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I’m an owner of the East Oregonian in Pendleton. The EO is part of a family-owned newspaper group, not associated with The Oregonian. But, we depend on The Oregonian to cover news of statewide importance. Local and regional newspapers like ours, especially in rural areas, just don’t have the resources to cover state politics. It’s important for Oregon to have a newspaper whose journalists are watchdogs over the state legislature. We hope The Oregonian’s reporters will embrace that role as they go through this upheaval.
Print journalism is definitely going through a major transition. Smaller community newspapers like the daily EO and our weekly newspapers are better off than the metro dailies — we don’t compete against TV news, so we are the main news source. But, we recognize that putting all our news on our web site and giving free access to it is not a sustainable business model. Many advertisers don't care about being on the web and don't want to pay to be there; they want the certainty of knowing their print ad will be in the hands of subscribers. Our challenge is the same as The Oregonian's — to keep our readers interested and engaged, so they continue their habit of picking up the newspaper every day.

Kathryn B. Brown

posted 2 years, 7 months ago
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