It’s been more than six months since Eugene Weekly announced the devastating embezzlement that almost put this newspaper out of business.
It’s been less than six months since our readers and this community rose up to fundraise and support this local and independent alternative weekly and bring it back to print.
So where is the Weekly now?
It’s in red boxes all over Eugene, delivered by bike by Pedalers Express throughout the city. Readers can find the newspaper in Cottage Grove, Springfield, Creswell and throughout the area — because even though we have Eugene in our name, we cover Lane County. That said, we have had to pull back on distributing the newspaper in Florence to save on distribution costs.
Next week, the Weekly will get a new look.
You’ll see a new logo and a redesign of the Weekly’s pages. The print paper has not had its fonts or layout changed in more than 10 years. Our interim publisher, Mark Zusman, says the redesign is less about trying to create a new identity than demonstrating the Weekly’s commitment to delivering the news in print.
Zusman, who’s also co-owner and publisher of Willamette Week in Portland, has run alt-weeklies for more than 40 years. He says the Weekly’s commitment to serving the community is impressive. He’s working to ensure the paper not only survives but, as he likes to put it, “rises like a phoenix.”
For the redesign, Zusman brought in Portland-based designer Maggie Gardner to work with the EW’s art director and production manager, Todd Cooper, on updating the logo and other design elements. “We are still very much in a rebuilding stage,” Cooper says, “and we wanted to introduce a new look for a new era.”
Cooper points to “bolder headline treatments” and a cleaner look for our events calendar — which will still be that list of events in print that readers have made clear they love.
Gardner says a new font, Founders, will be used for headlines. She says Founders “was once a workhorse font that deftly delivered listings information has proven to be impactful as a headline font.” She’s selected Freight for the updated Eugene Weekly logo. The semi-serif Freight, she says, is “a style that pays homage to our journalistic roots.”
Both Cooper and Gardner point to the use of more color throughout the paper. Much of the work in bringing this newspaper back is happening in the background, but “this design refresh,” Gardner says, “is our way of making our continued investment of energy and strategy visible to you.”
We remain thankful for the financial support you gave and still give the Weekly — both when we first announced the embezzlement, and continuing today. We’ve created a new position — director of community development — and have brought in Jody Rolnick, the former editor and publisher of the Cottage Grove Sentinel and an experienced grant writer.
Rolnick reports that the Weekly in the past few months has received $11,000 from donor-advised funds at Oregon Community Foundation, and a $20,000 transformation tech grant from the Google News Initiative to help in our community engagement efforts. She says community support will help the paper hire more journalists, increase the number of pages and digitize our archives.
“Reader contributions saved Eugene Weekly and they will continue to be really important to the survival of the paper,” Rolnick says. “The community feels a great deal of ownership of the paper and financial support is a good way to show that.”
Our journalism continues to deliver for you. We’ve hired a new reporter, Bentley Freeman, a recent University of Oregon School of Journalism and Communication grad as well as a former UO Catalyst Journalism Project intern. He has stories this week on the Lane County commission’s proposed changes to voting districts and on the House District 12 legislative race.
The Catalyst Journalism Project continues to provide us with outstanding reporters, including four who are working with us through the summer: Sadie Gustafson, Emma J Nelson, Emily Rogers and Amelia Winkelman.
Catalyst reporters have brought home awards. They won first place awards for investigative reporting and health coverage in the regional Society of Professional Journalists contest. Earlier this month, Catalyst reporters won first place for solutions journalism from the national Association of Alternative Newsmedia. The organization also awarded the Weekly a second place for explanatory reporting and a third place for health coverage.
Eugene Weekly maintains editorial independence in what we publish and also remains committed to a central tenet of community journalism: political endorsements. It’s shocking, but EW is among only three Oregon newspapers that conduct statewide endorsement interviews with political candidates. And while other papers have shuttered their opinion pages, we continue to run letters and viewpoints from local writers and you, our readers.
Looking ahead, we are gearing up for the fall campaign to bring you the same insights, candor and surprises from our endorsements, and we are getting ready for Best of Eugene voting.
We would be remiss if we left out one more update — a topic, in fact, people ask about a lot: What happened to the person who stole all that money from us?
Not much has changed since we provided you the behind-the-scenes story of the embezzlement in early April. The Eugene police are waiting for us to turn over the evidence, and we can only do that after CPAs working for us finish with a detailed (and expensive) forensic accountant report. We will keep you posted as the case develops.
We all look forward to the day the discovery of the embezzlement can feel like a distant memory. But we won’t forget the way this community rose up and saved the Weekly.
Our new look, our ongoing commitment to community journalism and our determination to improve this newspaper every day — it’s a tribute to you, our readers.
To contribute to Eugene Weekly, go to Support.EugeneWeekly.com.