Why Portland’s veteran bicycle journalist Jonathan Maus is taking a break

After more than two decades documenting Portland’s cycling culture, policy fights and everyday riders, Jonathan Maus is easing off the pedals.

As the founder and publisher of BikePortland.org, Maus helped shape how Portland understands bikes — not just as transportation, but as identity, community and politics.

This month, he announced a hiatus while he figures out his next act.

Maus spoke with OPB “Weekend Edition” host Lillian Karabaic about the decision to take a break.

This transcript has been edited for clarity and length.

Lillian Karabaic: I don’t think there’s anybody in Portland who rides bikes who doesn’t at least know you a little bit after 21 years of reporting on Portland’s bicycle culture. Can you tell me a little bit about how your journey has changed since you started writing a column on biking from the Oregonian to the two decades later now of having your own blog?

Jonathan Maus: Oh my gosh, that’s a huge question, right? I mean, so much has changed over all these years, and I’ve certainly changed, which is part of why I announced I needed to take a break finally after 20 plus years.

I think the biggest one is what I think a lot of listeners can relate to, which is: I started this journey when I was 30 years old with just this blind ambition, just naivete, optimism that was just boundless about Portland and about the world in general. And I just wanted to soak it all up. And I worked as hard as I could every day for many years to try to stay on this amazingly huge wave, which was Portland being this beacon of bicycling in North America. It was just so exciting. And that’s not the world we live in right now. I’m 51 now. I’ve changed a lot just personally.

And of course, the community that I’ve been covering all these years has changed a lot as well. Just been a shift in my energy, but also externally, the community itself and the city has changed a lot along with that.

Karabaic: I think the thing that really strikes me about Bike Portland is that it’s not just a news site. You kind of call it a blend of activism and journalism. It’s really this community hub, but I have to say that community rarely agrees with itself. It’s very opinionated. Do you think that culture kind of shaped the site itself?

Maus: That’s a big part of what has changed in general. I mean, people probably can’t even imagine, but when BikePortland started, it was really the only voice in this space, to some degree. Prior to that, bicycle advocates and bike-minded people would communicate through ... I don’t know. There were email newsletters, I think, that a group would put out, and there wasn’t really a forum where everybody could come together. And so at the start, it felt like we did all agree with each other a lot more. The community was definitely more honky-dory kumbaya. Everybody in the comment section was self-reinforcing. And to some degree, that’s fun and interesting and great. But obviously, yeah, as the years have gone on, that community has changed a lot as well. So, every time there’s a big controversial story or just that’s how things change, the site gets bigger.

And I think there’s this tendency for the bigger you get for people to want to sort of take you down. So I have to say, too, as somebody who’s been close to being canceled a few times and has gone through the ringer in terms of controversy and people getting upset with me for various things I’ve done, that absolutely weighs on someone after a while. It’s weighed on me. It’s not a good feeling. I have a very, very thick skin. I’ve been on the internet for 30 plus years now — not necessarily a bad thing. I think our community has grown to where it can handle all sorts of different viewpoints. And that’s just how the nature of the internet is now. It’s a lot more arrows out there than they used to be.

Karabaic: Many times over the years, you’ve really strived to break local news. And like you said, sometimes your opinions or even just your wording ends up causing a stir. Was there a time that you got something wrong or you missed something important that you still think about?

Maus: I think it’s been a big part of just my growth as a human being making big mistakes publicly. I’m really grateful that I got to make big mistakes, although in the moment they were the lowest, lowest points that I could have possibly gone through. I remember one time coming home and telling my wife that we’d probably have to move and I was serious. I was like, “I don’t think I can ever do anything in this town or work again.” That was in the darkest moment when I made a huge mistake.

A source called me from a group bike ride saying that there was a cop that had infiltrated their ride and I was sort of, I guess, too eager to write the story and I trusted the person I was on the phone with, and I went and wrote the story. Turns out it wasn’t a cop.

Turns out it was just a regular person there for a ride.

And I really thought that was the last thing I could ever do on BikePortland. But in a day or so, I guess I wrote an apology post and people, I think, appreciated that apology. I met with the cop and the person I misidentified.

I met with them face to face and ironed it all out, so it ended up being okay. But that was a pretty royal mistake and a very public one. I mean, that’s the thing of 20 plus years of just falling down in public repeatedly. I mean, I learned journalism that way. I don’t have an editor looking over my shoulder. I have thousands and thousands of them. I think it’s been an important part of just my growth and just evolving into the person I am today.

Karabaic: You have documented this rise and the frustrations of Portland’s bike culture. Portland used to be considered the most bikeable city in North America. It was the first city to get a platinum ranking from the League of American Bicyclists, but other cities started to kind of catch up and even surpass us. From your vantage point, what do you think was the turning point for that?

Maus: We set an example that people copied and we’re all hitting the same wall. And to go further beyond that takes the sort of political moves and sort of the funding stuff that I don’t think any American city has cracked yet. I bet New York City will be the first one. We’ve all hit up against the same ceiling. It’s just that other folks were able to join us up at the ceiling and we weren’t able to surpass it.

I think in Portland, there’s many, many reasons why the sort of shine came off the apple for us when it came to being this biking utopia city or having that really strong brand. I never said this before, but we got high off our own supply. We got so navel-gazey and just so into ourselves. And I’ll fully admit that I was part of that, in a sense of: I think we just got complacent.

We started to think we were so cool and we were so bikey that we just maybe stopped looking at the fundamentals and stopped working hard and stopped being grateful and really working with intention to keep moving the needle maybe. I think that was part of it.

I actually remember being at a certain event and actually that thought crossed my mind. I’m like, there’s just a lot of patting ourselves on the back at this event. This feels really weird. I feel like we totally jumped the shark, but I think that’s one part of it: is that we got complacent, and we stopped really working on the fundamentals.

Karabaic: I will say, I think almost anybody would say that Portland bikers love to congratulate ourselves.

Maus: Yes. The “Portland high five” — hitting ourselves on the back.

Karabaic: I feel like it’s impossible to not ask this, but I keep saying to people that I feel like you might be in the future running for elected office, but you don’t know it yet. You have reported on local politics, especially like Portland City Council and Metro regional government for so many years. Do you think there’s a possibility your next act would be seeking elected office?

Maus: I don’t think so right now. I’ve thought about it. I really do like politics from a strategic point of view, just the sort of game. But personally, I just don’t know if that’s where I can have the most value for the community, honestly. I never rule anything out, and I would never say never.

Karabaic: You’ve been doing it day and night for two decades. What does this hiatus look like for you practically?

Maus: It’s been very, very weird. I mean, it’s already kind of like a brain fog thing just to stop and let go of the rope.

I have this vision in my head of like skiing behind a boat for some reason and I’m holding this rope, but I feel like that’s the kind of image I think of when I think of Bike Portland sometimes. I’m holding this rope and I just can’t let it go and it’s tugging me. I’ve never really let go of the rope. I mean, even when I took vacations, my family would be sleeping and I would wake up early, open up my laptop and have to check in and write posts. I was just so consumed by it.

This last week’s been the first time where I just dropped it all. I just said, “I’m done. I’m just not going to hold onto this anymore.” The hardest thing about doing something like this for so long and doing it the way I did was that you’re just on this treadmill and I can’t, it’s hard to do anything else unless I just get off and create space and look back at it from a distance.

Karabaic: That was Jonathan Maus, founder and publisher of BikePortland.org, who recently announced he’s taking a hiatus after more than 20 years.

BikePortland.org celebrates 20 years with a community event on May 13 at Migration Brewing.