Un-happy Anniversary

[March 19th, 2008]

»News people want to bury often comes out on Friday afternoon. Take last Friday, March 14, when Columbia River Crossing project organizers dropped this little nugget in an email: “the Draft Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) has been delayed a couple of months,” for more due diligence. Translation: The document meant to provide the rationale for moving forward with a new $4 billion bridge across the Columbia is wobbling a bit. “As recently as their Jan. 22 meeting, they said the draft EIS would come out by the end of February and there was a perception that this was a done deal,” says local economist Joe Cortright, who opposes the bridge. “It suggests to me they are concerned they haven’t made a case and it’s not a done deal by any stretch.”

»Philistines struck at the First Thursday “Keep Portland Weird” art show at City Hall. Artist Lex Loeb placed a couple of his sculptures March 6 on the Southwest Fourth Avenue sidewalk outside City Hall, one of which was a bright orange concrete traffic cone with a pipe sticking out the top. Accounts vary, but at some point a mystery man cut the chain attached to the piece and threw the sculpture in the park across the street where a security guard recovered it.. Another Loeb piece, a “Fake News” box planted alongside real news boxes remains missing. On the upside, Loeb sold a Hypercolor painting of Mayor Tom Potter for $140.

»Portland’s powerful teachers’ union appears to have landed a victory. But according to initial reports from parents and advocates, the union’s big win against Portland Public Schools administrators could come at a cost to students. Here’s what happened: Last week, WWire first reported leaks that the Portland Association of Teachers had reached a tentative agreement with PPS administrators on hotly contested Article 10 contract language governing teacher hiring and transfers (see wweek.com/wwire/?p=11083 for more). Teachers will vote this week on the new proposal, crafted outside of negotiations. Rachel Langford, director of Stand for Children, says the agreement appears to be a setback. “If a top goal of this district is to close the achievement gap, this deal is a step in the wrong direction ,” Langford says.

»If a news publication covering healthcare policy churns through three editors in 18 months, is it time to call a doctor? Close observers of the Oregon Health News, an 18-year-old investigative journal covering hospitals, docs and health-insurance industries, say the diagnosis is already in: OHN is terminally ill. The journal needs a new editor-in-chief to replace acting editor Abby Christopher, who took over temporarily in January. Christopher replaced Tim Stumm, who replaced founding editor Diane Lund-Muzikant, who says she was fired in fall 2006 (“Surgical Strike,” WW, Nov. 1, 2006). Over at the Media Methadone blog, former OHN associate ed David Rosenfeld writes that OHN director Carol Robinson is more interested in “good news” than serious muckraking. Robinson says “we have not heard that criticism from our readership.

»One of the nation’s top reporters will be in town Friday, March 21, to discuss his new book, which has a heavy Oregon component. David Cay Johnston, a Pulitzer-Prize winning reporter who’s retiring from the New York Times next month, will discuss “Free Lunch: How The Wealthiest Americans Enrich Themselves at Government Expense.” The book’s first chapter is about Bandon Dunes, a golf course near Coos Bay; another chapter deals with the Texas Pacific Group’s aborted attempt to buy Portland General Electric. Johnston will appear at the First Unitarian Church, Southwest 12th Avenue and Salmon Street, from 7 to 9 pm. Doors open at 6:30. Best of all, it’s free.