On August 22, the Highway 58 Herald announced its imminent closure, set for Sept. 15. The announcement comes after what George Custer, former editor and current board member of The Herald, describes as a “painful battle from day one”
The Herald has served rural residents along the 87-mile stretch of Oregon’s Highway 58 corridor from Pleasant Hill to Highway 97 since 2021. It was founded as a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization by Doug Bates, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, following the November 2020 closure of Oakridge’s local weekly paper, the Dead Mountain Echo.
The Dead Mountain Echo had served the Oakridge area since 1973. Without it, residents began to notice the toll that not having a local paper was taking on their town.
“Things were getting a little fishy at City Hall,” Custer says. “A handful of us got together, and we decided something needed to be done.”
Bates, who had worked at The Register-Guard and The Oregonian, among other newspapers, came out of retirement to offer his expertise in journalism and editorial leadership, helping launch the Highway 58 Herald alongside a board of directors. After the first year, he handed over the reins to Custer, who, in March of this year, passed the editor position to Ellie Graham, who the board letter describes as “outstanding.”
“Because of what we felt was an emergency situation, we really didn’t have any donors or deep pockets,” Custer says of the rural paper’s launch. “We just kind of dug into our own pockets and financed the beginning of this thing.”
From the beginning, The Herald faced the financial challenges that come with operating a small newspaper in a rural community. Its coverage area stretches across the 87-mile Highway 58 corridor, but many of the communities it serves, including its home base of Oakridge, have small populations and limited advertising markets.
“But because Oakridge is so small, with 3,300 people, the economies of scale are so much more difficult,” Custer says.
The Herald’s closure also comes less than six years after Oakridge experienced the loss of its previous newspaper. For Custer, that history makes the possibility of losing another local news source particularly significant.
“You know, a lot of times, you don’t know what you have till it’s gone,” Custer says. “And our only hope is that something or somebody will happen.”
The August 22 announcement was not necessarily intended to close the door on local journalism in the Highway 58 corridor. Rather, Custer says, the board wanted to make The Herald’s situation public while leaving room for potential solutions.
“That’s why we made the announcement; we kind of left the door open for talks, opportunities,” Custer says. For those who want to offer possible solutions, the letter from the board suggests reaching out to General@highway58herald.org.
The imminent closure also comes on the heels of the August 11 announcement of the closure of another local, rural-focused newspaper, The Chronicle, which covered communities including Springfield and Creswell.
For now, the Herald plans to continue publishing through Sept. 15.