Eugene Weekly continues to recover after embezzler nearly shut down the alternative paper

Just over two years ago, Eugene Weekly, the city’s longtime alternative-weekly newspaper, came to a shocking halt. EW’s editor announced that their beloved paper was flat broke — not because of mismanagement, but because their business manager had apparently been embezzling for years. The paper was missing $100,000, with an additional $200,000 in bills that hadn’t been paid. Editor Camilla Mortenson said she had no choice but to lay off the entire staff, including herself, just before Christmas in 2023. But with a strong upwelling of community support, the paper resumed printing in February 2024.

In the meantime, a veritable saga unfolded as Elisha Young, the former business manager, was brought to justice. She ultimately pled guilty this week to five felony counts of theft, just weeks before she was set to face a jury trial in May. Mortensen said the paper has been thriving, but is still building back to where it was before the embezzlement began. She joins us to share the more details about the impact these unfolding events have had on the paper, its staff and the community it serves.

Note: The following transcript was transcribed digitally and validated for accuracy, readability and formatting by an OPB volunteer.

Geoff Norcross: From the Gert Boyle Studio at OPB, this is Think Out Loud. I’m Geoff Norcross. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a headline as impactful as the one that topped a story in Eugene Weekly in December of 2023. It was, “Where’s the Damn Paper?” The story laid out why there wasn’t going to be a print version for the first time in 20 years and why it’s going to be a struggle to keep the publication afloat.

Eugene Weekly’s editor said the paper was in dire financial straits, not because of mismanagement or the usual financial pressures in the print journalism world. It was because their business manager had been embezzling for years. It was a scandal that got national attention. That business manager recently pleaded guilty to theft charges and will be sentenced in May.

We wanted to get an update on where things stand with Eugene Weekly. Camilla Mortensen is EW’s editor, and she joins us now. Camilla, welcome back to Think Out Loud.

Camilla Mortensen: Thanks for having me.

Norcross: And since I love that headline so much, I’m going to ask you, how are things now at the damn paper?

Mortensen: You know, the damn paper is doing pretty well. [laughter] By the way, when we chose that headline, we were careful to say something that we thought could be said on the radio, if it got that far.

Norcross: Thank you for that.

Mortensen: But yeah, we are hanging in there. We’re still printing 27,000 copies about right now and still putting out some pretty darn good journalism.

Norcross: We’ll talk more about the future of the paper, but let’s talk about the big development that just happened. Your former business manager, Elisha Young, pled guilty this week to five counts of felony theft. What did you think and what did your staff think when that news broke?

Mortensen: It is an interesting mixture of relief, regret. There are so many things going on with that. We’d been attending various check-in hearings over the past, almost a year now, and there was a jury trial scheduled for May. But to hear that she pleaded guilty on all the counts, it was getting closer and closer to a feeling of closure on the whole thing.

Norcross: A lot has happened since December of 2023, but this development made national news at the time. Would you remind us, if you could please, what happened after you first discovered the theft?

Mortensen: We kind of had inklings that something wasn’t quite right. But we discovered, shortly before Christmas in 2023, the full extent of the money that was missing and just ways that things had not been getting paid, and the bills. That was also when we realized that there was nothing left and we couldn’t keep going. That was when the whole staff, everybody, me, all of us had to be laid off. That was also when we decided that we couldn’t disappear without letting the community weigh in. And that was when we decided, the Thursday it would have come out, to put out the headline, “Where’s the Damn Paper?” and explain what had happened.

Norcross: Talk a little bit more about how the community stood up for the Eugene Weekly. What happened?

Mortensen: Honestly, it was amazing. Me and some other folks just kept coming into the office because we were determined not to let the paper go either. And the story got picked up across the country. It was local news. It was AP news. It was The New York Times, The Washington Post. And then here locally, people just began dropping by, dropping off money and holding fundraisers. There were so many different fundraisers around the community. Within, I don’t know, maybe a couple weeks – it’s such a blur in some ways [laughter] – it became clear that we were going to be able to raise enough money to bring the paper back. And that was just amazing.

Norcross: When did you start printing again?

Mortensen: February 8th – I remember the day because there were so many things to put back into place. You’ve laid off your whole staff and all your drivers for delivering the paper, and suddenly it’s, oh, we’re going to print this and we’ve got to get it out. So yeah, February 8th, we continued to publish online that whole time, but readers really wanted their print paper back.

Norcross: So you were able to publish online with what kind of a staff?

Mortensen: Me, because I refused to go home [laughter]. And actually, we have done a lot of work with the University of Oregon Catalyst Journalism Program. They are a teaching, investigative and solutions journalism project, and they pay for student reporters. So they were able to staff up with us and produce actually what turned out to be some award-winning journalism. We were breaking stories about the now former 4J school superintendent with allegations of retaliation and bullying. So that was happening the whole time we were technically not even in existence.

Norcross: There’s more drama around Elisha Young, the former business manager. She had to be extradited from Ohio to Oregon to face charges, but that wasn’t as straightforward as one might think. What happened there?

Mortensen: No, so it took a while. As it turns out, you have to have forensic investigation into the accounting. You can’t just prove that the money was taken. You have to prove it wasn’t supposed to be taken. So we did forensic accounting. It was turned over to the financial crimes team. Then, there was a grand jury indictment – that was not on my bingo card to testify before a grand jury. That was a new one for me.

She was indicted and they then arrested her in Ohio where she had been living, but when the request to fund that went to the governor’s office, it was turned down. I was honestly stunned because it’s sort of this feeling of relief; OK, we’re getting closer to this wrapping up. And then to find out that she was then released ... That then made headlines again because it turned out that the office had also turned down the extradition of one of the people that was alleged to have been participating in the ring targeting Asian families here in town. So then that then got reversed and she was extradited last summer and brought back to Eugene.

Norcross: Why did it get reversed? Do you know?

Mortensen: I think there was just so much outcry against it. There were so many people who were just shocked, both that case and the Asian families that were being targeted. Yeah, I think it was just so much. There were calls, letters and stories. And here in Eugene, the police were even talking like they would figure out a way to extradite her themselves, but I was really glad when they changed their mind [laughter].

Norcross: The community stepping up again. Camilla, are you back to full staff?

Mortensen: Not as much as I’d like to be. I think one of the heartbreaks of the embezzlement was COVID hit us like it hit everybody and then we thought we should have been coming back more than we were. We lost some staffing then. So we’re still not quite where I’d like to be, but we are about where we were in terms of my news staff before we discovered the embezzlement, I should say. And we’re still growing the paper, we’re printing – we could be printing more, in all honesty. I would love to have more pages.

But there was some turnover after the embezzlement because you’ve lost your job for six weeks. So, staffing back up, getting advertisers back, straightening out all the weird things that were happening as a result of having been embezzled … but getting there, room for growth.

Norcross: And what steps have been taken to keep this kind of theft from happening again?

Mortensen: Well, before, we were sort of more of a committee, a publishing publication committee. We had a publisher that we brought in. She was a longtime publisher, an editor down in Cottage Grove at the Cottage Grove Sentinel. We have outside accountants that are doing the accounting.

The one thing that I think I learned, I’ve learned so much about embezzlement [laughter]. I always thought we were sending our finances out for doing taxes and whatever, but your CPAs who are doing your taxes aren’t looking for embezzlement. They’re just looking to make sure that your taxes are getting done. So there are things in place that I’ve now learned. My personal favorite, which I never knew, was to make sure whoever’s doing your accounting takes a vacation for two weeks and that someone else does the job. That’s a really easy way.

Norcross: What was the process of reporting on yourself like for you?

Mortensen: That was hard. It’s also been a really, I don’t want to say it’s a good experience, but it’s been a really interesting experience being sort of on both sides of being interviewed and then also doing interviews. It gives me, I think, a sympathy that I might not have had before to people who are victims of crimes and just sort of asking them to tell the story of it. But then telling the story itself was also really hard and sort of deciding when I’m going to write the story or if I need to pull in my publisher who wasn’t here for the embezzlement to write the story. But it’s been really important to us that we were transparent about everything the whole way through.

Norcross: You also teach journalism at the University of Oregon. You advise Lane Community College’s paper, The Torch . Have you used this story, which you were both covering and in the middle of, in your classes or with the LCC student journalists?

Mortensen: I absolutely have. It’s been so interesting to sort of show them, here are the local journalists reporting on it. Here’s The New York Times version of the story. Here’s the AP version of the story. Here is the television version of the story. Look at this version of it in which the New York Post picked up the story but didn’t talk to any of us – which was also not on my bingo card – versus the in-depth reporting.

For example, The Oregonian did a really great job digging into the extradition saga, and sort of talking to them about how it is to be interviewed and how it is to sort of see your words on the page, and also what questions to ask and not being afraid to ask the questions. Because the students are like, well, weren’t you upset? And I’m like, yeah, but they need to ask me about it. I need to tell the story in order for people to know what’s happening.

Norcross: Last question: The paper’s owners, Anita Johnson and Georga Taylor, have died since all this started. What’s happening with the ownership of Eugene Weekly?

Mortensen: It is currently owned by their children. However, before Anita died and also with the approval of the Taylor family, it was decided to pass the paper over to me [laughter]. So, that’s what happens when you recover from an embezzlement, you win a newspaper.

So I am slated to be the next owner of the Weekly, which I love that we are keeping it locally owned. And then I am working with my publisher, the soon-to-be previous owners and others to turn the paper over into not a nonprofit paper, but nonprofit ownership. That’s a really important distinction because one of the things that Anita Johnson loved that we did was endorsements and endorsement interviews. We can’t do that if we are a nonprofit, but we can if we are nonprofit owned. So that is our effort to keep the paper belonging to the community that saved it.

Norcross: Well, Camilla Mortensen, thanks for taking the time and best of luck as you manage this transition for the paper under new leadership, including your own. So thank you so much for taking the time and I appreciate you talking with us.

Mortensen: Thank you so much.

Norcross: Camilla Mortensen is the editor and soon-to-be new owner of the Eugene Weekly.

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