Salvage Heart

Could it be that the Portland Tribune, the once-mighty challenger to The Oregonian (at least on Tuesdays and Fridays), could be gearing up for another assault?

In the Tuesday, October 24 edition, the paper included a letter from Steven Clark, Community Newspapers and Portland Tribune president, that, to the unknowing reader might sound like a re-commitment to the paper's purpose. Key points include (quoted from the letter):

• The hiring of additional reporting, editing and photography staff.
• The hiring of a company executive editor to grow and improve local news coverage within our many newspapers.
• The expansion of our Web sites, including more local news, information services and the addition of Reuters national and international news coverage.
• Expansion of editorial and opinion pages.
• Enhancement of newspaper distribution.
• And expansion of partnerships between our many newspapers.

And to its credit, the paper has gradually evolved into a Portland "community" paper rather than a seldom-published daily, albeit still the flagship enterprise. Combined with the 15 or so other properties in the Community Newspapers chain, you're generating content for a lot of neighborhoods. It will be interesting to see how Reuters content is folded in...does this mean that Trib content then goes to Reuters?

Also worth noting: not one but two investigative/enterprise reporter positions open at the paper right now, as posted at JournalismJobs.com. These positions will be based at the Trib, but will "serve as a resource" to the other 16 Pamplin papers as well.

One caveat: Owner/Doctor/Reverend Robert Pamplin, Jr., has engaged in vigorous bloodletting in the past at his media properties, including KPAM 860 am (at one brief time the home of the largest radio newsroom on the West Coast), and the periodic purges at the Trib (Business section, we hardly knew ye....), including the downtown Portland editorial offices.

A final note: tip of the hat to Ellison Weist, who had the guts to tackle that massive Daniel Boone biography (I couldn't land the assignment at the competitor paper) by Robert Morgan, a review of which ran yesterday as a preview to tonight's reading at Powell's City of Books. Daniel Boone rules! Kit Carson drools!

[Semi-full disclosure: I've written for the Trib, and my spouse once worked at KPAM. Also, we both appeared on the cover back in 2005, which I may post if I go back and scan it in.]

Labels: journalism, newspapers, Portland, Portland Tribune

Do you take the Times?

Ah, such pomposity. Such worldliness. Such implications of leisure time devoted to reading about crop rotation debates in Uganda and hot tub culture in Krakatoa. And then the inevitable, "Did you see the piece? It was in today's Times."

This far west, Times may need the preface "New York," as it could be that rubes such as we might confuse the reference with the Tigard Times, perhaps. Perhaps not.

The point is, look for Salvage Heart to throw in with that lot of ink-smudged superiority, as the daily home delivery has begun. So, not only will we have the holier-than-thou Sunday newsprint edifice adorning our porch...our porch...on the GODDAMNED PORCH please! Not on the sidewalk, because then it gets stolen by dog walkers. But, anyway, home delivery every day. And every other day.

Which brings us to a programming note: tomorrow Discovery Channel launches a 15-hour "Dirty Jobs" marathon, featuring Mike Rowe (host, above). All day Monday (Labor Day, which is better than marathon episodes of childbirth) and we're closing in on episode 150. I know this because, well....

Did you see the piece in Friday's Times?
"Gross -Out Fanfares for the Common Man"

(The Oregonian pulled a Zap2It wire story for its TV guide today.)

Fifteen hours seems like a lot. On the other hand, I can watch this all day long.

Labels: Dirty Jobs, Mike Rowe, New York Times, newspapers, television

"You can't know who you are if you don't know where you are." --Wendell Berry

Fishing around online, looking to see when Wendell Berry might next push West, when I found a citation of his work by Timothy Egan, journalist-turned bookist whose The Worst Hard Time account of the Dust Bowl won last year's National Book Award.

Turns out Egan is the Seattle Post-Intelligencer's July writer in residence, which entitles him to absolution from word counts.

Egan's ode to Seattle, the once and future emerald city, is at 2,500 words a little baggy for newsprint (that's what, over 70 column inches?) but worthwhile.

Timothy Egan on Seattle

Egan is the 7th of 12 writers in the P-I's series. His piece veers from timeless to topic, with a jab at a certain Mariner 6'10" tall.

"I like the fact that a few boo-birds have started to infiltrate the censorious nest of Safeco Field, especially when a first baseman is getting paid something like $14 million a year to hit -- what? -- barely .200."

Also of note: four short video interviews with Egan, in which he explains why he got into journalism--to write books, of course!

"I didn't want to go to the Iowa Writers School [sic] and get in to the navel-gazing school of minimalist fiction where you write about what other navel gazing graduate students are thinking about. And--I know I'm putting down a huge part of contemporary fiction....I was really influenced by Tom Wolfe's essay some time ago, 'Stalking the 10,000-footed beast' [sic] (Stalking the Billion-Footed Beast, which ran in the November 1989 Harper's)...where he said 'The problem with most American writers now is that they don't mix it up with the public.' Dickens, Hemingway, Tolstoy, Dorothy Parker, Joan Didion--you name any terrific writer, and you find those people are reporters at their core."

Let's see...I got in to journalism because, well, did I? We'll see, won't we.

With both feet, beginning September 10. The thumping sound is my heart racing, and the creditors already beating a path to the front door.

Labels: journalism, newspapers, Seattle authors, Timothy Egan, Wendell Berry, writing