Bad news, literally

One of the ongoing problems in American communities is the decline of local journalism; specifically, many communities no longer have a locally owned newspaper dedicating to covering local issues in depth. Our daily newspaper (the Register-Guardheld out longer than most, but several years ago the owners retired and sold it to the USA Today network. Now what we get is a few local stories (but shared with Salem, mostly), a few national or international news stories buried in the back, fairly thorough local sports coverage (delayed a day or so), and the comics. I suppose the sports mostly drives the interest in subscribing, but I want the local news (and obituaries), and I also enjoy the comics - or I did until a few months ago when they decided to replace the current ones with a bunch of old comics that surely cost them much less if anything.

So I've been deciding whether I care enough to keep my subscription going. It's more than $50 a month, and for that I'd rather have pretty good local news coverage. (I get my national and international news online from the New York Times and Washington Post.) My alternatives seem to be the Eugene Weekly, which does in-depth stories (but only weekly, but it's free), and for the more dramatic but less detailed news, I check the websites for two of the local TV stations, the in-depth local radio station, and Oregon Public Broadcasting. I'm not sure if that's good enough, but maybe.

Unfortunately, today we learned that the Eugene Weekly may not be around much longer. One of its writers (who is married to one of my coworkers) put this on Facebook today:

"Shortly before Christmas, we discovered that EW had been the victim of embezzlement at the hands of someone we once trusted. We are still counting up the damage, but it’s thousands upon thousands. The theft of EW’s funds remained hidden for years and has left our finances in shambles. A team of private forensic accountants is analyzing our books and accounts. We’ve reported the thefts to the Eugene Police Department, which is conducting an investigation.

"We’ve discovered that many companies we do business with — vendors who turned out to be very patient — haven’t been paid in months. EW employees who thought they were paying into retirement accounts have learned the money never arrived at its destination. We had to lay off the entire 10-person staff EW three days before Christmas. One of our biggest creditors, our printer, says it will print EW again only if we pay upfront."

Bleh. So they're seeking donations, and I guess there will be fundraisers, and then we'll see.