Tag Archives: news

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Lynn Peterson is in Trouble

Lynn Peterson was primed and ready.

In June 2023, Metro President Lynn Peterson announced she was running in the Democratic primary for the 5th Congressional District seat occupied by Kurt Schrader until replaced by Lori Chavez-DeRemer.

“I’ll bring a track record of developing common sense solutions and getting things done to Congress,” Peterson said. “I’m going to fight not only for needed investments in housing, public safety, transportation and education, but also our fundamental rights to vote and seek reproductive health care.”

The race is a top target for Democrats trying to flip the U.S. House, which is now narrowly in Republican hands. The district, which voted for Joe Biden in 2020 and has more registered Democrats than Republicans, stretches from Bend to Portland. 

Peterson jumped out of the gate with an endorsement from DeFazio and over 50 endorsements from officeholders and community leaders from throughout the 5th District and the state.

What could go wrong?

Well, money.

In an email blast today, Peterson said, “For the next few months, our fundraising numbers will help set the narrative as we approach the primary and look toward the general election. (emphasis in original) For many, these numbers serve as a proxy metric for viability.”

According to campaign finance numbers posted today by the Federal Election Commission (FEC), Peterson had just $52,834.13 cash on hand as of the end of 2023.

The other four Democratic primary candidates, Janelle Bynum, Kevin Easton, Jamie McLeod-Skinner and Matthew Davie, haven’t filed their campaign finance reports for all of 2023, but Bynum and McLeod-Skinner had healthy balances as of Sept. 30, 2023 (Bynum: $217,842.324; McLeod-Skinner: $154,767.48). 

In addition, The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee gave Bynum a lift when it announced its support for her on January 29, noting that it had put her on its “Red to Blue” list of key candidates running to replace Republican members as  part of the Democrats’ strategy to reclaim the House majority.

 The primary winner will take on Republican U.S. Rep. Lori Chavez-DeRemer, who won her seat in 2020, defeating Democrat Jamie McLeod-Skinner 51% – 49%.

Chavez-DeRemer hasn’t filed her end-of-the-year campaign finance report with the FEC, but as of Sept. 30, 2023, she had cash on hand of $1,290,581.19. It’s expected that her aggressive fundraising efforts continued in the fourth quarter of 2023, making her a strong candidate in the race against her eventual Democratic opponent. 

Despite the Democratic lead in registrations in the district, the Cook Political Report rates the race as a toss-up. 

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Affordable Housing Push Spawns Money-Raising Frenzy in Oregon 

Government just can’t seem to stop wanting more money.

In a strange twist, now there’s a move to make life less affordable for many Oregonians in order to promote affordable housing.

Oregon Governor Tina Kotek’s Housing Production Advisory Council has just submitted a 20-page draft report, HPAC Policy Recommendations, on ideas on how to address the affordable housing crisis. And, of course, the ideas include raising more money. The Taxpayer Association of Oregon revealed the report on Jan. 10, 2024.

Remember when voters passed Measure 50 in 1997? It introduced maximum assessed value (MAV), which acts as a “cap” on the growth of taxable (assessed) value for most property. MAV growth is limited to 3 percent per year. Combined with permanent tax rates, Measure 50 effectively limited tax increases, except under specific circumstances. Kotek’s Housing Production Advisory Council is proposing raising that to 5%.

Own a vacation property in Bend?  Kotek’s Housing Production Advisory Council is proposing eliminating the Mortgage Interest Deduction for Second Homes (i.e., abolishing the income tax deduction for interest paid on second homes).

Drive a gas car?   Kotek’s Housing Production Advisory Council is proposing doubling fuel taxes.

On section 7 (Page 16/17) it lists 5 suggestions to raise new revenue (as shown below):

  1. Generate new, state-level revenue to fund critical local infrastructure.
    a. New revenue generation to be limited to duration of HPAC Timeline (i.e., sunset in 2032)
    and in support of the related work plan topics described below. Potential sources
    include:

i. Revenue Source and Annual Revenue Generated (Legislative Revenue Office,
2023, p. B7, FY 23-24 dollars).

  1. Increase all personal income tax brackets by ½ percentage point.
    a. $699 Million
  2. Establish Special $1 per $1,000 real property tax assessment outside of
    Measure 5.
    a. $504 Million
  3. Implement 0.5% Retail Sales Tax.
    a. $501 Million
  4. Implement 0.5% Payroll Tax.
    a. $620 Million
  5. Double Fuel Tax.
    a. $686 Million

The report also proposes: 

Reform Oregon’s tax system to encourage development of needed housing and provide
adequate revenue for local governments to support housing production.
a. Taxes are both a tool to raise revenue for government and to shape taxpayer behavior.
Attaining the Governor’s desired housing production goals will require significant new
revenue; this recommendation highlights actions that can address revenue shortfalls and
encourage a shift in taxpayer behavior to support housing production.
b. Potential actions include (but are not limited to):
i. Targeted Measure 50 Reform:

  1. Increase annual Maximum Assessed Value change to 5%.
  2. Authorize voters to increase the permanent levy of their local
    jurisdiction.
  3. Exempt Cites and Counties from compression.
    ii. Adopt Land Value Tax
    iii. Eliminate Mortgage Interest Deduction for Second Homes (i.e., abolish income
    tax deduction for interest paid on second homes).
    iv. Enact temporary property tax exemption for new housing at 120% AMI or below.
    v. Reduce or Eliminate Tax Expenditures (i.e., tax exemptions) not related to
    housing.

The report notes that four lawmakers, from both parties, sit as members on Kotek’s Council.   They are:

  • Senator Dick Anderson (R – Lincoln City)
  • Senator Kayse Jama (D – Portland)
  • Representative Vikki Breese Iverson (R – Prineville)
  • Representative Maxine Dexter (D – Portland)

There are also a number of community members appointed to theCouncil by Governor Kotek.

They need to hear from taxpayers.

_______________________________________

Gubernatorial Appointments:
  • Co-chair J.D. Tovey – rural Oregon and an enrolled member of the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation – land use, building codes and housing development 
  • Co-chair Damien Hall – Metro- land use, and affordable and market housing development 
  • Daniel Bunn– Southern Oregon – land use and financing market housing 
  • Thomas Cody– Metro area – affordable and market housing development 
  • Deborah Flagan – Central Oregon – market housing development and construction
  • Ernesto Fonseca– Metro area – affordable and market housing development and financing affordable housing 
  • Elissa Gertler– Oregon Coast – land use and financing affordable housing 
  • Riley Hill– rural Oregon – land use and market housing development 
  • Natalie Janney– Willamette Valley area – land use, market housing development 
  • Robert Justus – Metro area – affordable and market housing development 
  • Joel Madsen– Columbia Gorge – affordable housing development and financing 
  • Ivory Mathews – Metro area – affordable housing development and financing
  • Erica Mills– Southern Oregon – financing affordable and market housing 
  • Eric Olsen– Willamette Valley area – construction, market housing development 
  • Gauri Rajbaidya– Metro area – affordable and market housing development 
  • Karen Rockwell – Oregon Coast – affordable and market housing development 
  • Margaret Van Vliet – Metro area – financing market and affordable housing, and affordable housing development 
  • Justin Wood – Metro – construction and market housing development 

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Could Sale of the Pamplin Media Group Threaten Local News?

The word is Pamplin Media Group, publisher of the Portland Tribune and 23 other local community papers in Oregon, is being shopped around for sale. 

Simultaneously, the Group is closing its Gresham Outlook printing facility and laying off its approximately 20 employees, an indicator of financial stress.

A Portland Tribune story noted earlier this year that the Pamplin Media Group “…has weathered numerous upheavals in the journalism business, three recessions that reduced advertising revenues and the COVID-19 pandemic that reduced revenues even more than the previous recessions.”

With all the bruising changes affecting the local newspaper industry, sale of the group may well lead to another upheaval. 

In early 2023, when Mark Garber handed off the position of president of the Pamplin Media Group to become president emeritus, he commented that when he’d started his newspaper career as a reporter in 1979, “We used manual typewriters and handed our copy to an editor, who marked it up, literally cut and pasted it, and then sent it to a human typesetter.”

The changes in the local newspaper business since those days have been massive, butchering a once robust news ecosystem in the United States.

The loss of local news has had far reaching implications. “As everyone knows, the internet knocked the industry off its foundations, ” James Bennet,  former editorial page editor at The New York Times, wrote in The Economist in mid-December. “Local newspapers were the proving ground between college campuses and national newsrooms. As they disintegrated, the national news media lost a source of seasoned reporters and many Americans lost a journalism whose truth they could verify with their own eyes.”

Just since 2005, the country has lost one-third of its newspapers and two-thirds of its newspaper journalists. So far in 2023, an average of 2.5 newspapers have closed each week according to a State of Local News Report by Tim Franklin, Senior Associate Dean and John M. Mutz Chair in Local News and Director of the Medill Local News Initiative at Northwestern University.  Most were weekly publications, in areas with few or no other sources for news.

“The underlying infrastructure for producing local news has been weakened by two decades of losses of newsrooms and reporting jobs,” noted an October 2022 report from the Agora Journalism Center at the University of Oregon’s School of Journalism and Communication. “And news organizations today…often sense they are swimming against the tide of economic, technological, political, and cultural changes that threaten the long-term viability of local news production.”

In Oregon’s current troubling time, when misinformation is on the rise, the civic damage from a decline in trusted, quality local newspaper coverage can be particularly severe. Even more so when local papers rip more of their content from national news outlets or run stories to satisfy distant corporate owners. “Communities that lack robust local news also tend to experience lower rates of civic engagement, higher rates of polarization and corruption, and a diminished sense of community connection,” the report said.

The recent acquisition of many legendary local newspapers by hedge funds and private equity groups shows what could await the Pamplin Media Group. 

The Register-Guard in Eugene was locally owned until 2018 when it was sold to GateHouse Media Inc.  In 2019, GateHouse Media’s parent company, New Media Investment Group, acquired Gannett, the parent company of USA Today and more than 100 other dailies, creating the largest newspaper company in the country, with the combined company adopting the Gannett name. 

Management of the new company was left to Fortress Investment Group, a private equity firm in New York City. Fortress, which controlled New Media Investment Group, the parent of GateHouse, was owned by SoftBank, a Japanese conglomerate. 

There were about 21,255 employees at Gatehouse and Gannett at the time of the merger; Gatehouse had 10,617, Gannett 10,638. Gannett has since dramatically cut costs, reducing its headcount to 11,200 at the start of 2023.

Over the years, the Register-Guard has suffered right along with Gannett. At the time of its sale to Gatehouse in 2018 the Register-Guard had over 40 employees. Its website currently lists just 3 News reporters, 3 Sports reporters and 1 Multimedia Photo Journalist. Hardly enough for robust local coverage.

The Alden Global Capital hedge fund is another company eviscerating local newspapers. Alden, which owns about 200 publications, including the Chicago Tribune, is the second-largest newspaper publisher in the country, behind Gannett. Alden is perhaps best known for acquiring and then gutting the Denver Post.

In July 2023, Los Angeles billionaire Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong sold The San Diego Union-Tribune to an affiliate of the MediaNews Group, which is owned by Alden, for an undisclosed amount. The Voice of San Diego called Alden “the most terrifying owner in American journalism” and said the sale put the Union-Tribune “back in the American newspaper doom loop.” 

Word of cutbacks was swift. The same day as the sale announcement, the MediaNews Group sent an email to the paper’s employees saying cutbacks would be needed to “offset the slowdown in revenues as economic headwinds continue to impact the media industry” and informing staff that the new owner would be offering buyouts. If enough employees didn’t take buyouts, the company said it would lay off additional employees. 

As of the end of October 2023, employees estimated that somewhere between 60 and 80 people were left from the 108-person newsroom under Soon-Shiong.

The Voice of San Diego said the sale of the Union-Tribune to Alden put it “back in the American newspaper doom loop.” Let’s hope the sale of Pamplin Media Group doesn’t put its community newspapers in the same place.

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Messages of Doom Aren’t Reaching Trumpers

A friend recently praised the The Atlantic’s January/February 2024 edition for turning over an entire issue to 24 writers offering dystopian warnings about a second Trump presidency. 

“In his first term, Trump’s corruption and brutality were mitigated by his ignorance and laziness, “ wrote David Frum. “In a second, Trump would arrive with a much better understanding of the system’s vulnerabilities, more willing enablers in tow, and a much more focused agenda of retaliation against his adversaries and impunity for himself.”

“Trump’s bullying of military leaders, journalists, and judges was never merely the ranting of an attention seeker, and that behavior—backed by the credible threat of violence from radicalized supporters—will likely become even more central to his governing style,” wrote Juliette Kayyem.

That should have a real impact on public discourse about Trump, my friend said.

Not likely.

The Atlantic, The New York Times, The Washington Post, The New Yorker, Vanity Fair, The Washington Monthly and multiple other elite liberal/progressive/left-leaning publications are preaching to the choir in covering politics and so much more of the cultural landscape. Far too often, their attention is on things the vast majority of Americans are simply not focusing on. 

As former New York Times editor James Bennet wrote in The Economist, “The reality is that the Times is becoming the publication through which America’s progressive elite talks to itself about an America that does not really exist.”

The New York Times illusions are reflected in its coverage of the HBO show “Succession”, described by one critic as “an amoral look at the stupidity of capitalism”. The paper droned on about the show interminably after its debut in June 2018. 

“…time has hardly dulled the beige sheen of “Succession”, New York Times reporter Alexis Soloski effused in the paper’s Dec. 3, 2024 edition. “In January it will likely dominate the Emmy Awards — all of the main cast received nominations and Armstrong earned two, for writing and as an executive producer — and no other show has come to replace it in the cultural consciousness.”

But the fact is Succession was a niche show, not even on the radar of most Americans. Succession’s May 2023 finale drew 2.9 million viewers, a series high. Even counting delayed viewing, “Succession” averaged just 8.7 million viewers per episode in its fourth and final season.

That’s with a total U.S. population of 341 million, with just about every household having a television or computer screen for streaming.

That’s how it is with the New York Times. Even though it now has about 10 million subscribers, and still claims it runs “All the News That’s Fit to Print”, it’s not really talking to America. 

According to the paper’s readership demographics, 91% of its readers identify as Democrats, only 7% of the readership doesn’t have a higher education degree and most of its readers are white and well-off. 

In other words, most people who read the New York Times and other liberal-leaning publications do so because they already share the political sensibilities of these publications.

And frankly, there’s not much incentive for pundits to go off the beaten track. As Osita Nwaney put it in a Columbia Journalism Review article about political writing, “…What’s worth writing about and how? The morsels of rage and misery we offer might not have much political effect, but they do feed an online writing economy that rewards speed, quantity, and deference to algorithms designed for the profit of three or four tech companies—an economy that offers few incentives to generate writing that lingers in the mind longer than half a day or half an hour…The whole system is one of the bleakest forms of entertainment imaginable.”

Similar limiting factors are present with most “elite” news outlets in the United States. 

Even television news and opinion shows reach a narrow audience. The days when Walter Cronkite dominated the scene,  reaching an estimated 27-29 million viewers per night, when the nation’s population was just over 200 million, are long gone. 

ABC World News Tonight with David Muir finished the week of November 27 at No. 1 in the evening news ratings race with an average of just 8.45 million viewers. That same week, NBC Nightly News with Lester Holt averaged 7.075 million viewers and The CBS Evening News with Norah O’Donnell averaged 5.05 million total viewers. In other words, the combined viewership of all three top evening network news shows totaled 20.56 million, about one third fewer viewers than Cronkite alone reeled in more than 40 years ago when America’s population was much smaller.

The proliferation of liberal political comment on social media  and in reams of political punditry also likely has less of an impact on the broad public than is often assumed. 

This is likely one big reason why all the hand-wringing about Trump in progressive publications and network news shows, isn’t denting Trump’s support. He’s still crushing his GOP presidential primary opponents and surpassing President Biden in the polls, even in a poll pitting Trump against Biden, Kennedy, West and Stein. 

Put simply, Trump’s supporters just aren’t listening. 

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Do no evil: Google’s Digital News Initiative is a bad deal

Want to know how to win friends and influence publishers: give them money.

So much for Google’s “Do no evil” mantra. Its decision to launch a “Digital News Initiative” with eight news publishers in Europe is a clear effort to influence news coverage and political activity.

Publishers that value their integrity and know journalism should just say no.

googledonoevil

Google is facing a European Union investigation into allegations that it has abused its monopoly positions in online search and has improperly bundled its Android apps.

Despite the timing, Google insists that the digital initiative is not simply a P.R. effort or an attempt to discourage major media from undermining the company’s business goals. Sure.

In Google’s early years, it declared that one of the ten things it knew to be true was, “You can make money without doing evil.” Apparently it’s changed its mind.

At the same time, newspapers used to believe that their job was to be speak the unvarnished truth. As Adolph S. Ochs, the founding father of the modern New York Times, declared more than a century ago, 100 years ago, the paper was committed “…to give the news impartially, without fear or favor, regardless of party, sect, or interests involved…” Apparently some newspapers trying to adapt to the new digital world have changed their mind, too.

Google announced today (April 28) that the initiative will initially have eight publishing partners: the Financial Times; Les Echos in France; NRC Media in the Netherlands; El Pais in Spain; La Stampa in Italy, Faz and Die Zeit in Germany; and the Guardian in the U.K. Publications from Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp are noticeably absent.

Founding partners also include The European Journalism Centre (EJC), The Global Editors Network (GEN), and The International News Media Association (INMA). Publications from Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp are noticeably absent.

Under the partnership, Google plans:

  • to work with the publishers to establish a ‘product working group’ to enable a close, on-going dialogue exploring product developments to increase revenue, traffic and audience engagement
  • Create a €150m ($164 million) innovation fund to support and stimulate innovation in digital news journalism over the next three years.
  • Invest in new training and development resources for journalists and newsrooms across Europe

News publishers may try to rationalize such a partnership with Google, but the fact is this does not auger well for the their independence. As the saying goes, you are judged by the company you keep.