Eugene Weekly officially has a new owner: its longtime editor, Camilla Mortensen.
Mortensen, who has worked at the Weekly since 2007 and has served as its editor-in-chief since 2016, officially took over this month, the paper announced Thursday.
Camilla Mortensen, Eugene Weekly editor and owner, on Aug. 6, 2026.
Nathan / KLCC
The move follows the recent deaths of the last of the Weekly’s previous longtime owners: Anita Johnson in late 2024 and Georga Taylor this February.
Mortensen said the owners’ families agreed to sell the paper to her for a nominal fee. She said before Johnson died, she’d expressed her desire to give Mortensen the reins.
“Anita was really civically involved, but also had a great sense of humor, fun and snark,” said Mortensen. “That’s the spirit she wanted the paper to keep.”
However, Mortensen said she doesn’t plan to own the paper permanently. Instead, she hopes to transfer ownership to a community nonprofit.
Weekly publisher Jody Rolnick said the public stepped up to save the Weekly after it was embezzled, and it should be theirs to keep.
She said this nonprofit would be eligible for grants and donations, while the paper itself would remain a for-profit business, so it could still do things like political endorsements.
“We want this to be community-owned so it doesn’t matter who’s the publisher and who’s the editor,” said Rolnick. “It cannot go away unless the community decides to sell it to another corporation.”
Mortensen said she’ll remain the owner until the paper is ready to be transferred to the community. She said they want to print more pages and pay more reporters sustainable wages.
Earlier this year, the paper’s former business manager, Elisha Young, was sentenced to three years in prison for stealing more than $138,000 from the Weekly between 2021 and 2023.
Mortensen said the paper is still recovering from those losses, but it’s close to paying off its remaining outstanding debt to its printer.
Despite the new ownership, Mortensen said readers are unlikely to see sudden changes to the paper that publishes every Thursday. She said she likes to “let the Weekly be the Weekly.”
“I don’t know if I want to say I’m terrified or intimidated or just aware of the weight of ownership of the paper, “ said Mortensen. “But I also so strongly believe that it is the right thing to do because it is so important to this town to have this local media.”
Nathan Wilk is a reporter with the KLCC newsroom. This story comes to you from the Northwest News Network, a collaboration between public media organizations in Oregon and Washington.
It is part of OPB’s broader effort to ensure that everyone in our region has access to quality journalism that informs, entertains and enriches their lives. To learn more, visit our journalism partnerships page.
