Image provided by: University of Oregon Libraries; Eugene, OR
About East Oregonian : E.O. (Pendleton, OR) 1888-current | View Entire Issue (Oct. 11, 2017)
Page 4A OPINION East Oregonian Wednesday, October 11, 2017 Founded October 16, 1875 KATHRYN B. BROWN Publisher DANIEL WATTENBURGER Managing Editor TIM TRAINOR Opinion Page Editor MARISSA WILLIAMS Regional Advertising Director MARCY ROSENBERG Circulation Manager JANNA HEIMGARTNER Business Office Manager MIKE JENSEN Production Manager OUR VIEW Same product, new delivery T he end of an era in As the publisher and an newspaper delivery has owner of the East Oregonian, arrived. As of Nov. 1, I’d love to see our circulation the print version of the East and advertising revenue grow so that I can hire Oregonian will be delivered exclusively by mail. more journalists and cover The reasons for this Umatilla and Morrow change are both financial and Kathryn counties in greater depth than we do now. However, in a practical: Carrier delivery is Brown region with slow population far more costly than USPS Comment delivery, and we have had growth, growing circulation ever-increasing difficulty is a challenge. And in an finding reliable carriers. environment where some of our biggest advertisers have gone out of There are deeper reasons for this change as well, which are affecting business over the years (car dealers the entire newspaper industry in the in Pendleton, K-mart, Albertson’s, United States. The EO is not the Pendleton Grain Growers, JC first daily newspaper to transition to Penney and Del’s to name a few), all-mail same-day delivery, and we growing advertising revenue is also a challenge. certainly won’t be the last. For over a century, the business After our last fiscal year, I was faced with the very real need to cut plan for the EO was pretty simple. expenses. After examining other Revenue = subscription income + options, such as dropping delivery single copy sales + classified and days, I concluded that converting to display advertising revenue. The mail delivery was the best option. major expenses were newsprint, It affords us significant savings and employee salaries and benefits, and press equipment maintenance. Since allows us to continue publishing five days a week. newspapers were the main — and Since we switched from afternoon often the only — source of news delivery in 2012, our readers have in many communities, there was a become accustomed to morning captive audience, willing to pay for delivery. (We made that change the news and advertising that only when The Oregonian stopped home their local paper could provide. delivery in Eastern Oregon.) For But then, a new delivery method many who don’t get their mail until for news arrived in the late 1990s: later in the day, this will take some Online delivery. getting used to. In the last decade of the 20th If you need your news fix century, newspapers had to invest in first thing in the morning, please the computer equipment, software subscribe to our email newsletter and training to make publishing at www.eastoregonian.com/eo/ online possible — while still newsletters so you can get the producing a print newspaper on headlines and read the news online printing presses using technology first thing in the morning. Also, our that hasn’t changed much in the last e-edition is posted online in the early hundred years. morning hours each publication day. With the internet came Craig’s If a print newspaper is the only List, eBay and Amazon — new way you want to read, you can ways of buying and selling that still find the EO in single copy did not depend on newspaper locations throughout both counties. advertising. Most locations in Hermiston and The internet also brought the Pendleton will have papers by 6:30 news of the world to everyone a.m., but outlying areas will not with a computer, or in recent years, get their papers until the mail is everyone with a smartphone. delivered to that location. In many ways, the internet has We know this will alter (again) broadened the average citizen’s the reading habits for some of our knowledge of the world, but may loyal print subscribers, and we have disconnected them from their local communities. Across America, hope you understand our aim is to continue bringing high-quality daily readers have dropped their paid news coverage to Umatilla and newspaper subscriptions. Plenty of Morrow counties. We see the times people perceive news of their local city council meeting or school board changing, and believe this is the best way to keep pace with them. election to be far less interesting ■ than entertainment news, gossip and Kathryn Brown is publisher of the scandals coming out of Hollywood East Oregonian or memes on Facebook. Unsigned editorials are the opinion of the East Oregonian editorial board of publisher Kathryn Brown, managing editor Daniel Wattenburger, and opinion page editor Tim Trainor. Other columns, letters and cartoons on this page express the opinions of the authors and not necessarily that of the East Oregonian. OTHER VIEWS Ten reasons to stay calm about those Russia Facebook ads T he latest excitement in the Michigan and Wisconsin, including Trump-Russia investigation is non-battleground states like Texas, a set of Facebook ads linked to were targeted,” the government official Russia, about 3,000 in all, that some of familiar with the ads said, via email. the president’s adversaries hope will 6) Very few ads specifically targeted prove the Trump campaign colluded Wisconsin or Michigan. “Of the with Russia in the 2016 election. hundreds of pre-election ads with one “A number of Russian-linked or more impressions, less than a dozen Facebook ads specifically targeted ads targeted Michigan and Wisconsin Byron Michigan and Wisconsin, two states combined,” the official said. York crucial to Donald Trump’s victory 7) By and large, the ads targeting Comment last November,” CNN reported Michigan and Wisconsin did not run recently. Some of the ads, the network in the general election. “Nearly all of continued, appeared “highly sophisticated in these Michigan and Wisconsin ads ran in 2015 their targeting of key demographic groups and also ran in other states,” the official said. in areas of the states that turned out to be 8) The Michigan and Wisconsin ads were pivotal” to Donald Trump’s victory. not widely seen. “The majority of these In addition, the report noted, the ads Wisconsin and Michigan ads had less than seemed tailor-made for the Trump campaign. 1,000 impressions,” the official said. “The ads employed a series of divisive 9) The Michigan and Wisconsin ads (like messages aimed at breaking through the those everywhere else) were low-budget. “The clutter of campaign ads online, including buy for the majority of these Michigan and promoting anti-Muslim messages, sources Wisconsin ads (paid in rubles) was equivalent said,” CNN reported, suggesting that anti- to approximately $10,” the official said. Muslim content could have been designed to 10) The ads just weren’t very good. The complement candidate Trump’s message. language used in some of the ads “clearly Put aside whether Michigan and Wisconsin shows the ad writer was not a native English were in fact “crucial” to Trump’s victory. (He speaker,” the official said. In addition, the set would still have won the presidency even if of ads turned over by Facebook also contained he had lost both.) The theory is that Russians “clickbait-type ads that had nothing to do could not have pulled off such “highly with politics.” And in general, the official’s sophisticated” targeting by themselves and view is that the ads simply were not terribly therefore may have had help from the Trump sophisticated, contrary to how they have been campaign or its associates. portrayed. But is that the whole story? Not according None of this proves anything about the to a government official familiar with the Facebook part of the Trump-Russia affair. It Facebook ads, who offers a strikingly different doesn’t prove there was no collusion, and it assessment. What follows is from the official certainly doesn’t prove there was. But it does and from public statements by Facebook itself: suggest this particular set of ads might not be 1) Of the group of 3,000 ads turned over a very big deal. to Congress by Facebook, a majority of the In an Oct. 4 news conference, the Senate impressions came after the election, not Intelligence Committee chairman, Republican before. Indeed, in an Oct. 2 news release, Sen. Richard Burr, did not play up the Facebook said 56 percent of the ads’ Facebook angle. “I think if you look from impressions came after the 2016 vote. 10,000 feet, the subject matter of the ads 2) Twenty-five percent of the ads were was — seems to have been to create chaos in never seen by anybody. (Facebook also every group that they could possibly identify revealed that in the news release.) in America,” Burr said. 3) Most of the ads, which Facebook Burr elaborated, adding, “If we used solely estimates were seen by 10 million people in the social media that we have seen, there’s no the U.S., never mentioned the election or any way that you can look at that and say that that candidate. “The vast majority of ads run by was to help the right side of the ideological these accounts didn’t specifically reference chart and not the left. Or vice versa. They the U.S. presidential election, voting or a were indiscriminate.” particular candidate,” Facebook said in a Sept. Burr noted that he has no objection to 6 news release. Facebook releasing the ads publicly. Certainly 4) A relatively small number of the doing so would go a long way toward clearing ads — again, about 25 percent — were up the public’s understanding of the issue. geographically targeted. (Facebook also Like everything else in the Trump-Russia revealed that on Sept. 6.) affair, people need to know what happened. 5) The ads that were geographically ■ targeted were all over the map. “Of those that Byron York is chief political correspondent were targeted, numerous other locales besides for The Washington Examiner. YOUR VIEWS U.S. taxpayers should not add Puerto Rico How sad to see the devastation in Puerto Rico. They have now been hit with two terrible storms, leaving the island in near total ruin. The U.S. is struggling now to pay for our own disasters in Texas and Florida but is now making an attempt to help in Puerto Rico as well. The president has flown there and promised to help rebuild this island because, of course, Puerto Rico is a U.S. “territory.” It is not a state, although the island has lobbied hard for that status for many years. These folks are U.S. citizens but don’t vote in our elections. They are exempt from paying U.S. federal income tax but do pay into Social Security and Medicare. A half million of them have migrated to the U.S. in the past decade, and the island has 12 percent unemployment. The U.S. taxpayer subsidizes Puerto Rico to the tune of $10 billion each year. Puerto Rico is a tiny island 1,000 miles from Miami. The U.S. occupied this island after the Spanish-American War in 1898 and the population was granted citizen status in 1917. They have a governor and elect a commissioner who represents the island in our Congress but has no vote. There is a military base there, and Puerto Ricans do serve in the U.S. military. However, it is difficult to see any strategic military significance or benefit this little Island offers the U.S. This past June, Puerto Rico had another referendum on their political preferences and voted over 97 percent for statehood. The final decision is up to Congress, but they have rejected that status a number of times in the past. Americans are the most generous people on the planet and do more to help other countries than the rest of the world combined. But these storms are not over. They will return. These natural disasters will once again ravage our own country, but we will be also be responsible for rebuilding Puerto Rico over and over again in the future. Don’t you wonder how many disasters our government (sorry I meant the U.S. taxpayer) can afford — in addition to those hitting Puerto Rico? We are in debt about $21 trillion now, so I guess we can always raise the debt ceiling again and borrow another couple trillion. I mean really — who’s counting? David Burns Pendleton PFLAG reaches out on National Coming Out Day For far too long members of the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer commu- nity have had to hide in fear, living their lives “closeted” to protect their jobs, homes, families and relationships. Constant fear of being rejected by friends and loved ones, as well as the community of which they are a part, has led to many of them remaining in the proverbial closet. National Coming Out Day encourages all LGBTQ people and their allies to stand proud of who they are and to fight for a more equal tomorrow. Twenty-nine years ago, National Coming Out Day was created by Rob Eichberg and Jean O’Leary as a result of the 500,000 person March on Washington DC for Lesbian and Gay Rights. The coming together of thousands of LGBTQ citizens and supporters energized many to establish this holiday. Parents, Families & Friends of Lesbians & Gays promotes the health and well-being of gay, lesbian, transgender and bisexual persons and their families and friends through support, education and advocacy in communities all over the United States. We are currently 400 chapters strong and growing. Unbeknownst to many, PFLAG has been part of Pendleton and surrounding area since the late 1980s. PFLAG Pendleton envisions a world where diversity is celebrated and all people are respected, valued, and affirmed inclusive of their sexual orientation, gender identity, and gender expression. With a strong desire to help people live a healthy and happy life PFLAG Pendleton will be available on Wednesday, October 11 to take calls from anyone looking for personal coming out support, support for a family member, or for parents or family on how to support someone who has just come out. Currently one out of every two Americans has someone close to them who is gay or lesbian. For transgender people, that number is only one in 10. Coming out — whether it is as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer or allied — STILL MATTERS. When people know someone who is LGBTQ, they are far more likely to support equality under the law. Your call is confidential and being answered by a PFLAG member who cares about you and your community. The number to call is 541-966-8414. You can also find us on Facebook- PFLAG Pendleton Oregon Chapter or email at pflag.pendleton.or@ gmail.com PFLAG Pendleton meeting information can be found in the East Oregonian under the community calendar or local meetings. Thank you. Vickie and Lonnie Read Pendleton LETTERS POLICY The East Oregonian welcomes original let- ters of 400 words or less on public issues and public policies for publication in the news- paper and on our website. The newspaper reserves the right to withhold letters that ad- dress concerns about individual services and products or letters that infringe on the rights of private citizens. Submitted letters must be signed by the author and include the city of residence and a daytime phone number. The phone number will not be published. Un- signed letters will not be published. Send let- ters to managing editor Daniel Wattenburger, 211 S.E. Byers Ave. Pendleton, OR 97801 or email editor@eastoregonian.com.
