Pheasant farm attracts lots of gawkers | NORTHWEST, A2
E O
AST
145th year, No. 8
REGONIAN
Tuesday, November 3, 2020
$1.50
WINNER OF THE 2020 ONPA GENERAL EXCELLENCE AWARD
REOPENING SCHOOLS
New metrics
don’t mean
much locally
A difficult,
however
necessary,
decision
Local schools will
remain closed
despite state easing
some standards
By ANTONIO SIERRA AND
ALEX CASTLE
East Oregonian
umaTILLa CouNTy —
When Gov. Kate brown announced
new public health standards for
schools to reopen, it allowed doz-
ens of schools across rural oregon
to reopen their doors.
but for most schools in umatilla
County, it won’t mean much in the
short term.
despite loosening some of the
key statistical thresholds counties
need to meet to allow their schools,
umatilla County still falls well
short of that goal.
under the new metrics, schools’
reopening status will be evaluated
over two-week intervals of case
rates per 100,000 and test positiv-
ity rate. These rates will designate
the county into one of four zones,
which determine to what degree
a school can open for in-person
instruction.
In the green zone, all schools can
reopen to students of all ages when
a county records a case rate of 50 or
fewer cases per 100,000 people and
a test positivity rate below 5%. In
the yellow zone, elementary school
students can return for a hybrid
instruction model when a county
records a case rate of 100 or fewer
cases per 100,000 people and a test
positivity rate below 8%.
The orange zone is for coun-
ties to transition into preparing for
in-person instruction when they’ve
recorded 200 or fewer cases per
100,000 and a test positivity rate
below 10%. When counties record
rates above those figures, they’ll be
in the red zone where no in-person
instruction is permitted.
umatilla County case numbers
have been rising steadily through-
out october. From oct. 18-31, the
oregon Health authority reported
223 new cases of the virus, which
amounts to 274.8 cases per 100,000
people. The county’s test positiv-
ity rate was also recorded at 17%
during those two weeks.
In order to reach the orange
zone, umatilla County would need
to report fewer than 162 cases over
a two-week stretch, To reach the
yellow zone, that number would
need to drop below roughly 122
new cases over two weeks, and then
even further to roughly fewer than
60 cases to reach the green zone.
umatilla County Public Health
director Joe Fiumara has mixed
feelings about the new metrics but
said Nov. 2 that he felt they were “a
See Schools, Page A8
ANDREW
CUTLER
FROM THE EDITOR’S DESK
duchek, a former East Orego-
nian pressman, first began work-
ing on the press in the early 1970s
after working as a paper deliv-
ery boy for the East Oregonian in
his youth. at that time, the East
Oregonian was printed on a Goss
suburban press, which the com-
pany had purchased more than a
See Printing, Page A8
See Decision, Page A8
Ben Lonergan/East Oregonian
Alvaro Orrala inspects papers and makes adjustments as the East Oregonian runs off the press in Pendle-
ton on Friday, Oct. 30, 2020.
East Oregonian to move printing
operations to Walla Walla
By BEN LONERGAN
East Oregonian
P
eNdLeToN — When
Nick Tinhof winds
down his shift on Tues-
day, Nov. 3, he realizes it
will be the end of an era
at the East Oregonian.
election day will mark the last
time the eo’s Goss and Tensor
press will operate in Pendleton
as the East Oregonian begins the
process of transitioning its print-
ing services to The seattle Times
Company-owned Walla Walla
Union-Bulletin.
“I’m just sad to see it go, I
don’t really know how to put it
into words,” said Tinhof, the East
Oregonian‘s lead pressman.
Tinhof began working on the
press shortly after its installa-
tion in 2013 and quickly worked
his way up from replacing plates
and ink to running the entire
show. Tinhof credits former East
Oregonian pressmen bob ras-
mussen, Jeff davis and dennis
duchek with mentoring him and
helping him get up to speed on the
press and its inner workings
“It’s always fun working at
night, you can’t go to the hard-
ware store to get spare parts if
something goes wrong,” he said.
“Whatever you’ve got in this
building is what you’ve got to
try to make it go, you’ve got no
backup.”
Tinhof is passionate about the
work, carefully checking each
page for color, clarity or any
smudge marks as papers come
off the press, ramping the press
Ben Lonergan/East Oregonian
Pressman Nick Tinhof makes adjustments to the press during the
press run on Friday, Oct. 30, 2020, at the East Oregonian press facility
in Pendleton.
up and down and making adjust-
ments on the fly like a conduc-
tor orchestrating the moves of a
symphony.
“you’re responsible for how
good it looks,” said Tinhof. “No
matter how late it is or what goes
wrong there’s no just give up and
go home.”
In the coming weeks, the press
will be dismantled and shipped to
Walla Walla where it will replace
the Union-Bulletin‘s aging press.
There, it will print papers through-
out the region, including those
operated by eo media Group,
including the East Oregonian. In
the interim, the eo media Group
newspapers and publications will
be printed in yakima at another
printing facility operated by The
seattle Times Company.
“The East Oregonian has
A
lbert einstein once said
that the world as we have
created it is a process of
our thinking and that it cannot
be changed without changing our
thinking.
Changing the way we think and
do business has been key topics for
the East Oregonian and eo media
Group in 2020 as we navigate a
CovId-19 world.
The latest change is in the very
product that you hold in your
hands right now. Today’s edi-
tion of the East Oregonian is the
final version that will be printed
in-house here in Pendleton. start-
ing with the Thursday, Nov. 5,
issue, the printing of the EO, along
with the Hermiston Herald, La
Grande Observer, Baker City Her-
ald and Wallowa County Chieftain,
will temporarily be moved to the
seattle Times Company-owned
Yakima Herald-Republic.
our move to yakima will be
short-lived, however. The Ten-
sor/Goss press that the East Ore-
gonian installed in 2013 will be
moved to a new home at the Walla
Walla Union-Bulletin, where it
will serve as the press for a print-
ing hub that will operate in a
larger geographic region. The East
Oregonian and its sister publica-
tions will then all be printed out of
that facility.
It was a tough decision to move
the printing to another facility, but,
honestly, not making these tough
decisions is what leads to news
deserts popping up at an alarming
rate around the country. That was
something that we weren’t going
to allow to happen.
as we move forward, our bed-
rock values that focus on the
reader will not change with this
move. The press — an icon in the
newspaper industry — doesn’t
represent the soul of any paper. It
is an important piece, surely, as
it is used to print the newspaper.
What is more valuable, and what I
think will linger, is the dedication
and determination of our entire
staff to bring you credible, rele-
vant stories about our community
had a printing press in Pendle-
ton since 1875, so it was a diffi-
cult decision to close our produc-
tion facility and move our press
to Walla Walla. but, having two
presses within 40 miles of each
other no longer makes sense,”
said Kathryn brown, eo media
Group vice president and former
publisher of the East Oregonian.
A proud history
Good Shepherd highlights work
during annual community meeting
By JADE MCDOWELL
East Oregonian
HermIsToN — Good
shepherd Health Care
system’s annual commu-
nity meeting highlighted
the ups and downs of an
unusual year for the hospi-
tal and its clinics.
Sims
For many community
members, this year’s vir-
tual presentation was the first opportu-
nity to get to know brian sims, who took
over as Ceo on oct. 1. sims said previous
Ceo dennis burke’s advocacy for rural
hospitals had made him a well-known
figure among hospital administrators in
other parts of the country — including
sims, who previously managed a hospital
in Iowa.
“To have the opportunity to follow
dennis and lead one of the best-known
critical access hospitals in the nation is
one of the greatest honors of my profes-
sional life,” he said.
after the state required hospitals to
cancel nonemergency procedures in the
spring during the pandemic’s first lock-
down, sims said Good shepherd medical
Center’s patient days were down by 24%
during the 2019-20 fiscal year.
However, he said outpatient visits were
up by 6.3% and clinic visits, including
See Good Shepherd, Page A8
Ben Lonergan/East Oregonian, File
Large signs at the perimeter of the Good Shepherd Health
Care System campus instruct people arriving at the hospi-
tal on entrance procedures on March 23, 2020.