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Who’s Writing the
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work.” But even so, he says he thinks it would be difficult for
just one person to do this work.
“I cannot independently confirm that the RG is
outsourcing editorials. I doubt, however, that Bath or
Glavash are writing all, or even most, of them,” Wilson writes.
Christian Trejbal is the CEO of Opinion in a Pinch. He
declined an interview for this story, saying he has nothing to
add to previous emails to EW where he said that he couldn’t
discuss specifics of his client list.
Dick Hughes, who is a writer with Opinion in a Pinch and
the former editorial page editor of the Salem Statesman
Journal, also declined an interview request.
However, several local politicians who did endorsement
interviews in fall 2018 with the RG confirmed to EW that
Trejbal or others participated in their interviews over the
phone, in addition to the presence of Bath, Cannon and
Glavash.
The most recent comments from Trejbal about his opinion
writing business are from 2015. A notable piece of journalism
on the subject was written by Deron Lee for the Columbia
Journalism Review in October 2015, more than two years
before the RG lost its editorial staff.
A main issue of outsourcing editorial writing to
companies like Opinion in a Pinch is the fact that these
writers do not typically belong to the communities they
write their editorials for. News editorials typically ponder
and weigh in on issues the paper reports on and that affect
the community.
“Trejbal says it’s simply a matter of doing internet
research on the issues at hand, and sometimes calling local
officials to get the lowdown,” Lee’s article for CJR says.
This is inadequate for former RG editorial staffers such
as Wilson.
“Heavy, or exclusive, reliance on such a service entails
some serious problems. Obviously, the editorials would be
written by people with little or no direct knowledge of the
community or readership. No matter how strong an outside
contractors’ researching and writing skills may be, a feel for
the community is indispensable,” Wilson writes.
Paul Neville is a former associate editorial editor for The
Register-Guard. He shares many of Wilson’s opinions on the
importance of local knowledge for editorial writers.
“By the time I came on as associate editor I had a lot of
experience in the community, at the newspaper, covering a
range of beats,” Neville says. “That used to be the way they
promoted somebody to the editorial board.”
“From time to time I’ve had the impression that an
editorial was conceived and written by people who might
just as well have arrived in Eugene yesterday,” Wilson says.
“It’s really important that editorial writers have that
sense of community and that sense of institutional history,”
Neville says. “Every day we’d have an hour-long meeting
where we’d talk about the editorials coming up. It was a
process that farming editorials out doesn’t provide for.”
But, Neville mentions, some editorial content is better
than nothing.
“Even editorials [for The Register-Guard] written by
people in Portland are better than no editorials at all.” ■
ld
W
hen national newspaper publishing
chain GateHouse Media bought The
Register-Guard in February 2018, some
of the most notable changes happened
in the editorial section.
Jackman Wilson was the editorial
page editor at the time; he recounts the
changes made to the RG’s editorial section after the GateHouse
acquisition.
He says new editor Alison Bath’s “first significant change in
the editorial department, effective Sept. 1, was to reduce the
number of opinion pages by half: No more four-page Sunday
Commentary section, no more daily op-ed pages.”
Wilson writes to Eugene Weekly in an email that while it isn’t
particularly damning for a specific newspaper to lose parts of
their opinion section in this new news era, some of the changes
that were made confirmed his decision to leave the paper.
“This move came as no great surprise,” he says. “It’s rare to
find a newspaper of any size with 16 ad-free opinion pages every
week. The cut-down to eight, however, solidified my decision to
depart. It was becoming clear that I belonged to an era that was
coming to an end, and I had no interest in being associated with
the new one.”
After Wilson left, his editorial colleagues Christian Wihtol and
Bob Welch left, too.
“Overnight, the institutional memory of the RG editorial
department went from three-quarters of a century to three
days,” Wilson says.
According to Shanna Cannon, the RG’s publisher, the paper’s
editorial board is made up of herself, RG Editor-in-Chief Bath
and associate editor Anna Glavash. Cannon said in a May email
to EW that the RG is still “actively recruiting and interviewing for
an Opinion Editor.”
This spot has been vacant since Wilson left.
“We have a job posting for our Opinion Page Editor and filling
that position is a priority,” Cannon also wrote to EW in October,
shortly after Wilson’s departure.
“Bath and the RG are still looking for an editorial page
editor. An editorial page without an editor will unavoidably be
rudderless,” Wilson says.
Wilson, who had been on staff at the RG since 1985 before
his 2018 departure, has a wealth of editorial writing experience,
including, he says, writing for Opinion in a Pinch, a Portland-
based company that writes editorials and opinion columns for
papers in need — that is, lacking in the editorial staff to produce
necessary work.
He has not done work for Opinion in a Pinch for the RG, he
says.
Since the GateHouse acquisition resulted in a significant
cutback in editorial staff at the RG, there has been speculation
about Eugene’s newspaper being one of those papers in need.
EW has been one of those speculators, questioning who is behind
the “Our View” editorials, now that the only person listed on the
editorial section of the paper’s “contact us” page is Glavash. Bath
and Cannon are listed on the opinion page itself.
Glavash denied EW’s interview request because she “can’t
answer questions on behalf of the paper.” She is, according to
Wilson, who hired her, a “quick study with a good feel for the
or
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