In this undated supplied photo, Les Zaitz, at the office of the Malheur Enterprise. The 116-year-old newspaper was purchased by Zaitz and his wife Scotta Callister in 2015, and is set to close operations on May 31.
Courtesy of Malheur Enterprise
The owners of the Malheur Enterprise are retiring. After offering the community news for more than 115 years, the newspaper is closing. Its online service will end on May 31. Les Zaitz is the retiring publisher of the Malheur Enterprise. He joins us with details.
Note: The following transcript was transcribed digitally and validated for accuracy, readability and formatting by an OPB volunteer.
Dave Miller: This is Think Out Loud on OPB. I’m Dave Miller. Ten years ago, the longtime newspaper reporter and editor Les Zaitz, and his wife and business partner Scotta Callister bought the Malheur Enterprise, one of only two papers in Malheur County. In the decade since then, the small paper has earned a cabinet’s worth of journalism awards. But the Enterprise is shutting down after 115 years. Its last print edition came out last week. The newspaper’s online service will end on May 31.
Les Zaitz joins me now to talk about the decision to close up shop. Les, welcome back.
Les Zaitz: Good to be with you, Dave.
Miller: So before we get to this recent decision, can you just remind us why you and your family bought this paper back in 2015?
Zaitz: We learned that the paper was for sale. We live about 100 miles from Vale and I’ve lived in Eastern Oregon for going on 20 years now. And we well understood the importance of these small rural newspapers to their communities. They’re essential community glue and the idea of a newspaper just shutting down just caught us as something that we could help prevent. We looked at it, we saw some tremendous opportunity, and frankly, we also saw this as a chance to use the Enterprise as a bit of a journalism laboratory.
Miller: Did that work out?
Zaitz: Oh, beyond my wildest imagination, Dave. We developed an attitude towards aggressive public interest journalism that the community really rallied to. By that I mean, we always kept in mind that we were serving the average person in Malheur County and not the powerful and the rich. We were able to develop a reputation as a place to come and learn this profession, with a string of internships. I’m very proud of where students from University of Oregon, USC, University of Missouri, who have come through the Enterprise newsroom have ended up in their own professional careers. So, yeah, the Enterprise, as a journalistic and business enterprise, was a success on both fronts.
Miller: As you were doing that, did you have a succession plan in place?
Zaitz: Well, to be honest, no. The succession plan was, frankly, let’s just focus on making this the best community rural newspaper we could and could we lead the industry by example? Because even 10 years ago, the strains and the stresses on community journalism, not only in Oregon but around the country, were increasingly evident. So, the succession plan was the hope we can find someone that wants to take the baton for the next lap around the track. And as the industry has, sort of, collapsed in the past two or three years, that became less and less of a viable course.
Miller: My understanding is that you did decide to put the newspaper up for sale in 2022 and that there were some prospective buyers. What didn’t happen? How come you couldn’t find someone that you thought was the right buyer?
Zaitz: Well, I think the environment was against us in some ways, Dave. I mean, Vale is a small rural community, literally in another time zone from the rest of the state. It is far from the types of entertainment and features that young people expect in life these days. Secondly, what journalists don’t understand is that to run your own newspaper may seem glorious, but you also have to run a business. And that was the trick, finding someone that understood not only how to write a strong story about a controversial city council story, but knew how to process payroll reports so that people got paid and taxes were taken care of.
Miller: So that was where you had the problem? You feel like you had people who maybe could do the journalism side but not the business side?
Zaitz: Yeah, we could have continued this by maybe bringing in journalistic talent, but that would have left us in charge, day to day, of the business operation. And that just wasn’t a viable choice for us.
Miller: Meanwhile, the owner of Malheur County’s only other newspaper, the Argus Observer, is dealing with their own financial struggles and they’re exploring a sale. What do you think the closure of the Malheur Enterprise right now is going to mean for the community?
Zaitz: Quite simply, the community, the 30,000-some people in Malheur County, are not gonna have a window into a lot of what happens in their community. We have been very diligent about holding public officials, at all levels, accountable for how they spend public money, how they decide what schools to close, what schools to maintain. So, people are not going to get the kind of in-depth reporting that our team delivered that gave them particular insights into the community and empowered them to act on their own. So that’s number one.
Number two, I think it’s just the level of journalism that we introduced to Malheur County and frankly, to rural Oregon. That’s gonna be missing. I mean, we held ourselves to the highest professional standards. We tried to perform ethically. We tried to be fair, no matter how tough our reporting was. And I think those sort of features of the kind of journalism that I spent my lifetime practicing are taking a walk.
Miller: What is your theory for how to run a local newspaper as both a successful business and a trusted news provider in 2025?
Zaitz: Well, Dave, that’s what we’ve done for the past 10 years. And if I was 60 years old, I would not walk away from this. I mean, good Lord, I cannot resist a good story. And there are many, many good stories left to be found and to be told. So, it is not a function of, is this possible? It is entirely possible. Does it take the right individual, the right combination of talent? Of course. Is that combination of talent available as it might have been 10 years ago or 20 years ago? No.
What we tried to do, Dave, in Malheur County, despite it being a rural impoverished county, we drove very hard to introduce people to the digital access to news. [It is] much more affordable, much more regular, and I think that’s the opportunity in journalism and rural journalism going forward. I think that the day of the print newspaper in small communities is going away. The presses are disappearing, the commutes to get a paper printed are much longer. And that adds to the expense, when you can put that expense into better news coverage on a digital format.
Miller: What are your plans for the Salem Reporter and Keizertimes, two other papers that you and your family own and have run?
Zaitz: In Keizer, which has been in our family since 1987, we’ve just recently hired a new reporter and I’m looking to replace myself as an interim editor fairly soon. So that organization will go back to essentially being self-contained and running itself. The Salem Reporter, which is an all-digital subscription-supported news service, is doing very well. I’ve got a tremendous team there. My role there these days, Dave, is more as a mentor and then as a coach on the investigative and enterprise stories that Salem Reporter is becoming known for. So, in many ways, with the Enterprise closing down, my pace will drop considerably, and I’ll probably move into the elder statesman and guru status.
Miller: Well, why hold on to those papers as an elder statesman and a guru, and let go of the Malheur Enterprise? Why not just be that same role for all those papers?
Zaitz: Well, because the resources to do so in the western side of Oregon … In Salem, the second largest city in the state, the resources are there for the operation to essentially run independently. That wasn’t true in Vale. That required daily hands-on work, both on the reporting and on the business side. So that’s the difference, that the Malheur Enterprise consumed a great deal of my work week which often stretches to seven days a week. With Salem and Keizer, I can step back and enjoy a bit of life outside of journalism that I’ve been unable to do, to this day, in recent years.
Miller: But what does that tell you about the future of rural journalism?
Zaitz: You know, that’s a tremendous question Dave. And I think the answer there is going to have to be a solution that involves collaboration. I think part of the problem we’re seeing in journalism is that people are seeking training in how to tell a story. And I think in, particularly, rural areas of Oregon like Southern Oregon, the coast, Eastern Oregon, the issue comes down to how do you deliver news that people want? Really the fundamental driver is being able to understand what people will want and, as importantly as for OPB, what they will support.
Miller: You told Willamette Week’s Nigel Jaquiss that you’re gonna still be doing journalism at Salem Reporter or Keizertimes to some extent, but you’re finished with investigations. With all due respect, I don’t know if I believe you. And I’m wondering if you believe yourself?
Zaitz: Well, that will be the challenge, Dave. But look, as you know, I’ve been chasing stories relentlessly for over half a century in Oregon. And as I said a few minutes ago, I can’t resist a good story and I can’t resist poking around when I smell something that doesn’t smell quite as sweet as roses.
Miller: Right. So, for example, let’s say that you find out that some city councilor somewhere in Marion County is doing something that seems shady to you. And this feels like your story, not one of your reporters. Do you feel like you can let it go or assign it and truly take your hands off of it?
Zaitz: Well, yes and no. I mean my legacy will be the young talent that I have helped and continue to mentor. And I do that on a regular basis with a really strong crew in Salem. So I’m confident that my role now is to get out of the way and let upcoming talent learn how to do these things, and be there to guide them and to train them, as necessary.
But yes, I think my days of fighting public records fights, and arm wrestling with district attorneys and government officials … I’m ready to be done with that. I’m ready to be done with trying to figure out how to get public officials who don’t want to talk to face up to their conduct in a way that’s responsible. I’m ready to move on from that. It may be a challenge, but that’s my intent.
Miller: Les, thanks very much for joining us. Congratulations.
Zaitz: Thank you for having me, Dave.
Miller: Les Zaitz is about to become the former publisher of the Malheur Enterprise.
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