[print] The Oregonian To Cease Publishing "This Week"

3467.

This Week, the mid-week advertising circular published for about a decade now by The Oregonian, Oregon's largest newspaper, is soon to be no more.

The rubric has been worn by more than one publication in the greater Portland area over the last two and a half decades. During the 1990s, This Week was a light news and advertising tabloid published by a concern based in Wilsonville whose name escapes me. There wasn't much in it other than a ton of ads, but what was there was pretty good. There was a weekly column about Portland and Portland history called "Round The Roses" by Karl Klooster (fortunately these have been collected into books which are probably available at Powells) that was memorable and readable.

This Week expired sometime around the turn of the 21st Century. Eventually The Oregonian picked it up for its mid-week ad circular, which was rounded out with what they termed "The Best of FoodDay", The Oregonian's mid-week culinary section. FoodDay, to our eyes, had an uneven history over the years: It would start strong and then dwindle off as fewer and fewer interesting things got put in and it became more devoted to trend-chasing rather than exploring the culinary landscape. Over time, though, the This Week, under The Big O's auspice just kind of slowly dwindled away. Lately it's just been a plea to subscribe, sometimes with an interesting article from the Food section of The Oregonian but just as likely with something put in from a national news service or The Washington Post and half a page devoted to an adult coloring book panel.

In view of the wasting away of This Week, the edition we got today amounts to pretty much a mercy-killing:

TW was, interestingly enough, a broadsheet, the last broadsheet publication The Oregonian issued. Typically there was a big ol' Bi-Mart ad, and that was useful. So, if there's any real victim here, I'd say it would be Bi-Mart.

But if you want what little TW had to offer, you'll just have to plump for an edition of The O. And so that goes.

Though it could have ranged from four to eight pages at its height, it was only one rather stiff sheet now, as it has been for a while. The back looked like this:

A recipe for madeleines, sourced, as it would happen, from The Washington Post, an appeal to subscribe to the Fun Size Oregonian, and as much of what we oldies used to call "the want ads" as they could fit in. But, here's a thing: let's zoom in on the madeleines recipe, shall we?

It was written by Dorie Greenspan, special to The Washington Post (I guess that means she's a stringer) and is brief history of the French cake-biscuit, complete with some interpretation of the shell-shape (an homage to religious pilgrims who used the scallop shell as a badge) and the obligatory, if awkwardly-worded and inaccurate reference to Proust (referring to a short paragraph in 'one of the 20th century novelist's long books, 'Remembrance of Things Past''), paired with a tempting recipe for her own coffee-and-cinnamon inflected version (which sounds tempting to me, but probably is a horror to a purist). No worries for the tradtionalist, though; the traditional madeleine is recapitulated in that final paragraph, though amusingly noted as a 'variation'.

So, in the final edition of This Week, the only original local content is a big front-page thing telling you that this was the last This Week. The rest, they got from somewhere else, which is kind of an exegisis of the state of Portland media to me, these days. It used to be so colorful.

But then, I realized a thing. The last valuable bit of information imparted by this publication was a French baked delight famous for triggering memories that recover unremembered memory. Could the layout artist be sending a bittersweet message here?

When it comes to Portland media, most of the best is a remembrance of things past.

Abysinnia, This Week.

And so it goes.

[liff] It Really Got Underway When I Found Out They Tore Down The Old Corvallis Gazette-Times Building

3455.

Firstly, and at the outset, I'd like to make it utterly crystal clear that I'm not here to cast aspersions or tell the newspaper business how to run its business … well, not necessarily. I am, after all, a prole. I go to what work there is, do what work has to be done, and come home to my anxiety-ridden, yet cozy-if-not-entirely-comfortable-and-without-pitfalls life.

But you know how, once you past a point, you start to recognize, since you can no longer ignore it, how things you took for granted and for constant had actually changed out of all recognition? Become things you no longer recognize? There is a point. We all remember it, like that legendary moment when we're all at a iconic disaster and you're saying to each other yeah, you know you never forget where you were when. 

There was a before, and there was an after.

Before, at 600 SW Jefferson Avenue in Corvallis, Oregon, was the headquarters of a fondly-remembered part of a younger life. Twice in my life I've called Corvallis home. It's a pretty town, located in a lovely place. Of the major northwestern Oregon cities, it's the only one that is not hung off I-5 like a bead on a string, however, because of Oregon State University, drawing students from all over the world, the sophistication of a much larger town always seemed to be in the woof of the town's fabric. And, while being Oregon's Ag college, there is a great deal of tech research going on there, so before the internet was that big a thing, it was a cinch getting a internet login there.

Those of you who did online in the 1990s who know the name 'jacobs.orst.edu' would know what I mean. So, it was off the beaten path but it was a pleasant size and not too far away from everything. Corvallis remains pleasant to this day.

Screenshot of the article you can find here.

During the day, the daily paper was (and still is) the Corvallis Gazette-Times. Being a newspaper devotee, a habit borne of long practice, I loved that paper. It was a good size for the town and hit all the high spots; what I remember most was the fairly-cracking good writing of the editorial page editor, Wendy Madar. The paper itself was house in a solid, understate building bounded by SW 6th and 7th Streets and SW Jefferson and Adams Avenues. It was just west of downtown, a building of red brick and gray concrete, a welcoming little courtyard in front where there were benches for anyone to use, a tree-shaded park-like setting, and a big front porch with the words Gazette-Times in newspaper-masthead black letter in iron over the front of that. It was the sort of building that expected to be around a while.

A cherished memory is going into the lobby, in front of the newsroom, and to the left, there was a rack with a number of recent papers there. Anybody could go and peruse them, and several times, I did. I remember the newsroom, with that quiet hubbub of people getting news things done. All that is in a capsule in my mind.

Back in November, whether it was before or after The Election I don't recall, but I got one of those little frissons of 'wonder what that's doing right now', you all know the kind, and I go looking through Google Earth to get a view of the old building. And I see that there is a Corvallis-sized city block of scraped earth there. And that stunned me for a very long time.

The G-T building in 2012. Google Street View.

I have studied the history of the building a bit. It was built in the 1970s, back when the paper was still a family-run operation, owned by the Ingalls family. The publisher, Robert Ingalls, wanted a new building that would give the paper room to survive and thrive. He was thinking of the future, but maybe not the future we all got, where media owners went from many owning many to just a few owning the many; eventually, the G-T got bought by Lee and went from being the Albany Democrat-Herald's competitor to its partner. Eventually, printing equipment, circulation staff, the whole nine-yards moved east to Albany. 600 SW Jefferson became too big to keep. And so it was sold. And demolished. In the year 2015, 104 years after the founding of the paper. The article about it can be read here.

The G-T is now in a leased office in a corner of an older strip-shopping center in the 1800 block of NW Circle Blvd in Corvallis. Just reporters and editorial staff and management. Doesn't require much space, I guess. Look, I get it; the business is changing, they can't support the old physical plants; it's all about content, all media organizations have to make money. I get it. Really I do. But when I found that the G-T's urbane, lovely city center headquarters was now really just a storefront in a North Corvallis shopping center, my heart, already broken by the self-consumption of The Oregonian and the blanding of the once-vibrant Portland radio scene, got broke into a few more pieces, and I couldn't ignore that things had started to change into something I didn't really want to see any more.

Another thing I get is that change will happen, models will evolve, change, and disappear. I get that, too. What I wish didn't have to happen, however, was that not only the new is embraced, but the good part of the old gets shunned. I said it when The Oregonian moved out of 1320 SW Broadway; edifices matter. When it comes to media such as newspapers, they matter. When you move your century-plus local newspaper - a newspaper, I'll remind, that celebrated its centernary back in 2009 with a birthday party that included a dapper character re-enacting the coin flip that chose the order the then-newly merged paper's combined name would go in - to a small leased office on the north side of town, certainly that reflects current realities. They are what they are, regardless of how regrettable that might seem.

What bothers me is that it may also reflect a future with diminished, narrowed horizons, a future where we're all thankful we're doing as well as we are because we could be doing so much worse.

It's hardly a part of my life, but I'm mourning it. Which should tell you a great deal about me, I guess, somehow, in a way.

The Gazette-Times' building's demise was documented in a scene that can still be viewed by all and sundry at http://www.gazettetimes.com/news/local/gallery-gazette-times-demolition/collection_e13be39e-d06b-5f11-ae4b-228715d1bcd6.html

There was a before, and there is an after.

Welcome to after.

[print] Soylent News™'s New Calendar Strikes Again …

3128.

… but, on what day, it's kinda hard to tell. But then, isn't time an arbitrary thing, especially when NCA3 is doggedly, tirelessly, relentlessly redefining today's The Oregonian as a thing to be read?

We return to the scene of the crime, Library Day (accept no substitutes), and The Wife™, who is doing her usual weekly catch-up, and peeps it. Here's the wide-angle view:

So stipulated. And, now, the closeup.

Yep. As documented previously, there's been the Julian, the Gregorian, and now, the Oregonian Calendar. Didn't like the way Sunday, August 11th, 2014 worked out for you?

Don't worry, Soylent News™ is giving you a do-over on Monday, August 11th 2014.

But, as documented earlier, remember, it's always Tuesday at the new Fun-Size™Oregonian. 

And Tuesday is Soylent News™ day. 

[print] It's Always Tuesday In The New Fun Size™ Oregonian

3123.

Changing calendars is nothing new, of course. The Julian calendar was upgraded to the Gregorian calendar, an in Ethiopia, they use a version of the calendar that includes leap days once every four years regardless (instead of omitting it in years evenly divisible by 400, as we do), resulting in the oddity (to us, anyway), that New Years Day, 2000, didn't happen for residents of Addis Abebe until September 11th, 2007. It is currently 2007 by the Ge'ez calendar.

However, in the West, we still keep to the Gregorian calendar, but here in the Beaver State, we've upgraded again … to The Oregonian Calendar.

It was revealed to us during our usual visit to the library. The Wife™goes through the week's Fun Size™ Oregonians which, as I've mentioned before, we never seem to have trouble getting, and she's frustrated, wondering where last Wednesday's paper was.

At last she lays it out day-by-day.

Oh, wait, what's this then?

Now, on my calendar, things don't run that way.

As our friend, the vintage Casio PV-S400 Pocket Viewer PDA will tell you, Monday the 21s is followed by Tuesday … the 22nd. The 23rd isn't supposed to come until Wendesday. 

Unless …

They've decided to upgrade our very calendar? Could that be? I mean, the modern The Oregonian is working hard to redefine our very idea of a newspaper as something to be read. Why not? But this isn't a calendar upgrade so much as a modern calendar levelling up, introducing new days in new sequences, without warning to the general population.

Kind of like reality until you find a Konami cheat for it.

But more research is called for. Stabilizing the test subject on the examining table, the patient is opened to examine the interior makeup … and IT'S STILL TUESDAY …

No need to panic. It was Tuesday, the 22nd, all along … they just hid it inside.

Of course, now Tuesday the 23rd follows Tuesday the 22nd. Mayhap Tuesday the 24th, after that, Tuesday the 25th, ad nauseam …  it's always Tuesday in Portland now. 

And it just stands to reason.

Tuesday is, after all, Soylent News™ day. 

[pdx] When Soylent News™ Stops Consuming People, It Will Eat Itself

3083.

This just in, via Randy Stapilus, blogmaster at the Ridenbaugh Press:

Post by Randy Stapilus.

Ai, yi, and and an ever lovin' yi. If Randy's source is correct then the circulation at The Formerly Big O is now about 63 percent of what it was … six months ago? 

Six months? 

Holy moly.

I make a lot of fun of the decline of The O. I do it basically to keep from crying and dying inside. Portland, Oregon is the 26th largest city in the fourth most populous country in the history of countries. Our 'daily' (not if you get it delivered any more, it ain't, of course), in its new 'fun size', once had bigger ambitions than the number of clicks it could get on a story at the website. It hurts, so I wiggle my ears and stick my tongue out and remind you all that Tuesday is Soylent News™ day, but I'm not happy about this. Not really. I daren't think they care, either; they stopped caring about my level of the socio-economic strata some time ago.

For a time, I delivered the pape, when I was a younger dude. True story.

A great American city deserves a great American newspaper. Sadly, The Oregonian is no longer that paper. Gone are the voices that used to make it great, and I see no Margie Boulét, no Phil Stanford, and certianly no Jonathan Nicholas (remember him, folks?), no 'appointment column reading'.

But the comics are in color, at least. Yay.

Maybe The Columbian can speak for us? They seem to still publish a newspaper intended for grownups, 7 days a week. The Statesman-Journal's looking better and better, all of a sudden, and at least it's published in the state capital. That ought to count for something.

In the meantime, the readership of Soylent News™ is apparently precipitously dwindling … but, don't think of it as deserting the paper.

We're just conciously decoupling.

Remember, Tuesday is Soylent News™ day.

[pdx] Meet The New "Fun-Size" Oregonian

3045.

Welcome to the new era. The Oregonian has gone post-newspaper.

They still publish one, mind, in a sense of the word. Newsprint is reeled off rolls, run through presses, and ink deposited in patters resembling letters, words, pictures, and such, in parseable array.

I had an idea of what I was in for when The Wife™ and myself stopped by the Jackson's Shell station at 122nd and Division before our weekly bout of Library time (you should all have a weekly Library day, by the way. Some sort of intellectual life. It's free. It won't kill you). Seeing those little The Sunday Oregonian early editions had generated an emotion that I don't think I'll ever be able to put into words.

Finally arriving out our branch and setting up for an afternoon of browsing, reading, and writing, we found several of The New Breed racked up where the should be. And, actually, that was rather odd. Since we no longer (for a bunch of reasons both practical and intellectual) subscribe to the pape, we catch up over the week at the Library. Typically, it was tough to find the week's editions; they were out around the building, all being read. Today, they were all in position, with no competition for reading them.

"They're all there," Wife™ says. "Nobody else is reading them."

And that is strange. Maybe it isn't a thing. Time will tell.

Left: a traditional broadsheet. Right: The Oregonian, "Fun-Size" edition.

 To be honest, I was having trouble visualizing such a small paper. The tabloid "Fun-Size" format has been identified with newspapers that are thought of as newspapers because they can't adequately be described as something else (e.g., National Enquirer), or major city dailies who were redesigned by people who were more interested in money than news (the post-Murdoch Chicago Sun-Times comes to mind).

Well, on the upside, my brain didn't burst into flames and I didn't cry and die inside when looking at this stunted little thing. World didn't halt spinning on its axis and career into the Sun. So, there's that.

But I do note that the Fun-Size edition debuted on the 2nd of April. I can only conclude that this is because if they rolled it out on the 1st, they would send the mother of all mixed messages.

The difference in layout is striking. The pre-April 2nd Oregonian carried the classic banner black-letter announcing the paper's title, a touch this old-fashioned mind always liked. In the stripe below the title, the wording Always On Oregonlive.com can be seen. There was a time they boasted of the Pulitzer they won there. We've come so far.

The current version shrinks the proud title to a minisculeness above the new-look Oregonian Media Group logo, a redesign which amounted to filling in the right side of the blackletter capital O.

The section heading. 'Memba when you could get the Living section or the Opinion section? Not no more, chum. Takes a sharp eye to deduce where one section takes up and the other leaves off.

The new Fun Size's section are all stapled together, a practice they are most proud of, ciding that they are the only daily in America to use stapled sections. They do it Europe, you know. The Fun Size's sections are nested within one another. The above it Saturdays. Tuesday, April 2nd's, was arranged thusly:

If you didn't pay attention to the table of contents, here's how you know you've stumbled into the Metro section of Saturday's paper, which is subsumed into the Main section:

The comics are all in color. This is a mixed blessing. Yay, because color comics, but, you know, some of the more richly-colored comics tend to look muddy when printed on newsprint. So, points for style here, but I actually preferred them in black and white a little more.

I will concede points for solid, sensible design as far as it goes, though. This Business section front page is a good example. Each new section has a signature color, and the front page's upper left ear is a square of that color. The boundaries of this square, extended out, give solid spines along which to organize and arrange the rest of the content. If the page layout of the Fun Size edition is based on modules, I'm betting that the single modular unit is the size of that square. So, solid layout logic, good.

Like I said, they redesigned The Oregonian,  and the world didn't end. Still, after watching the trajectory of the paper since the changes at the top, I can't say I'm encouraged.

Change doesn't happen in a vacuum. The Oregonian, a paper that once promised everyone who worked at it their jobs for life as long as they continued to do them well, has been hollowing itself out from the inside, as far as I'm concerned. The massive layoffs last year were just an inflection point in a path that began when the paper decided that on Mondays, Opinion would no longer be a separate section, and went through points on the curve that included Jack Ohman's departure for the Sacramento Bee, where he shines just as fiercely and funnily as he ever did here in Oregon, and the recently released news about compensation and performance standards that accentuate posting stories to OregonLive.com over everything else suggest that the West's largest daily is going to a place where I, bluntly, don't think we're going to be well-served from.

It doesn't signify, to me, courage in changing our idea of what a newspaper is and can do so much as it signifies, in the final view, a narrowing of perspective, and a stunting of horizons. Finding itself under too much pressure to aspire to greatness, The Oregonian is willing to settle for chasing clicks on a computer, web impressions on a smartphone.

The Fun-Size O's managment call it a 'digital-first' policy.

That's also the same policy my doctor has for prostate exams. 

[media] And Was His Stump Speech Written By Jim Steinman?

2877.Today in our somewhat-involuntary chronicling of the Death of All Media, we stumble on this.

Actually, If I can digress a moment (well, usually I do) I've got to blandly admit that I'm surprised at how easily things like this are to find. I don't go looking for them, truly I don't. The impression I'm coming to is that media orgs are so desperate to put out content, and do so in such a blind frenzy sometimes, that they just don't look. Copy-editors and caution have clearly become a thing of the past, or or going that way even quicker than even I had suspected.

That out of the way, today's morsel comes from the Global Post, yet another news organization that strives to keep us informed (or at least distracted) by posting everything all the time. It would seem that Meat Loaf, that memorable exponent of 70s-80s tract-home and trailer-park down'n'dirty rock'n'roll (I say this having lived in a tract-home and a trailer-park, so I know whereof I speak) has endorsed Mitt Romney for President, a development that manages, in a a Möbius-strip way, to be both unexpected and completely unsurprising. And the caption on the photo can't seem to get straight just who it is they're talking about.

No, you aren't misreading it. The caption says that's Mitt Romney, not Meat Loaf at Mitt Romney's rally, but Mitt.

If so, he's had work done.

On the other hand, you could have the makings of a new movie here:

The Romney Horror Picture Show. [1]

Try not to worry. It'll just get you old early.

[1] Yeah, I ripped that one off. It was too good to leave alone.