pamplin has resorted to selling unused industrial real estate, including Ross Island itself, to his firm’s pension fund, in dozens of unusual transactions that experts have said may violate federal pension law.

Wouldn't you love to see the Weed's financials for the last five years? Maybe they'd be a little less smug.

On a smaller scale, right up the street from here, the latest monthly issue of the Hollywood Star News shopper reminds us that that paper is still listed for sale. If a savior is coming for the Star News, he, she, or it is not coming quickly.

And on the other end of the spectrum, the executive editor of the Washington Post has abruptly resigned rather than see her newsroom chopped into thirds by the corporate suits who run the place. This in the middle of a Presidential election campaign and a crisis of confidence in many of the nation's key institutions.

We talk about the Fourth Estate being a noble calling, but at its core it's a business. And right now that business is in trouble. Money talks, and usually it doesn't say such nice things. Meanwhile, the fake news is flourishing. It doesn't sound like a recipe for a strong country. 

For all the flashy tools at our disposal, ferreting out the truth is going to be harder work than ever in the years ahead. Let's hope the smart kids have the resolve to do it.