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MICHAEL DUNNE: I'm Michael Dunne. To say that the newspaper business has been in a state of upheaval these last few decades is an understatement. Declining readership, shuttered operations and print papers now the size of newsletters, instead of the robust sources of news from days gone by and right here in our community, the Historic Register Guard has gone through its own share of hard times, including multiple changes of ownership and a shrinking newsroom, but the heart of the organization is still beating, and a relatively new editor and proud duck is now at the helm. Today on the show, you'll hear from Jill Bond and hear about how things are going at the second largest paper in Oregon, and how they're navigating the forever changed landscape of daily news. Jill Bond, editor of the Register Guard, welcome.
JILL BOND: Thank you.
MICHAEL DUNNE: It’s great to see you. So gosh, you've been in the in the role now for several months. How are things going?
JILL BOND: Really good, really good. I'm having a great time getting to know the community, or re getting to know the community…
MICHAEL DUNNE: That’s right? You're a proud duck. Is that correct?
JILL BOND: I sure am. You know that game last weekend.
MICHAEL DUNNE: You spent some time in Indiana, correct? We're not going to hold it against you.
JILL BOND: I knew it was coming. You know, the face off was coming. I got to be honest, it was. I was on the duck side; we appreciate that's where my heart is.
MICHAEL DUNNE: Since you were a student here, and then you left, and now you've come back, how has the community changed? Is there a different vibe from what you remember? Does it feel the same? Certainly, it's grown a bit since you were here and you know, even though it's still very much a college town, but there's also other things happening here.
JILL BOND: Yeah, I mean, I didn't have a car as a student, and so my part of Eugene was pretty small. It was the university campus, and what I could get to on my bicycle and walk to. Certainly, it seems that public transportation has improved since that time, and it's probably easier to explore more of the community without a car. But it's for some for me, a lot of it is an introduction to certain areas. You know, there were, there were some parts of the of town that I had gotten to when somebody took me there, you know, I had been to the mall or whatever, but now I'm really exploring, you know, we did some home shopping, and so that really got me out into almost every neighborhood, and I got exposed to a lot of a lot of different parts of the city. So, I do think the campus area has changed a tremendous amount, indeed, you know, I don't, I don't. I don't recognize Franklin Boulevard anymore. What's on it? You know, those were not the things like my husband was a season tickets holder for ducks and the places that he used to meet up with his friends before the game. They're not there anymore. It's all slick and tall and evolved. So, you know, there, there's definitely a lot of change, but some things remain the same. As I was walking here today, I walked past the courthouse, and I was thinking back to being a student, and one of the one of the assignments that we had was to go and see what we could find out about a public figure. I spent a good amount of time in that courthouse finding out a good amount about the person that I was assigned. And so, I, you know, I felt like, Ah, this is this space where, you know, nothing has changed. And so, there's definitely some changes that I have noticed, and some that I probably wouldn't notice because I hadn't been outside of the university area too much.
MICHAEL DUNNE: Tell our audience, since you've been here, take us inside the register guard. Talk about things you know, because obviously, I think that you know people you know. They read the paper, they either pick it up and they read it digitally. Talk about some of the ways in which you share resources with the Statesman Journal. Talk about how you know it's kind of been put together, and perhaps even it's only been a few months. But some of the things that you've instituted as editor?
JILL BOND: So how fortunate are we here in Eugene to have this close relationship with another newsroom, and it happened to be in our state capitol. So, we have the benefit of all of their reporting available to us in both our print and online editions, and we work very closely with the editors and reporters at the Statesman journal. We help each other, we share information back and forth, we alert each other about stuff that we've come across that might be of interest to our local communities, and it's, you know, a partnership that I look forward to continuing to strengthen, you know, so that has been a great part of getting to know my new team, and as far as the newsroom goes, You know, we've, we've instituted a good number of initiatives within our newsroom, and I think you're going to see more depth in the reporting that we do, and we're going to continue on that path. I'm hopeful that some of the readers have noticed a couple of the packages that we have put together for them in the last couple of months, and that, you know that's the trajectory we're on, is to do storytelling that one is highlighting the human aspect of our community, and two, that is centered on making sure that we're doing the best job we can, to make sure that the our readers are as informed about issues as they need to be to make decisions about how they feel.
MICHAEL DUNNE: Well, that rolls into my next question, which are sort of, what are your goals? However, you want to quantify in terms of short term, long term, what are some of the big objectives you're looking at in terms of running the paper?
JILL BOND: I want to improve the quality of our storytelling. So, you know, we're we, we do something in the newsroom called Writing Wednesday, where we just discuss one small aspect of storytelling and how we can do it better as a team. I'm asking the reporting team to examine their own construction of stories and their own construction of even sentences to make sure that we are offering the best product possible to our subscribers, and we also are looking for, like I said, we're looking for more depth in our storytelling of the issues. I'm an issues-based editor, so I believe that in order to serve our community well, we have to examine not what institutions want us to consider as important, but to really think about how things are affecting our community and individual members of our community, and that's where issues-based reporting is centered. Is this idea that people are who we serve, not we don't serve institutions, and we don't serve individual politicians or people who want to control the narrative. So, we try to be very critical when we look at what those people are telling us, and then put ourselves in the perspective of what the experiences, the human experiences, related to the decisions that are made, or the proposals that are on the table? Okay, let me quickly reintroduce you to the audience.
MICHAEL DUNNE: Maybe a little inside baseball. How are people consuming your product, what is kind of the breakout between people who still get the hard copy and then people who read the paper online, digitally?
JILL BOND: Well, I can't get into specifics, because that's proprietary I'll just say that we have large audiences in both spaces and I think that, you know, we're continuing to grow, and it is a challenge sometimes to serve these two different segments of who we serve. But so far, I think I've heard a lot of positive feedback, and it doesn't seem to matter whether someone is a digital subscriber or a print subscriber, or kind of has a foot in both, because that does exist as well, people have been very complimentary of the direction we're going.
MICHAEL DUNNE: Okay, well, and certainly especially with the digital space it allows for a mixed media approach. I know that, you know, I've certainly seen a lot more use of video and that sort of thing. Talk about how that kind of all fits together in terms of your overall strategy to offer readers, you know where they want to be met by their local newspaper?
JILL BOND: Yeah. I mean, it's important that we have storytelling skills across lots of different mediums, and our multimedia team is incredible. I am impressed every day with the work that they do and how willing they are to keep trying lots of new things and see what resonates with the Eugene community. People are visual in a lot of ways, and they are getting their news somewhere, and younger generations are searching for news on platforms that aren't traditional in terms of news. You know that I have a nephew who, a few months ago, asked me a question that I thought was so silly. Why is he asking me this when he could just Google it, but they're not because he's from a generation that doesn't Google things. They go on TikTok or Instagram and search for something, and if they can't find someone speaking directly to them about that, they don't know what to do. And that's a space that trusted news organizations need to fill, because otherwise something else is going to fill that space, and it's not going to be a trained journalist.
MICHAEL DUNNE: You talked about younger audiences. Your newsroom is a pretty young group. And I'm wondering, do you feel that that sort of sets you up for, you know, kind of envelope pushing ideas, but as well as longevity, in terms of people who can be here for a while and really serve the community?
JILL BOND: Yeah, absolutely. I think all of the journalists that are currently working at the Register Guard are incredibly dedicated to this community, and they also are all dedicated to getting better, learning more, trying new things. And I'm still, you know, I told you months ago that I was excited to work with this staff, and I am still very excited for what's to come.
MICHAEL DUNNE: So, Jill maybe talks about some of the stories you've been working on that got you really excited.
JILL BOND: So, we, I'm we have been working to create more depth in our reporting, and so we published a package of stories about the fire district proposal. I think that the reporting team did a really nice job in that first edition or installment of what is a two-part series explaining what the issues are around property taxes and what would need to happen in order for a fire district to become reality. And I also think it's extremely important that our community understand how we got here. The history of the day that we live in is built on the history that we came from and the decisions that were made by people who are no longer in office or who aren't voting anymore. Those decisions are affecting us today, and so making sure that people fully understand the history is very important. And another story that we just published digitally; it'll be in the Sunday edition. Are about Pacific sources, announcement that it will be leaving Lane County. We spent more than a month, I think, working on this story. Hannarose did an incredible job of tracking down as many sources as she could to help explain what is going to happen and how it is going to happen, because we recognize that, that's a huge chunk of our community that is sure by this change. And there were, there are so many questions swirling out there about what to expect, and not a lot of communication.
MICHAEL DUNNE: You brought back more interface or interaction with readers and letters together. How is that going? Because I know that was a decision before you got here, to kind of remove that, and then you decided to bring it back, that is that kind of direct feedback that you get from readers. How has that been going? And why did you, why did you bring it back? And what's the importance there?
JILL BOND: Well, I brought it back because people asked for it, okay, and I can't bring back a lot of what they asked for, but I thought this is something that I can do. And so far, so good, you know, I put out some ground rules for what would be acceptable, and that first week, I did get a couple of letters that did not meet the standard. Okay. I emailed those authors back and gave them the reasoning, and I think they understood that, yeah, I'm I am going to fact check your letter, and I am going to read it critically and that, you know, you, you're not just going to slip some stuff in there that's not that's not accurate. And so far, it has been well received. People, our readers are grateful to have this opportunity to hear from regular folks. And I think that's really what motivates me, beyond people asking for it, is that I think it's important to hear from people who live in your community, and to tell the stories of whatever's on the other side as well of thinking. We don't always get those opportunities in the way that we consume information. Today, it's super easy to get we used to call it a bubble, but now it's this AI thing, I think that's kind of rising, where people are talking to AI and maybe getting assurances that they're the they're the smartest, and their ideas are the only ideas, and they can do it. it's something that I'm still trying to wrap my mind around in terms of how people are interacting with this new technology…
MICHAEL DUNNE: All of us are…
JILL BOND: Yeah. So, you know, having a space where different points of view, different ideas can surface. I think it is really important for the community conversation and for people to be able to better understand what divides us and what unites us.
MICHAEL DUNNE: Okay, you also do a pretty good amount of writing. You write columns and whatnot. Talk about that, because that must be a lot of fun, but at the same time, it's also putting you sort of out there in front of readers that that, I think a lot of people would say that was missing, you know, in the last iterations of management of the paper.
JILL BOND: I want people to know that I am a member of the community, and that I live here, and that this is a place that I care for, and that the things that we do as a newspaper are embedded in the philosophy that we are here to serve our readers and to serve our community. So, it's, you know, it's important to me that the readers feel like they have a relationship with me and that they know something about me. I answer the phone at the Register Guard. So sometimes people are surprised. I had a woman call who wanted to leave a tip for her carrier, and was struggling with exactly how to do that. And I, you know, I said I would help her. I said, Here's what I'll do. And then she pauses and says, who's the new person in charge there? Is that? Is that Jill? Is that you and I said, Yes, it is. It's me. And it was a joy to her to get the opportunity to talk directly to me and to and she had, you know, really nice things to say about just having somebody in the community who she could feel like she knows a little about.
MICHAEL DUNNE: You're here now at a strange and almost fraught time in journalism. How do you both motivate your new staff, but also navigate the swirling winds around you know journalism these days.
JILL BOND: Stay focused. Stay focused on what's within my control. And what's within my control is improving the product that I have and improving the stuff that I have, and making sure that they are finding the joy that journalism can provide the fulfilling nature of this job. It's not for everyone, and a lot of people struggle in journalism. And I'll admit, even I did. I left for a little while. It's a calling, and once it's in you wasn't in your blood, it's really, it's almost a definition of who you are. You're always listening for a story idea in any conversation that you're having.
MICHAEL DUNNE: There's a lot happening in our state, which isn't necessarily happening here. But I did want to ask, especially with the kind of way that you share news and stuff. I mean, like, for example, the potential of National Guard troops being mobilized in Portland, how do you look at, okay, what is my role? What is my paper’s role in a statewide issue? How do you kind of suss that out to make sure that, yeah, we want to give our local readers a local community focus, but chances are they're probably interested in what's happening in the state's largest city.
JILL BOND: Yeah, I think I'm still navigating that, trying to figure out, you know, exactly what our subscribers respond to when it comes to statewide issues. And thankfully, we have that partnership with the Statesman journal that helps us get a little bit further up by five. We sent Chris to Portland for the…
MICHAEL DUNNE: Chris Pietch…
JILL BOND: Yeah, the emergency world naked bike ride. And you know, there, there are times when, when we send a photographer or reporter out further afield, because the issue seems to be so impactful, even here at home. So, we work together on that kind of thing. And I'm still, I'm still learning. You know that that part of what we that we can do and what we should do, sure.
MICHAEL DUNNE: Jill, my last question for you is this, if we were talking maybe a year or two down the road, what is success going to look like for you in terms of the paper?
JILL BOND: I see myself here in a couple of years, for sure, I would like to see a little bit of growth and the staff that would be great. I'd love to see my staff either sticking with me and continuing to mature their writing styles and their reporting abilities, and if not, I'd love to see them on a career path that gives them lots of satisfaction.
MICHAEL DUNNE: Jill Bond, the editor of the register, guard, thanks so much for coming in and talking with us.
JILL BOND: Thank you.
MICHAEL DUNNE: That's the show for today. All episodes of Oregon On The Record are available as a podcast at KLCC.org. Tomorrow, on the show, we talk to a U of O professor whose large national study contradicts conventional wisdom about smartphone use and mental health. I'm Michael Dunne, host of Oregon On The Record. Thanks for listening.
