A brutal week for Oregon newspapers with more sales, closures

A one-two punch this week is knocking out much of Oregon’s remaining local newspaper ownership.

Two family-owned publishing companies announced Monday that they are selling or have sold nearly half the state’s newspapers.

First Pamplin Media, a group of 24 papers including the Portland Tribune, announced that it sold to a Southern newspaper chain.

Then Salem-based EO Media, a fourth-generation publisher of a dozen titles, disclosed that it’s closing five papers, laying off 28 of 185 employees and putting the company up for sale.

Another 19 EO employees will see hours cut in July, when the five papers close and EO reduces the number of days it prints papers in Bend, Medford and Pendleton.

Cuts and consolidation aren’t unusual in the newspaper business. A steady business decline over the last two decades saw more than two-thirds of its newsroom jobs lost. Closures last year accelerated to 2.5 papers a week on average.

That’s reducing civic literacy and voter engagement, threatening democracy, as more than half of U.S. counties now have little to no local news coverage.

Still, EO’s announcement is jolting because the group was an exemplar, run carefully by the journalism-minded Forrester family for decades, and a leader in efforts to save remaining local newspapers.

“That one’s really alarming — if they can’t make it work, who can?” said Tim Gleason, a professor emeritus and former dean of the University of Oregon journalism school.

Unless a local buyer is found for EO, the sales will leave Oregon with only about a dozen locally owned papers, mostly small weeklies.

As of May, the state had 76 newspapers, according to a tally by Northwestern University’s Medill School.

Kathryn Brown, EO co-owner and vice president, said the family is “feeling very vulnerable to another economic downturn and not certain that we could weather that.”

The company, named for its Pendleton-based East Oregonian, grew substantially after it acquired the Bend Bulletin and Redmond Spokesman in 2019 for $3.65 million.

It grew again last year by starting a new paper in Medford to replace the daily that abruptly closed.

“Still we are not big enough to really get those economies of scale that a larger company can get, especially things like health care for employees; [it] is just killing us, and newsprint and mail delivery and all the other costs are going up,” Brown said.

Health care costs rose 215% this year, according to Heidi Wright, chief operating officer. Legal notices and advertising declined as the cost of postal services that EO uses for delivery has risen 50% since 2001.

“I don’t know that it’s unique to Oregon. There are a lot of challenges, a lot of headwinds, for our industry,” said Wright, currently president of the America’s Newspapers trade group.

Brown said it became clear to the family a few months ago that drastic steps were needed. A broker was retained and a sale could be done by year end.

The family intends to sell the papers altogether and be choosy about the buyer.

“We’re not going to sell to someone who is going to basically pillage the company,” she said. “We want to sell to someone who has local journalism at the heart of the brand.”

Brown is interested in selling to a nonprofit and favors the Colorado-based National Trust for Local News, which acquired newspaper groups in Colorado, Maine and Georgia.

The trust partners with philanthropists in states where it acquires newspapers. Whether Oregon has that capacity is unclear.

A digital news outlet launching in Eugene raised $2.5 million, but there’s not enough philanthropic money to provide all the support local outlets need, Gleason said.

“Not in the state of Oregon,” he said. “We don’t have the corpus of wealth that can do that.”

Sponsored

Pamplin Media was started with one of Oregon’s great fortunes but it appears to have dissipated.

Robert Pamplin Jr., whose father built Georgia-Pacific into a forest products giant, started the media company 25 years ago. He was initially motivated by his conservative politics but the papers became less ideological under veteran journalists hired as managers, Gleason said.

Other Pamplin holdings have been under pressure. Willamette Week revealed that the company sold dozens of properties to its pension fund and has struggled to pay bills.

In a release, Pamplin, 82, said his health prompted the newspapers’ sale.

“Due to age and health reasons, it made sense to pass the company on to someone else who will carry on the tradition of balanced journalism, the old-fashioned way,” Pamplin said.

Pamplin Media Vice Chair Mark Garber acknowledged the larger company’s financial pressure but told me “it’s not a factor in the newspaper sale.”

Garber said he expects more consolidation across an industry that is in transition and searching for the right formula.

“Even if it’s The Washington Post or Pamplin Media or whatever, having an owner with lots of resources doesn’t solve the business model,” he said. “It brings it back to, what are the ways forward?”

Pamplin Media was acquired by Carpenter Media Group, a chain spun out of Alabama publisher Boone Newspapers in October.

Carpenter in January also acquired Black Press, a near-bankrupt Canadian chain that includes Washington’s Sound Publishing, in partnership with Black’s financiers. Carpenter did not respond to my interview request.

Garber said “quite a few companies” looked at Pamplin Media “and we felt Carpenter was the right fit.”

“They’re really building with the goal of keeping these newspapers alive and a going concern going into the future,” he said.

All 110 employees will be “onboarded” by Carpenter Media, Garber said.

At EO, Brown and Wright don’t regret starting The Rogue Valley Times in Medford last year and said that didn’t precipitate the cuts and sale.

“We’ve had some real success in Medford with the subscriber base and with our content … where we’ve struggled is getting our advertiser growth up to the targets we set,” Wright said. “It is a real investment and I do think it will pay out.”

The Medford paper print schedule will shrink from three papers a week to two.

The East Oregonian is going from two to one print edition per week. It will absorb coverage by the La Grande Observer, Blue Mountain Eagle, Hermiston Herald, Wallowa County Chieftain and Baker City Herald, which will stop publishing July 1.

EO plans to keep staff in those areas, posting news online and contributing to the regional paper.

“I really don’t believe having just one or two reporters even in a small rural county is enough but right now, it’s what we can afford,” Brown said.

Let’s hope the next owner of EO shares that belief and finds a way to stabilize and grow the company.