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Camilla Mortensen is the longtime local editor of Eugene Weekly, the area’s alternative newspaper. The paper, which has been in print since 1982 (originally as What’s Happening) continues to print more than 27,000 copies a week in addition to its popular email newsletters and website. Camilla has a masters degree in folklore and mythology from UCLA and a doctorate in comparative literature from the University of Oregon. She has been a reporter and editor at EW since 2007 and teaches journalism at the UO in the mornings before heading to the Weekly’s office. She also teaches newswriting at Lane Community College and advises The Torch student newspaper.
An “ultra mega” coal-fired power plant is proposed for the coastal state of Tamil Nadu in India, on the shores of the Cheyyur Lagoon. The plant would churn out 4,000 megawatts of power and 25 million tons of carbon dioxide per year, according to the Environmental Law Alliance Worldwide (ELAW), which is aiding communities in India in their fight against the plant and 11 other ultra mega coal proposals. Continue reading
If you live in Eugene you probably do know someone who has watched an enviro bill pass or fail on C-SPAN like it's the final seconds of a close game. We are so doomed this season … Continue reading
It's an oldie but a goodie. Lane County's interesting decision making and the R-G's headline keeps resurfacing on the internet. (Click the image to go to Facebook and see it fullsize). Continue reading
The moment you see a post on social media that's too crazy, too good or too stupid to be true like fracking companies using pink drill bits to raise breast cancer awareness … it's usually fake. When people post and repost those things it drives me a little insane. SO I've been ignoring all those pictures of pink drill bits that people have been posting, because who would do that in real life, honestly? As it turns out a company called Baker Hughes. Continue reading
From Life in Color to Run or Dye and Color Me Rad, getting blasted with gouts of bright color has become part of the joy of dancing and fun runs. Fun runs have been criticized for misappropriating the Hindu festival of Holi on which they are based, and more recently there have been concerns about the massive amounts of nontoxic paint blasted at the Cuthbert Amphitheater at Life in Color Oct. 4. Continue reading
More than three million people have watched the sad but hopeful video of a pitbull who was left to die in a remote location in California. Named Bunny and shy and wary of strangers, the dog was lured into a live trap with some cheeseburger by her rescuers. Now Bunny has made her way to Eugene, where she is searching for a forever home. Continue reading
Jimmy Fallon of The Tonight Show notes the current contretemps over the UO School of Architecture and Allied Arts canceling its community figure drawing classes that feature nude models because, the school says, it got lewd phone calls in response to flyers looking for models. Continue reading
Thirty-five percent of female and 14 percent of male participants in a UO campus survey had at least one nonconsensual sexual experience during college, and 10 percent of female and 0.3 percent of male participants were raped. Continue reading
Oregon’s rivers aren’t meant to flow in straight lines. They are meant to meander and twist under the shade of native trees, giving fish like threatened upper Willamette spring Chinook a safe route to the ocean and back. Humans haven’t just dammed and straightened the Willamette — we’ve boxed it in with construction and with the gravel mines fueling that construction. Continue reading
University of Oregon professor emeritus Cheyney Ryan was a consultant in settling a 2011 federal case against Yale that led to changes in how that school addresses sexual violence. But last week the UO sent out an email to alumni in the Portland area appearing to criticize Ryan’s competence, saying that TV station KATU had misrepresented “the expertise of a retired UO faculty member” in a series on sexual assaults and the university. Continue reading