A jury trial brought by a former Register-Guard reporter against the paper for discrimination and wrongful termination is in its second week. Jurors heard witnesses for the defense in Lane County Circuit Court.
Serena Markstrom is suing Guard Publishing. She was fired from her reporting job in 2014 while on leave during her pregnancy. Markstrom says the termination was discriminatory. The jury heard testimony from Markstrom’s two supervisors, Christian Whitol and Ilene Aleshire, both news editors at the paper. They said Markstrom’s performance was poor after she was re-assigned from arts feature writing to a hard news reporter. According to Whitol, she failed to meet deadlines, did not produce enough stories, and complained about the new beat. The Guard says it terminated Markstrom because she accessed emails while on maternity leave from the paper. Aleshire said she’d told Markstrom not to check email because she was not allowed to do any work while on leave. Markstrom seeks $125-thousand in damages and back-pay dating to when she was fired from the Register-Guard in March 2014.
The trial is expected to continue through Thursday.
