One theory as to why the Oregonian won't endorse a candidate in the presidential race.
By Edward Hershey of Portland, Oregon. Hershey has spent 50 years as a communicator with stints in journalism, government, education and labor, most recently as SEIU Local 503's communications director. Previously, he contributed "Oregonians standing up against the national anti-tax movement".
You don't have to be much of a cynic to read far more into the Oregonian’s announced decision to skip a presidential endorsement this time round than the paper-thin philosophical rationale it offered.
The editors’ decision to reveal what was probably the most newsworthy item in the ninth paragraph of an 11-paragraph editorial — this is known in journalism as “burying the lead” — betrays their own recognition at what silly logic they offered. By the standard the editors set forth— “our CNN-level view of the presidential race is similar to everyone else's” — future editorials should hardly ever look beyond Oregon’s borders.
This is about pragmatism, not philosophy. What is most likely at play here is that the two men now driving editorial policy at the O — publisher Chris Anderson and editorial page editor Erik Lukens — understand it would be bad business to endorse Romney. But both would just about die rather die than endorse Obama.
Ergo, the cop-out.
Now the background: Anderson is a company guy sent in three years ago to run the Oregonian by corporate parent Advance Publications. It was something of a homecoming for a product of eastern Oregon who edited the student paper at Oregon State, but also a trip into alien territory for an executive who felt at home publishing dailies in Orange County (Calif.) and Colorado Springs, two of the nation’s most conservative bastions.
There was one early dust-up over Anderson’s refusal to accept an ad in favor of Measures 66 and 67 unless the sponsor deleted copy critical of his own position, but otherwise the new publisher seemed to bide his time in terms of exercising editorial control, possibly because he and long-time editorial page editor Bob Caldwell shared eastern Oregon roots.
Caldwell had generally navigated a middle ground editorially, tempering his own conservative sensibilities in recognition of the paper’s liberal readership. But his death in March gave Anderson the opening to bring in someone ready to steer to the right. He did so and them some, with the importation of Erik Lukens from the Bend Bulletin.
Lukens is an Ivy League-educated ideologue whose very conservative views were well catalogued in a series of blogs on the unapologetically liberal Our Oregon web site. And his influence on Oregonian editorials can hardly be disappointing his boss, the publisher. These days the paper’s editorials seem to be right there with the Wall Street Journal if not the Weekly Standard on most issues.
Alas, given the Oregonian’s economic slide, which has accelerated under Anderson, the paper can hardly afford to alienate even a few readers. Thus the decision not to endorse framed in a preposterous ostensibility: we’re just not sophisticated enough in backwater Portland to advance an opinion on who should run the country so we'll leave that to the big guys and stick to such local subjects as gill-netting and capital punishment.
I’ve seen this play out once before, back in 1972 after the Times-Mirror Corporation purchased Newsday, where I was a reporter. Times-Mirror was tight with Nixon, an anathema at Newsday even before the Watergate scandal broke. But there was no way a Times-Mirror paper could endorse McGovern. So our publisher announced — purely on philosophical grounds you understand — that we would forswear presidential endorsements then and forevermore.
Forevermore turned out to be four years, which is what I suspect will be the timeframe for the Oregonian’s no-endorsement resolve, assuming there still is an Oregonian in four years.
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Aug. 22, 2012
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10:03 a.m.
Aug 22, '12
I yearn for the days of Caldwell. Thanks for this informative post.
12:46 p.m.
Aug 22, '12
Theory #2: They are way too busy figuring out which AP stories to run, to spend any brain cells thinking about something so mundane as a presidential election.
11:32 p.m.
Aug 23, '12
Today's main section had exactly four stories written by the Oregonian. All the rest was wire service.
They want us to buy their newspapers instead of using Google News. But all they put in their newspaper is what I saw on Google News the day before.
Original content, guys. Original content.
1:19 p.m.
Aug 22, '12
Their editorial basically endorsed Ryan without actually saying it because they have no courage. There should be a discussion in Oregon on how to create a new state paper with local ownership that does what the Oregonian used to do. It would have to be on-line, but it wouldn't be hard to beat the Oregonian website.
5:25 p.m.
Aug 22, '12
Agree, John.
2:18 p.m.
Aug 22, '12
Considering the way the O-rag has treated public employees and particularly teachers,I wouldn't be surprised if all of the public employees of Oregon were to cancel their subscription in mass. If any are so inclined an good time would be a month before the next Oregonian board meeting.
4:19 p.m.
Aug 22, '12
The Oregonian is a terrible newspaper. It angers me that the editorial board that is so anti-Portland gets to avail itself of all the great stuff this city has to offer.
Ever since the editorial board scandal (lying about their colleague's death while being a John + ensuing drama), I give these people 0 respect and consider them without credibility on any matter. Here's to hoping they go bankrupt in the near future.
5:44 p.m.
Aug 22, '12
Can we be careful to separate the Oregonian's out-of-step editorial page (as well, recently, as Ryan Kost's dreadfully perverse topic selection and evaluation of "Politifact") from the rest of the paper?
Yes we've seen a large drain of journalistic talent (most recently Rick Attig and Jeff Manning)) and a drastic reduction of space devoted to real news. But Portland really needs a daily paper staffed by the likes of Steve Duin, Anna Griffin, Brian Denson, Michelle Cole, Tom Hallman, Beth Slovic, Nick Budnick, Jason Quick, Les Zaitz, Shawn Levy, and Harry Esteve.
I suspect they and other solid, fair-minded reporters and editors silently mourn the slow death of the O more than anyone. It must be galling for them to watch what Anderson and Lukens are up to. So let's not through the baby out with the bath water. Hey, I'd subscribe just for Jack Ohman's cartoons!
3:39 p.m.
Aug 23, '12
plus Janie Har & Jeff Mapes.
I have my complaints with the coverage (so many, many complaints) but my biggest one is the paucity of it.
4:44 p.m.
Aug 22, '12
I missed the O's editorial due to a vacation and the difficulty following them electronically...
Ed, thanks for shining a bright light on it and bringing it to blueoregon.com readers' attention.
5:42 p.m.
Aug 22, '12
"Company man" is the correct title for Anderson. Gone are the days when the paper sought to be, well, a newspaper. Anderson's job one is to put out a facade of news, but clever culling & placement of copy lend a rightward bent to the "fair and balanced" fishwrap.
7:23 p.m.
Aug 22, '12
This year, The Oregonian will not be endorsing a candidate for president. The access and close observation that inform our endorsements for state and local offices and Congress do not apply in a national race; our CNN-level view of the presidential race is similar to everyone else's.
This is a pretty lame thing to say for a leading newspaper. Endorsements, and for that matter editorials are about taking what is known and rendering a judgement. It doesn't matter how you get the information, or whether you are up close or far away. What matters is that the issue is important enough to warrant a public position.
Taking the O at their word, they're either saying it doesn't matter who wins or it doesn't matter what the paper thinks. I think they're wrong either way.
11:42 p.m.
Aug 22, '12
Thank you to all commenters and especially to Blue Oregon for posting this. In the past year I submitted 35 op ed commentaries to the MyOregon site and each was posted -- http://connect.oregonlive.com/user/edhershey/posts.html . This was to be the 36th, but the Oregonian refused it.
Paraphrasing an Indiana Congressman's oft-quoted admonition about barrels of ink, someone on the "10,000 Words" web site recently advised, "Never pick a fight with someone who buys their bandwidth by the gigabyte." But I'm not worried because I suspect the O's bark is worse than its gigabytes.
3:41 p.m.
Aug 23, '12
Petabytes.
If you've got a smartphone, you're buying bandwidth by the gigabyte.
8:55 a.m.
Aug 23, '12
I would not be surprised if the O's parent company "Times-Picayuned" the O in the next 2-3 years. Publish only 3-4 times a week and let the oregonlive.com site do the rest. And given the way they obsess on PERS, I'll probably cancel my subscription. I can read the O most weekdays in fewer than 7 minutes. During football season it goes up to about 10.
1:19 p.m.
Aug 23, '12
Their claim that they will address national policy is sort of weird since they "have the same CNN level view" of that as of the candidates, presumably.
If they are going to have views on policies, why not evaluate candidates on that basis?
4:46 p.m.
Aug 23, '12
Just some facts about The Oregonian after saying that I agree with Edward Hershey's point of view. Readership of the daily paper is down by 33% over the last decade, as indicated by paid circulation. There's no reason to believe that The Oregonian has not lost at least 50% of its revenue in the last six years, and Newhouse does run a business. A recent professional survey of the Metro region -- 400 households at plus or minus 4% -- indicates that only one-third (33%) of the population now considers The Oregonian their primary source of news. While I don't have comparable figures from 1984, when The Oregonian and the Oregon Journal merged, I would guess the figure from 28 years ago to be about 75% of the population.
Oregon Live is run out of New Jersey. It is almost impossible to navigate. It seems to have no filter for what is important and what is trivial, beginning with its front page. It is my opinion that TV news is weather, sports, advertising and tabloid trash, mayhem and fluff, yet more people now get their local news from TV than The Oregonian. I agree that The Oregonian has some great journalists, and that they will be very saddened as The Oregonian continues to deteriorate and perhaps go out of business.
Some of us are trying to start a new non-profit online news service, to be called Portland Voice. If you're interested in helping, message me on Facebook, and I'll follow up with you. Incidentally, San Francisco, Seattle, San Diego, Minneapolis and other cities already have excellent such non-profit news operations, doing investigative, explanatory work, and focusing on creating important professional journalism about what matters.
3:17 p.m.
Aug 24, '12
I'm old enough to miss the Oregon Journal, got it delivered on my doorstep until it was bought out by the O's parent in the 70s. It was a real union supporting newspaper. If the O is so antagonistic to its demographic, why not have another newspaper with real news, and real writers and journalists?
11:06 a.m.
Aug 30, '12
My mom was a reporter for the Oregon Journal until 1982 when she was moved to the Oregonian. She loved the Journal! I'll never forget sitting in the news room as a kid, listening to the typwriters clicking away, waiting for her to make her deadline.
11:09 a.m.
Aug 30, '12
...should say was moved to the Oregonian because it was bought out. If I recall, she (and her fellow journalists) were not very happy about the situation.
2:41 p.m.
Aug 30, '12
I wonder if the other major cities on the west coast, arguably about as far from DC as we are, have the same investigative problem as the O: Proximity. By that logic, the papers in Hawaii should carry no news of anything east of Provo and west of Seoul.