Eugene, Oregon. Photo (cc) 2012 by Visitor7.
The pixels were barely dry on my post about the Pulitzer Prize awarded to Lookout Santa Cruz when I learned about plans by founder Ken Doctor to launch a second Lookout Local site in Oregon’s Eugene area. The Oregonian reported last month that Lookout Eugene-Springfield will launch in late 2024 or early 2025 with a newsroom of 20, of whom 15 will be journalists. That’s more firepower than Gannett’s Eugene Register-Guard can muster. Indeed, The Oregonian published a pretty depressing report on that paper a year ago that began:
The Eugene Register-Guard, once one of the best newspapers in the region, today has no local editor, no publisher, no physical newsroom and little love from a dismayed citizenry. The news staff that once exceeded 80 now stands at six.
As was the case in Santa Cruz, California, Doctor’s reputation in the news business is standing him in good stead. He said he has already raised $2.5 million for his Oregon project and plans to scrounge up another $1.5 million. Doctor is a graduate of the University of Oregon’s journalism school, so this is something of a homecoming for him.
Doctor also has a long post up at Nieman Lab about efforts in California to bolster local news. Like longtime media analyst Jeff Jarvis, Doctor opposes efforts to extract money from Google and Facebook, noting that Meta, Facebook’s parent company, has made it clear that it doesn’t need news, and that going after Google would harm the uneasy balance between the good and bad that the company has done for (and to) journalism.
Instead, Doctor is looking to New York State, which recently created tax credits for news publishers who create and retain jobs. The key, he writes, is to ensure that those credits go to California-based publishers rather than to out-of-state conglomerates. And though he doesn’t name names, he’s presumably referring to the hedge fund Alden Global Capital, with whom he competes in Santa Cruz, and Gannett.
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SaraH
Some good news about our news biz!
Martha Bullock
I am delighted to hear about the Eugene venture. I now live in Eugene, having moved out here after living in Boston for 50 years. The news situation here is bleak, and this will be such an improvement.