City Club cheers for the Eugene Weekly’s new owner

Presenter: The City Club cheers for Camilla Mortensen as the new owner of the Eugene Weekly. With the latest on local journalism Feb. 28, program host Joel Korin:

Joel Korin (City Club): No program about journalism in Eugene should start without at least a recollection of all the things that Anita Johnson did for us and for print media here in Eugene. Wonderful woman and a wonderful paper. (Applause)

Camilla Mortensen is the long-time local editor of Eugene Weekly, our alternative newspaper. They have 27,000 copies a week. Camilla earned an MA in folklore and mythology from UCLA, a doctorate in comparative literature from the U of O and has been a reporter and editor at Eugene Weekly since 2007.

She teaches journalism at the UO and in the morning before getting to the office and she teaches news writing at Lane Community College where she is the advisor to The Torch and she insisted that I say that The Torch, LCC’s newspaper, is back in print. She also serves on the board of directors of Highway 58 Herald.

Presenter: Camilla Mortensen:

[00:01:25] Camilla Mortensen (Eugene Weekly, owner): True story: Long-time Eugene Weekly owner Anita Johnson, as well as long-time City Club member, asked me if I would apply to be the paper’s next editor, and I said no. I didn’t think I was ready. She ignored me. She made me the editor anyway. And I am grateful she believed in me.

[00:01:42] Ten years later I am still learning every single day. So here’s some of what I’ve learned about the relationship between this newspaper and our community, because after almost a decade as editor I’m about to become the paper’s next local owner. (applause)…

[00:02:01] Eugene Weekly is a combination of a community newspaper and an alternative news weekly. We were founded in 1982 as What’s Happening, and many of you still call us that, as a calendar to fill in the gap after the Willamette Valley Observer folded that same year.

[00:02:13] The founders wanted more than a calendar. They wanted a newspaper, a place to know where the latest protest was, a newspaper that would hold political and community leaders accountable, as well as celebrate local music, food, arts, and more.

[00:02:25] Over the course of more than 40 years that Eugene Weekly has been printing,… we provide an alternative angle, a deeper dive, a perspective that is missed by the mainstream press. We don’t just start with the facts that are handed to us, we pursue the truth.

[00:02:38] Our reporting has an impact right here in the community and I’m proud of that because that’s what community journalism should do, make the world a better place through care and through transparency.

[00:02:47] When thinking about where you get your news, look for a mission statement. We have one and this is how it starts:

‘Eugene Weekly exists to boldly question prevailing wisdom and authority. We expose corporate practices and public policies that benefit the few at the expense of the many. We provide a voice for the oppressed and dismissed and support unfettered artistic expression. As informed citizens, we carry responsibility for community leadership. We advocate aggressively for environmental sanity, government accountability, sustainable economics, social justice, cultural diversity, tolerance, and the lively free interchange of ideas and opinions.’

That is our guide as we run this newspaper.

[00:03:27] We believe it’s our duty to promote civic conversations year-round in our opinion pages, but especially during campaign season. So every election we interview as many candidates for political office in person as we can, and debate and discuss them, and issue our election endorsements.

[00:03:39] Near and dear to my heart, we run solutions, investigative, and local reporting by University of Oregon and Lane Community College students. And I’m going to give a shout-out again here to my LCC students at The Torch, who brought that newspaper back to life.

[00:03:55] Presenter: The Torch wasn’t the only local newspaper brought back to life. Facing the prospect of the Eugene Weekly closing its doors forever, the whole community helped put its beloved alt-weekly back on firm financial footing. Camilla Mortensen:

[00:04:10] Camilla Mortensen: We almost closed forever. We stopped printing. We kept going, kept the news going, kept publishing online and breaking stories. And you folks in the community responded and kept showing up, supporting us (with) your encouragement, your fundraisers, your contribution, and your desire to have us back in print. And the local media responded: KLCC, The Register-Guard, the local stations all showed up. All those things kept the doors open. This community and its media sources may disagree and compete but we always show up. Our diversity is needed and so are those moments literally when we are all on the same page.

[00:04:45] The long-time owners of the Weekly never took a profit from the paper. Even when it was profitable, they put the money back in. That’s the tradition of the paper and the tradition we continue as we work to make the Weekly into a truly community-owned paper exploring nonprofit ownership models.

[00:04:59] Thank you to the readers of the Weekly. We’ve been here for 40 years and our red boxes plan to be around for at least 40 more.

[00:05:06] Presenter: During the question and answer session, Mike Meyer:

[00:05:09] Mike Meyer: My name is Mike Meyer. I’m a local folk music producer, community organizer. In community work, I’ve had a lot of difficulty with these organizations. The KLCC folk music show is syndicated. Folk music should not be syndicated. It’s community music.

We’re in a community crisis right now with the way that the world is trampling over communities. Thousands of musicians I’ve worked with, multicultural musicians, are not getting onto the airwaves. These shows are not being announced. The Eugene Weekly has maybe one featured show of an entertainment thing a week. It’s very hard to get community activities into the media, and I’m wondering how we can do better.

[00:05:58] Presenter: For the Eugene Weekly, Camilla Mortensen:

[00:06:01] Camilla Mortensen: We have a long-time events calendar, which we post all the events in that are sent to us. Thank you, and I appreciate when you submit things, that’s great, Mike. And I would love to get more things in print. I would love to have, and I understand your concern, we do sometimes only have one music event featured. We try to do more and we always post extra online, but yes, if anyone has any solutions for us getting more music events in print, I would love to hear about them.

[00:06:25] Presenter: Congressional candidate Dan Bahlen:

[00:06:28] Dr. Dan Bahlen: My name is Dr. Dan Bahlen from the federally-recognized San Carlos Apache Tribe. I completed my doctorate in behavioral health Sept. 12. We’re running for Congress in this district.

[00:06:37] I want to voice my disappointment in being excluded from Eugene Weekly, which say they are a voice for the oppressed and dismissed. It is rare for an American Indian to earn a doctorate degree. It is rare for a homeless person to run for federal office. It is extremely rare for an American Indian to run for federal office. Yet Eugene Weekly contributed to the oppression and invisibility of the American Indian by not covering my campaign. I had even reached out face-to-face at Eugene Weekly in August and they had my contact information and I was waiting for an interview that never came.

[00:07:06] My question and request is that Eugene Weekly make up for the wrongs and run a story on my campaign to win the 2026 Republican primary here in Oregon’s 4th Congressional District.

[00:07:16] Presenter: Camilla Mortensen:

[00:07:17] Camilla Mortensen: Absolutely. I would be glad to do that, and I apologize that we did not address your campaign. (Yes!)  I would be glad to. (Thank you!)

[00:07:23] Presenter: City Club President-elect Thomas Hiura:

[00:07:26] Thomas Hiura (City Club, president-elect): It’s so easy for false information to travel at the same speed or even faster than reputable information that has to go through veracity confirmation. What’s this landscape like for you all to do your jobs?

[00:07:37] Presenter: Camilla Mortensen:

[00:07:39] Camilla Mortensen: …With that concern of misinformation, AI has very much become a really worrying portion that we are looking to deal with, and that’s something that Eugene Weekly does not use, does not use AI-produced reporting and will not use that.

[00:07:50] Aria Lynn-Skov: Hi, my name is Aria, I’m the editor of the South Eugene High School newspaper… How with your platforms, would you want to interact with and engage those younger audiences?

[00:08:01] Camilla Mortensen: That is a great question and also you’re the editor of The Axe, correct? (Yes.) … I think one of the reasons people still like us in print is that you can sit down, you can pick it up, and you can take a moment, and you can breathe and take a look at it, and giving yourself that peaceful moment to look at the news, instead of feeling barraged all the time, I think, is one approach to it…

[00:08:24] One thing that’s amazing about the role of the newspaper is getting a community on the same page, reading the same headlines and hopefully engaging that kind of dialogue and conversation that’s so important. And that’s not something I ever want to see stopped…

[00:08:39] And also I always tell my journalism classes: ‘The one thing I cannot teach is curiosity.’ And curiosity and getting young folks curious about what’s going on in the world, I guess, is the one slight advantage of what a mess the world is right now, because I hope it makes people more curious about what they can do for the world.

[00:08:56] Andrew Kalloch (City Club): Andrew Kalloch. Just this week the Washington Post‘s owner changed the editorial policy of that paper and it once again led at least some cohort of subscribers to end their subscription. And I wonder what you think about that and what advice you would give to citizens about how to support journalism, when to decide to pull the plug, and how to make those difficult decisions.

[00:09:16] Presenter: Eugene Weekly owner Camilla Mortensen:

[00:09:19] Camilla Mortensen: The ‘pull the plug’ part kind of scared me, Andrew…

[00:09:24] Unabashedly, we obviously lean progressive, it’s in our mission statement. That said, we enjoy the back and forth. We have a letter this week from somebody who is angry about something and when we were getting contributions from the community,… one of my favorite comments I got from people is like, ‘Wow, I really disagree with your opinions, but I love the fact you print my letters and so I’m going to support you.’

[00:09:46] Presenter: The City Club celebrates 40 years of the Eugene Weekly by remembering Fred Taylor and Anita Johnson, and cheering for the new owner, long-time editor Camilla Mortensen.

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