Kudos to Willamette Week for starting out the year with a genuinely worthy cover story: the upcoming mid-term resignation of Portland city councilman Erik Sten. Their website not only has the whole scoop, but a downloadable recording of the interview, and reporter Nigel Jaquiss managed to get the whole thing done so secretly that he caught the rest of the PDX media completely flat-footed.
It's clear in the interview that Sten wanted to shiv The Oregonian, and he did it: the morning edition on the street doesn't carry a word about one of the biggest local political stories of the year, and at the moment the paper's website carries a story containing only a confirmation from Sten's head of staff and a note that the councilman could not be reached for comment. Ouch.
WW and Sten also scooped the Portland Mercury (whose city hall reporter, Amy J. Ruiz, had the good grace and good sense to link to the competition's story on the paper's blog) and the Portland Tribune, which has a few comments from Sten outside his office in City Hall.
Not a good start to the year for The Oregonian -- which is, of course, precisely what Erik Sten and Willamette Week wanted to achieve. In any case, it's nice to see the local media competing for genuine scoops for a change, rather than just bitching at one another. (Not to mention bitching at the bloggers.)
Yet weirdly, Sten says in the interview that the local bloggers are too obsessed with scooping each other. In my mind, that's what a healthy media scene is all about. And what his interview with Nigel embodies.
Incidentally why did Sten go to Nigel? The same Nigel who ran a story late last year accusing Sam Adams of, essentially, molesting a 17 year old boy, without anything to back it up?
Still, I'm just bitter. Well done WW. I suppose.
Posted by: Matt Davis | January 02, 2008 at 04:48 PM
"Yet weirdly, Sten says in the interview that the local bloggers are too obsessed with scooping each other. In my mind, that's what a healthy media scene is all about. And what his interview with Nigel embodies."
Ah, Matt - surely you're not looking for consistency or altruism in politicians?
He made it clear in the interview he had a beef with the O. Shiv-ing them with a scoop of this magnitude obviously trumps any beliefs he has about the local media.
"Incidentally why did Sten go to Nigel? The same Nigel who ran a story late last year accusing Sam Adams of, essentially, molesting a 17 year old boy, without anything to back it up?"
Because Nigel is a good reporter (despite a couple of eyebrow-raising missteps in '07), and because...well...he wanted to shiv the O by taking the story to what the O would consider its major competitor.
"Still, I'm just bitter. Well done WW. I suppose."
It was very well done. And the Mercury, by giving WW credit, also handled it well.
The O didn't extend that courtesy. Did you see the analysis by the O's Anna Griffin, who is an excellent reporter in her own right but seemed stuck with the thankless duty of playing catch-up? She wrote:
"To anyone who follows Portland politics, Erik Sten's decision to leave office barely halfway through his fourth term isn't a complete shock. Sten, once the City Council's boy wonder and now its longest-serving member, has seemed to be drifting since even before he ran for re-election in 2006....Still, his departure will resonate, even if it's more in symbolism than in substance."
Ho-hum. Nothing to see here, folks.
As bitter as you may feel, Matt, imagine the spirit of wormwood in the O newsroom as they contemplate their Rose Bowl front page against the WW's this morning. I saw the two front pages next to one another in a rack of newsboxes this a.m., and all I could think was: It could be worse; it could be Snowball the deer.
Posted by: Kevin Allman | January 02, 2008 at 05:23 PM