PORTLAND, Ore. — The journalism field, particularly in terms of local and investigative reporting, has been in a years-long slide toward disintegration. Good news for the industry can be hard to come by — and when it does happen, it tends not to stay good for long.
This summer, The Oregonian's Mike Rogoway published a chart showing the overall drain experienced by Oregon newspapers. In 2001, there were 4,747 journalists between the various publications. As of 2023, there were just 1,122.
In some cases, papers have folded entirely. In others, newsrooms have downsized, leaving them with fewer reporters and fewer stories.
Television broadcast news hasn't experienced drain of the same scale as yet, but audience habits have been shifting for TV as well, and for some time.
But there've been some recent developments in the world of nonprofit journalism, a concept that many hope will be more resilient to the upheaval faced by for-profit publications, and a glimmer of light amidst all the gloom and doom. It's starting to make inroads right here in Oregon.
Not going gently into that good night
In an effort to fight the news drain, the owner of Willamette Week is launching a new nonprofit news operation called the Oregon Journalism Project. It will be run by Willamette Week's Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative reporter Nigel Jaquiss, and they're going to ask philanthropists to help pay for it.
"We've been very clear with people that we would like to have their money, but there can be no strings attached," Jaquiss told The Story's Pat Dooris in a recent interview. "And I think that anybody who knows Willamette Week knows that we will go after any story without fear or favor and that many of the people that we have written about over the years have been people that we might philosophically agree with or agree with their politics. But when they need to be held accountable, we have held them accountable. So I don't have any concern. I think we've shown over and over again that ... if there's a story there, we'll go after it. No matter who it involves."
The Oregon Journalism Project will launch this fall, and Jaquiss said that it's a direct answer to the lack of reporters statewide.
"We've seen across the board — in Salem and Eugene, in Portland, in Medford, Pendleton, Ontario — everybody, every newspaper and news organization is much smaller than it was 10 years ago, and vastly smaller than it was 20 years ago," Jaquiss said. "That's no slight to any of those publications, including The Oregonian, which continues to do great work. But it's undeniable that even The Oregonian, which remains the state's largest newsroom, is far smaller than it than it once was.
"And that's not their fault — it's the industry that we're in. It's the migration of advertising from old methods to the internet, which has cost us all significant revenue. So, this isn't about somebody else doing a bad job. It's about the loss of capacity across the state in every county, in every city, and we're wanting to provide some kind of a watchdog service to shed light on things that should be that should be better, that should be more accountable."
Another well-respected investigative reporter in Oregon is Les Zaitz, owner of the Malheur Enterprise newspaper. He's a two-time Pulitzer finalist and five-time winner of Oregon's top investigative reporting award. He worked on major stories at The Oregonian for 25 years.
Zaitz is on the same page as Jaquiss — that there are many vital stories to tell in Oregon and not enough journalists to tell them.
"Probably even in Portland, for in as many reporters as there used to be," Zaitz said. "So, there are stories going untold in Oregon's largest city ... the principle then ought to be, 'How do we best use what journalistic resources there are in Oregon to tell the most important stories for the most people?'
"Now in southern Oregon, on the coast, in eastern Oregon, are there things going on that the local communities don't know about or are poorly informed about? You bet. And what's the impact of that? People don't engage; they can't hold public officials accountable, they can't question how their kids are being schooled or how the police are doing their work. So I think part of the solution in Oregon is to figure out what is the news that people want and how do we as a collective profession find a new way to deliver that information."
The hyperlocal and the far afield
Enter another nonprofit news organization. Journalist Lee van der Voo and her business partner plan to launch a digital newsroom focused on the Columbia River Gorge in 2025 called Uplift Local. They'll deliver the news in part via text message.
"I think that when nonprofit digital newsrooms started to develop in 2009-2010, it was a lot of upstart folks who are recognizing the decline of the traditional newsroom and just kicking the tires on new things and trying to see what would work," van der Voo said. "I think now nonprofit newsrooms really are more targeted. They're either serving specific demographics or geographies, or filling particular subject matter gaps. I think generally they're there to close longstanding, sometimes emerging news gaps. And to just fill in the blanks where local newsrooms may have declined."
And that's precisely what van der Voo intends to do with Uplift Local: fill those gaps by providing journalism in areas that are underserved by local news.
"We've done a lot of research in Oregon," she said. "We've talked to 3,500 individuals in four different languages, and we've identified news gaps to be rural areas that don't have local news — or sufficient local news — people who prefer to receive news and information in a language other than English, and culturally distinct communities who may not be getting relevant news."
Van der Voo said that digital nonprofits are typically tiny compared to traditional newsrooms. She pointed to operations like The Lund Report, which specializes in health care news for Oregon and southwest Washington. There's also InvestigateWest, where she worked, which covers communities throughout the Northwest with a focus on the environment, government and corporate accountability.
According to Jaquiss, the Oregon Journalism Project will have a broader scope and look for stories all around Oregon — taking Willamette Week's approach to watchdog journalism statewide.
"Well, the owner of Willamette Week, longtime editor Mark Zusman, has been spending a lot of time with other publications around the state. I think he's got 18 papers that are excited about running stories from the Oregon Journalism Project," Jaquiss said. "So our goal, Pat, is to is to look for the kind of stories around the state outside the metro area that Willamette Week has done for decades and to try and publish those with local partners, to sometimes work with local reporters when appropriate, and to try and shine a light on things that are happening in different parts of Oregon that are not getting covered right now."
Scoop or be scooped
Despite the promise of expanding journalism projects, Les Zaitz worries that the nonprofit journalism market in Oregon is already getting crowded. In addition to the Malheur Enterprise, he runs the Oregon Capital Chronicle, a nonprofit news outfit in Salem that focuses on state government and politics.
There's also Oregon News Exploration, a nonprofit co-founded by van der Voo which is still working to launch its statewide reporting effort. And now the Oregon Journalism Project is joining the fray.
"Well, look ... you know, any initiative to try and rebuild journalism in Oregon? It's a good initiative," Zaitz said. "My concern is that we've got like, three different projects underway in Oregon under different nonprofits that all seem to be sort of aiming at the same thing, of trying to fill in news gaps around the state. And I just worry that in a small state with not a lot of donors, that the efforts are going to be spread too thin, and the results are going to be too inadequate for what we need to do in Oregon."
Ironically, this means that the nonprofit journalism game could be highly competitive as these organizations each work to chase stories beyond the Portland area — as long as they can each keep their sources of funding strong.
In the meantime, Jaquiss knows that there will always be stories worth telling about how local and state governments are working — or failing to work.
"I think that we're believers that government can do good things for people," he said. "We're also believers that if government is not held accountable, that things can drift, and outcomes can be suboptimal and bad things can happen. So, it's not that we blame government or that we're targeting government, but that's where decisions get made. That's where budgets are allocated. That's where entitlements are granted.
"So those governments — whether they're state, local, county, municipal — are the places where the action really is, where in every community in this state, important decisions are made on a daily and weekly basis that affect people's lives, and we want to take a look at those decisions."