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Michael Dunne: I'm Michael Dunne. It was a startling cover for Eugene's alternative weekly: "Where's the damn paper?" With that announcement, Eugene, and eventually the rest of Oregon and the nation, learned that an employee had embezzled massive amounts of money from the paper, forcing it to lay everyone off. It seemed like the death knell for this quirky yet vital voice of Eugene's alternative scene. Last week, the final chapter of this journey was written as the employee pleaded guilty and will now serve jail time. But between that screaming headline and the final verdict, a tremendous recovery happened at the paper. Today on the show, you'll hear from its editor about all the twists and turns and the amazing community support that kept the paper printing. Camilla Mortensen, the editor of the Eugene Weekly, it's always great to see you. Thanks so much for coming in.
Camilla Mortensen: Thanks for having me on.
Dunne: It's been a busy week. Let's level set for listeners who may not know what happened to the Weekly. You made local, state and national news. Just give us a recap of what happened a couple of years ago.
Mortensen: Back in December 2023, and even a little before that, we had noticed that we thought we were doing fairly well coming back from the pandemic, but we still seemed to be struggling in ways that were hard to understand. In mid-December 2023, our business manager started having what appeared to be a medical issue. While she was out of the office, it came to light that our 2020 books hadn't been closed and that we didn't have any money. She asked for $30,000 from the owner of the paper to make payroll, even though we thought we were fine on payroll. I was actually coming back from out of town at the time, and she was dog-sitting my dog, so I had reached out to her and her husband to check in. That was when he blurted out that she had been taking money from the paper, and things unraveled from there. It turned out we were so far underwater that we absolutely could not continue. We put out one last edition before Christmas, and then in the days before Christmas, we had to lay off everybody. Me, everyone at the paper. There was no money to continue.
Dunne: And of course it was determined that she was embezzling from the paper. She fled, and all sorts of things followed. Talk about what happened this week.
Mortensen: She went to Ohio, and we spent some time going through all the books with our accountants and then with the Eugene Police Financial Crimes Unit. In March and April of last year, there was a grand jury indictment, but at that point she was in Ohio and they moved to extradite her. She was arrested in Ohio, but the governor's office actually turned down the extradition. That then led to a bit of a controversy. It also led to the discovery that other extraditions had been denied, including cases involving a string of burglaries targeting Asian families. The extradition decision was reversed. She was arrested again, brought back to Oregon, and released. There was a trial scheduled for May, but on Tuesday of this week she pleaded guilty on all five felony counts.
Dunne: When you put out the issue headlined "Where's the damn paper?" it was very transparent of you, and you've been transparent through this whole process. Why? A lot of businesses probably wouldn't be, and perhaps not even a lot of media organizations. Talk about that decision.
Mortensen: Media organizations should be transparent, and we couldn't just disappear without saying what had happened. There were red boxes all over town and a vibrant newspaper that suddenly went under. That was a big part of the decision. We also wanted the community to help decide if we could come back, and that's when we put out the appeal for help. Finally, and importantly, a lot more businesses get embezzled than people realize, and they don't always want to come forward. Businesses and nonprofits can be reluctant, and I understand why, because there are a lot of accusations of "What did you do wrong?" Nonprofits worry they can't keep fundraising. Businesses worry it will affect them. It's also a hard process to go through. You can't just prove that the person took the money. You have to prove they weren't supposed to. We wanted other businesses, especially smaller businesses, to see that this does happen and that there can be justice.
Dunne: Talk about that community support.
Mortensen: That was pretty amazing. We knew that when we didn't come out on Thursday, there would be a lot of questions. I wrote a story we called "Where's the Damn Paper?" because we figured that's what people were going to say when they walked up to the red box. There were other words we wanted to use, but they weren't good for radio or distribution. We explained what had happened to the best of our knowledge at the time, and basically said we cannot publish. And if you want to help, here is how.
Dunne: And they came through for you.
Mortensen: They did. We already had a nonprofit arm in place, so we were able to fundraise through that. But people were also just saying, create a GoFundMe. So we made one. That got picked up locally by KLCC and OPB, then by The Associated Press, and then the next thing I knew The New York Times and The Washington Post were calling. Something about a community newspaper going under for all the wrong reasons, at a time when media is under so much strain. Here was a paper that was doing OK and got taken out in the same way so many small businesses have been.
Dunne: Now that this has run its course, does it feel like a circle has closed? Talk about your feelings now that this person has pleaded guilty and will be brought to justice.
Mortensen: It's really hard, because this was a person I worked next to, someone I considered a friend. My dog has epilepsy and is very medically sensitive, and I trusted her to take care of him. To find out that the whole time I was cutting five hours here to balance the budget and keep my reporter full time, the money wasn't necessarily going to my reporter. That was horrible. And, you know, people don't just steal money because they're horrible human beings. People steal because they have drug problems, gambling problems. On one hand, I don't see prison as a fix, but if it can help address something like a drug problem and turn someone around, then hopefully it's a break in the pattern so they can reset. I teach at Lane Community College, and I work with a lot of formerly incarcerated students who turn their lives around. I would rather intercept people before they enter the prison system and fix the problem earlier. But I struggle with not seeing justice served, and not just for the paper and the staff. People came into the office crying while we were out of business because the Weekly was such a staple for them. So I do think it's important to come full circle and see that there was a repercussion for what happened to the staff, the paper and the community.
Dunne: Speaking of that staple, and switching gears, you're making a conscious effort to keep print journalism alive. Talk about why it's important that the Weekly remains a physical paper.
Mortensen: We actually kept publishing online during the six weeks we were down. We stopped print shortly before Christmas and didn't restart until Feb. 8, 2024. We were actually breaking stories about the 4J superintendent during that time, but people really wanted that print paper. There is something tangible about having a print paper, about having the routine of going out on Thursday and picking it up, doing the puzzles, being mad at Slant. All those different things. I wonder if it might be making a comeback. You do see more businesses and others resuming print newsletters and print updates. I don't think this community is quite ready to let go of it. There are so many different ways to access information, whether radio, Facebook or whatever, but there's something about that tangible moment of picking it up. And when you're publishing digitally, it's easy to upload something and do a quick fix. In print, it doesn't work that way. I feel like it makes us a better newspaper because we're so careful.
Dunne: Right now, The Onion is famously making a big push to increase subscriptions to a daily print paper. They want to get to the point where they have more print subscribers than the Washington Post. You have a brand people want to be associated with as they walk around Eugene or Springfield holding the paper. Is that part of it, too?
Mortensen: I think it is. It's that tangibility again. Full disclosure: I totally subscribe to the print version of The Onion. It's great. And this week is our satire issue, so we're definitely drawing some inspiration there. I always joke that I'm not the sort of person who wears my Ducks T-shirt unless I leave town. But there is a feeling of: this is Eugene, this is Lane County, and this is a piece of it that people like to grab hold of.
Dunne: Switching to a more immediate topic: you and your team have been heavily involved in covering the protests around ICE activity. I've seen you out there at protests, and you're also assigning team members to cover them. It can be a volatile situation. Talk about that, both as the boss and as someone covering it, because at any moment it can turn ugly.
Mortensen: This is something we've been really careful about. I also advise the Torch newspaper at LCC, so I give guidance to my student reporters there as well. I tell all of my reporters: know your rights. Know what you are allowed to do and what you're not allowed to do, and balance that with the need for transparency. When the feds say to clear the courtyard, we clear the courtyard. Waving our press pass doesn't magically let us stay there, but it does signal to the feds why we are backing away slowly and continuing to film. If we're gone and it's just federal officers and a protester in the courtyard, who is documenting that? We try to keep reporters safe. My main reporter covering this, Eve, has really good equipment. At one point, people saw us out there and some community members actually dropped off gas masks and other protective gear to help keep my reporters safe, which I really appreciated.
Dunne: We've bought a bunch of PPE for our reporters as well. You brought up your work at LCC, and I want to talk more about that. In addition to running a paper, you're also a journalism instructor. You advise the paper there and have done instruction at the University of Oregon. Talk about how you blend those two worlds. Did you bring the embezzlement experience into the classroom? Did you talk with students about covering protests and the dangers involved?
Mortensen: Absolutely. I make sure that every class, both at LCC and the University of Oregon, starts with looking at the news across different sources. I also bring in real-world examples of ethical debates I'm actively engaged in. In the case of the embezzlement, that was actually one of the harder moments in teaching. I had always walked in as the editor of the Eugene Weekly, and suddenly it was: well, I was the editor of the Weekly. Maybe I will be again, but it was a jarring shift. On the broader scale of experiencing a crime, embezzlement is different from, say, losing a child or surviving a sexual assault. It's a financial crime. But it's also personal, because it's a violation of something that almost feels like family. I think it has made me a better journalist and a better teacher. I can talk to students about how to approach someone who has been a victim of a crime, or someone who wants to get the word out but finds it difficult to explain what happened. I can look at how I've been quoted and show them: here's a really good example of coverage, and here's something I would have done differently. I'll show them examples where someone did a story without reaching out to the Weekly. Why is that problematic? Why should you always reach out to the victim? It's allowed me to expand on those conversations. With the protests, I asked my students: if you were forbidden as student journalists to cover a protest, how many of you would still go? They all raised their hands. So I said, OK, let's talk about how to do this safely, what your rights are and what you should be doing. Go in pairs. Have PPE. Have one person up close and one person further back. All the different ways to cover it and stay safe.
Dunne: I imagine you have some opinions about journalism today, especially in the Trump era, where the term "fake news" gets bandied about constantly. You've been at this a while. Give us a quick state of journalism today from your point of view.
Mortensen: The more cries of "fake news" get tossed around, the more important it becomes to do really good, well-sourced journalism. I tell my students: when someone says they want to be anonymous, they have to tell me why. Do they face real repercussions? Are they an immigrant worried that speaking on the record could get them targeted? Absolutely, they can be anonymous. But if someone just doesn't want their mom to know they're racist? No. You're going to have to give me your name. I feel, and maybe I'm idealistic because I'm a longtime journalist who loves what I do, that people do swing back around to sources they trust. And getting back to the embezzlement: being transparent is really hard, because you're essentially saying, here are the mistakes that were made. But that is literally what makes good journalism. This is what we're doing. This is why we do it. This is who we are. These are our sources, our information, how we got it and why.
Dunne: You work with a lot of young people. It's a difficult profession to get into these days. Are you optimistic because of the people you come into contact with who want to do it?
Mortensen: I am. One of the things I absolutely love: there are newer outlets that have started up, like the Dissonant Times, and they're doing it in print. They're doing good work. Another one of my current interns has a print music publication called Telephone, and it's print only. I see them, and they love print, they love journalism. They see the attacks on journalists and they're still interested in becoming journalists, or at least in understanding journalism better. Not all of my journalism students go on to become journalists. Some go on to become lawyers or other things. But they still love the purpose behind it, and that makes me really hopeful.
Dunne: My last question: despite everything that has gone on, with your paper and all you've seen in journalism, do you still like the gig?
Mortensen: I still like the gig. When we were embezzled and I lost my job, I kept asking myself, what would I do? And this is what I like to do. I like to show the community all the different things about our community, from drag shows to injustices to everything going on in between, and to increase transparency while bringing people together. Everyone who picks up the Weekly once a week or visits the website, they're all reading these stories and talking about them. It's a forum for a conversation.
Dunne: She's Camilla Mortensen, the editor of the Eugene Weekly. Thanks so much for coming in and talking to us.
Mortensen: Thank you.
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, the No Kings rally was this past weekend, and we talked to one of its organizers about the rally and also about how you organize a gathering of thousands of people. I'm Michael Dunne, host of Oregon on the Record. Thanks for listening.
