SEPTEMBER 27, 2019, KEIZERTIMES, PAGE B3
Keizertimes marks 40th anniversary
A look back on Keizer’s
history of local news
On Thursday, Oct. 3, the
Keizertimes will be celebrating
its 40th anniversary.
While the newspaper in-
dustry has been roiled by
changes large and small in
recent decades, we wanted to
celebrate our award-winning,
locally-owned paper’s suc-
cesses with the community
by publishing this giant-sized
edition of the paper and look-
ing back on the history of
news in the Keizer commu-
nity.
While the Keizertimes pub-
lished its fi rst edition on Oct.
3, 1979, the history of news-
papers in Keizer goes back
even further, to the 1940s and
the Keizer News.
Clarence Zaitz, father and
father-in-law of the current
Keizertimes owners Les Zaitz
and Scotta Callister as well as
dad to current publisher Lyn-
don Zaitz, arrived in Salem to
work for the Capital Journal in
1963. In 1964, he purchased
the Keizer News, a weekly
community paper in what was
then a mostly agricultural area
of Salem.
“It was an eye-popping
experience,” Clarence said.
“That was back in the days of
printing with hot lead before
offset printing. Fortunately, print,” Clarence said.
Unfortunately, the busi-
I also acquired an itinerant,
drunken printer. He stayed ness of running the paper
with me long enough to took him away from his fi rst
love, reporting, but he and
teach me the basics.”
He switched to offset Joanne enlisted a small team
printing as soon as he learned of “neighborhood reporters”
to feed them
about it and
the stories for
could make
each edition.
the
switch.
Joanne sold
Offset doesn’t
ads and helped
involve
the
manage the
dangers
of
business end
molten metals.
throughout
Clarence
their owner-
and his wife,
ship.
Joanne, who
“I
took
already
had
fi ve
kids
— Les Zaitz care of all the
offi ce stuff af-
when
they
Keizertimes owner
ter taking the
took over the
kids to school,
Keizer News,
fed each copy of each edi- but we always tried to have a
tion of the paper through the babysitter on the nights we
printing press by hand and went to press,” she said.
They also offered print
then through a folding ma-
chine. The offi ce was located services to others in the com-
on the southeast corner of munity and printed some of
River Road North and Che- the fi rst student ID cards for
mawa Road Northeast where McNary High School when
it opened in 1965.
Shari’s is now.
The most memorable news
“We’d be there till mid-
night or one o’clock in the event was a winter fl ood in
morning to get enough pa- 1964. Keizer News was the
pers to take to the post offi ce. fi rst publication to have print-
Some nights, the kids would ed photos of the devastation
all be asleep on the news- on the streets, beating all the
“We had to be
a successful
business to be
a successful
paper.”
local major newspapers at the
time.
“The fl ooding happened
overnight. I raced around to
get photos in the morning,
brought them back to devel-
op them, made paste-ups and
we had a fl ood edition on the
street by noon,” he said.
That was one week the
decisions came easy, but that
wasn’t always the case.
“Sometimes on the day
that we’re supposed to put the
paper together, I still didn’t
know what I was gonna put
on the front page,” he said.
Living in the moments like
those were as exhilarating as
they were exhausting, but de-
spite victories like the fl ood
edition, running the business
became a grind.
“There was a constant
strain to make enough mon-
ey to survive between getting
advertisers that were reluctant
and inheriting equipment we
were totally unfamiliar with,”
he said.
He and Joanne shuttered
the paper in 1969 and Clar-
ence took a job running the
Oregon capital bureau for
United Press International.
While Clarence was run-
ning the paper, his enthusiasm
for journalism was infecting
his sons, Les and Lyndon.
Les was acting as a report-
er for the Keizer News by
the age of 13. The offi ce was
just across the street from the
all-volunteer Keizer Fire Dis-
trict and Clarence sent him
out to fi nd out what hap-
pened every time the crew got
back from a call.
“I would trudge across the
fi eld and they’d give me all the
details. It was cool to have the
inside information that young,
and share it with other peo-
ple,” Les said.
Lyndon was a student at
Whiteaker Middle School one
day when a plane crashed in a
nearby fi eld. His fi rst stop was
the main offi ce to call his dad
and report what happened.
QUOTE from LYNDON
Les went on to a career
with The Oregonian, but he
and his wife, Scotta another
break-out Oregonian reporter,
were looking to own a paper
of their own.
They
scouted
papers
throughout Oregon and
Washington, but Les thought
the Keizertimes, which was
started by John Ettinger in
1979, had the most potential.
“John was not a newspaper
guy, but he had done a good
job of building a publication
on a shoestring budget. Keiz-
er was growing and I though
the newspaper could serve the
community better,” Les said.
Les and Scotta purchased
the paper from Ettinger in
1987.
While Les had prior expe-
rience in the community, he
found running a business to
be just as challenging as his
father.
“We had to be a success-
ful business to be a successful
paper, but we also wanted to
upgrade the quality of the
journalism and give the paper
a more professional look,” he
said.
While his dad’s legacy in
the community didn’t play a
huge role in Les’s return to
Keizer, their paths diverged
again when Les ended up cov-
ering another major fl ood in
the area in 1996.
“We had to evacuate our
offi ce. It was a huge issue for
Keizer and we leaned into it
hard and worked around the
clock. There was great fear at
the time that the water would
keep rising and the dyke
would breach,” Les said.
The waters fi nally ebbed
saving the community from
more damage. Improvements
to the water management up-
stream have spared the city
continued fl ooding problems.
Whether it is the big com-
munity-wide issues or just the
small, everyday victories that
make Keizer the place it is, Les
said the presence of a newspa-
per is still as important as ever.
“In this day and age, the
Keizertimes continues to suc-
ceed and that is an important
legacy. Local news is not an
accessory, it’s essential to life
and is part of the success of
a community. Having good
journalism that reports hon-
estly about a community is a
point of pride,” he said.
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