The following was posted as a comment on the blog post where I critique the Oregonian's coverage of Measure 48. I thought it was so well worded and insightful that I should make it its own blog post:
By Anonymous
The Oregonian's Bob Caldwell is a careful and clever speaker whose words are narrowly true.
What is even more true is that the newspaper's local leaders have a pervasive influence that extends far beyond formal relationships. The reporters that get hired, or not hired, the dining out conversations, the social relationships, gossip on who is up and who is down, off-duty social contacts, and friendships in and out of the newspaper are all factors that signal to savvy reporters of where they stand in the complex web of newspaper relationships.
The supervisors who are hired, or fired, plum assignments granted, or withheld: all these reflect power and ideological relationships. All rivers of internal power flow from the top. Newspaper professionals have long had problems in being candid on these aspects of newspapers and their biases.
I suspect that no reporter works long at the Oregonian without understanding that frequent hard-hitting reports on teachers' union power and power abuse are not the way to reportorial permanency and power at the Oregonian.
Few indeed will be the reports on the billions of dollars that non-union Oregonians--that's most of us--have paid due to outsized teacher pay, benefits, and retirements.
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I'm sick and tired of being part of Si Newhouse's - The Oregonian owner's - experiment in creating a Potemkin Village in Portland, as part of carrying out the Si Newhouse 'Moscow on the Willamette' fantasy on our backs.
Why should newspaper readers have to put up with this pollution spewing from Si Newhouse? Si Newhouse not from Oregon. Si Newhouse a political extremist, out-of-state billionaire publishing magnate from New York. Just because Si Newhouse owns The Oregonian and can afford to write big checks from secret accounts stashed throughout his conglomerate empire?
Doesn't Si Newhouse realize that the newspaper is more than a profit-making corporation, it's also a precious community resource?
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