Saturday, October 20, 2018
OFF PAGE ONE
SPUDS: Nonprofit donated 26 million pounds of food crops between 2006 and 2017
Page 14A
East Oregonian
Continued from 1A
Hamm said because the
acres are a mixture of potato
varieties, it doesn’t work to
send them all to a french fry
plant, for example, but each
individual potato is good
for eating.
“This is a good use of
potatoes that are absolutely
OK, just not for a commer-
cial setting,” he said.
On Wednesday, Stahl
Farms donated the labor
and equipment to harvest
the potatoes, which were
loaded onto trucks provided
by Medelez Trucking. The
trucks took them to Wal-
chli Potato to be processed,
washed and packaged and
sent to a storage facil-
ity owned by farmer Steve
Walker. Hamm said they
didn’t have a final num-
ber yet, but it was definitely
more than 100,000 pounds
of potatoes.
Farmers Ending Hunger,
which started in Umatilla
County, facilitates dona-
tions of fresh food from
Oregon farmers to the Ore-
gon Food Bank. Burt said
Wednesday’s effort with
the test potatoes was a lit-
to their network of food
banks throughout the state.
“We will leave as much
locally as possible,” Burt
said.
Hunger is an issue
throughout
Oregon.
According to the Oregon
Food Bank, 14 percent of
Oregonians are “food inse-
cure,” meaning they don’t
have reliable access to a suf-
ficient quantity of nutritious
food. Of those 552,900
Oregonians, 194,070 are
children.
The food bank works to
lessen hunger by distrib-
uting food through 1,200
different local sites around
the state and Clark County,
Washington. Food is kept
in 21 regional food banks,
with CAPECO serving as
one for northeastern Ore-
gon. Food comes from cor-
porate and individual dona-
tions, and Farmers Ending
Hunger is one of the top
donors. The nonprofit
donated 26 million pounds
of food crops between 2006
Staff photo by E.J. Harris
Potatoes are bagged, and then stacked on pallets on Wednesday at the Walchli potato processing facility outside and 2017.
———
of Hermiston.
Contact Jade McDowell
tle different than the normal the effort. Some of the pota- Pendleton to be distributed picked up by the Oregon at jmcdowell@eastorego-
donation, but it was worth toes will go to CAPECO in locally, and the rest will be Food Bank to be distributed nian.com or 541-564-4536.
GRIT: The difficult job is to convince the country that a print publication is still important
Continued from 1A
in 1875, a rough, risk-laden
period in the state’s history.
“Along with schools and
churches, a newspaper pro-
vided an important measure
of civilization and order,”
he writes. Having a newspa-
per “was a way of proclaim-
ing that a town was real and
here to stay.”
Willingham explains how
small-town papers survived
uncertain early years, how
they weathered crises —
such as the 1922 Astoria Fire
and the Great Depression —
why some papers succeeded
and others folded, and why
they aggressively promoted
the development of their
towns. “If the paper’s going
to thrive, the community has
to thrive, and vice versa,” he
said.
“Grit and Ink” also high-
lights celebrated moments
for the local press — such as
EO editor Edwin Aldrich’s
push to save Pendleton’s
woolen mill and jump-start
the Pendleton Round-Up, or
Astoria Evening Budget edi-
tor Merle Chessman’s bold
editorial stand against the
Ku Klux Klan.
“You learn a lot of Oregon
history, actually, through
this book in a way,” Willing-
ham said. “You see what the
editors saw was important
in their communities, and
what they reported on, and
what they commented on,
and tried through their edi-
torials to shape the response
of the communities to those
events.”
Finally, the book shows
how community journalism
has changed from the late
19th century to the present
— and how much of the pro-
fession remains the same.
Indeed, the values laid
down by legendary EO edi-
tor C.S. “Sam” Jackson
were values Aldrich, his
successor, built upon — a
commitment to fierce inde-
pendence, accurate and fair
reporting, championing the
underdog and serving as the
voice of the community.
Independent observer
EO Media Group CEO
Steve Forrester, The Daily
Astorian’s former editor and
publisher, asked Willingham
to write the company’s his-
tory back in 2014.
Though “Grit and Ink” is
a book about the company,
published by the company,
Willingham said it isn’t an
“authorized biography.” The
ground rules for research
were “wide open,” he said.
“I had a totally free hand
to go wherever the research
took me, and I had no inter-
ference whatsoever with the
process,” he said.
The book will be distrib-
uted by Oregon State Uni-
versity Press.
Willingham read through
EO records, dug through
documents at the Ore-
gon Historical Society
and researched second-
ary sources. He studied the
company’s two daily papers,
handful of weeklies and 20
years of online editions.
In addition, he inter-
viewed Mike Forrester,
Steve’s older brother —
who like their father, J.W.
“Bud” Forrester, also edited
The Daily Astorian and EO
— Heidi Wright, the com-
pany’s chief operating offi-
cer; John Perry, the retired
COO; and John Shaver,
the company’s retired chief
financial officer. And he had
East Oregonian family ownership through four generations
E.B. Aldrich
EO editor and owner, 1908-1950
Elsie C. Aldrich
Board director, 1950-1983
J. W. “Bud” Forrester
EO editor, 1951-1973
Board director,
1951-2000
Eleanor Aldrich Forrester
EO business manager, 1951-1973
Board director,
1951-2007
Amy Aldrich Bedford
EO commercial printing manager, 1950-1975
EO public affairs, 1975-2006
Board director, 1951-2006
Michael Aldrich Forrester
EO editor, 1973-1990
Board director,
1968-present
Stephen Aldrich Forrester
Board director,
1972-present
Jacqueline Bedford Brown
EO human resources, 1988-2006
Board director, 1988-2009
Kathryn Bedford Brown
EO associate publisher 2007-2013
EO publisher 2013-2018
Board of directors, 1997-present
continuing
conversations
with Steve Forrester and
his cousin Kathryn Brown,
who is now vice president of
EO Media Group and until
recently was the publisher
of the EO.
Steve Forrester said he
learned things about his
family’s company that he
never knew.
“From listening to din-
ner-table conversations, I
knew that there had been
an unsuccessful venture in
Idaho” — namely, the com-
pany’s purchase and subse-
quent sale of the Twin Falls
Times in the early 20th cen-
tury. “From Bill’s research I
learned the details,” he said.
“The book has been four
years in the making, so it is
most heartening to see the
finished product that is so
compelling and attractive,”
he added.
Fighting newspapers
With material that errs on
the informational rather than
colorful side, the book may
put off readers uninterested
in the finer points of running
a news operation.
What will make the big-
gest impression? “The fierce
commitment of that fam-
ily over three generations
— four generations now —
to succeeding in commu-
nity journalism, to really
do what it took and make
the sacrifices to keep those
newspapers alive,” Will-
ingham said, “because they
felt the value they were add-
ing to the community and
the importance of what they
were doing.”
Part of that value comes
from the decision to remain
a print publication, some-
thing that appears at peo-
ple’s doorsteps and dentist’s
offices.
“I think that’s still what
you need for an identity
with your community,”
Willingham said. “There
is that physical presence
that’s really necessary, and
of course the difficult job
is to convince the country
that that’s still important.
Because when everything
is online, it’s so easy to lose
sight of it, or to forget what
it takes to maintain it.”
There’s a deeper value
every journalistic enterprise
must consider: “What are
the basic principles that you
won’t sacrifice over time,
that you feel — under what-
ever economic and political
and social circumstances —
will stand the test of time?”
If “Grit and Ink” has a
central message — a phi-
losophy of how journalism
should be practiced — Will-
ingham said it is captured
in a quote by Jackson that
serves as an epigraph for
Chapter 1: “Print the truth.
Fight for the right. People
like a fighting newspaper.”
“I think that motto really
runs through the entire his-
tory of the Forrester fam-
ily newspaper adventure,”
Willingham said.
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