Paper Tiger
With a net worth estimated at $560 million, he's the second-richest
man in Oregon, owning everything from the environmentally
challenged Ross Island Sand and Gravel to a Christian superhero
called Bibleman. Now businessman-minister Robert B. Pamplin
Jr., 58, has his sights set on building an empire of radio
stations and newspapers to add to his holdings.
Pamplin, scion of Georgia-Pacific mogul Robert Pamplin
Sr., has already collected seven radio stations throughout
the Northwest, and the federal government is considering
his applications to build 11 more. He made headlines two
months ago when he transformed his Christian radio station
KPAM (K-PAMplin) AM 860 into a news-talk format and wasted
little time in luring some of The Oregonian's most
well-known columnists to the airwaves. But even with the
lineup of Dwight Jaynes, Pete Schulberg and Paul Duchene,
the station's attempt to offer an AM alternative to OPB
has so far failed to find an audience.
But with last week's purchase of Community Newspapers Inc.
of Tigard, Pamplin has scooped up nine Portland suburban
newspapers, including Tualatin Times, Lake Oswego Review,
Beaverton Valley Times and the ever-struggling Our
Town, for a combined circulation of 52,100. (He previously
bought the independently owned Clackamas County News
and the Sellwood Bee.)
In a single stroke, the deal makes Pamplin one of Oregon's
biggest newspaper czars. Pamplin bills this relentless consolidation
as a way to "help protect the future of free speech and
balanced information for Oregon," though how his Hearstian
move to control local papers will accomplish this is a matter
of some debate.
Perhaps the most striking development is Pamplin's plans
to launch a new Portland weekly next year. He has named
Jaynes, former sports columnist for The Oregonian,
as the paper's president. Time will tell whether the sand
and gravel pastor has the grit to succeed in the newspaper
business.
--Steffen Silvis
Good Dope, Bad
Dope
Last week, just one day after the publication of a report
that showed a significant drop in Portland's heroin deaths,
the flyers began to appear:
"HEROIN WARNING. High rises in heroin overdoses over the
last few weeks. There's some very bad/deadly heroin out
there and yours could be lethal. BE CAREFUL!"
No one at the Medical Examiner's Office or the Health Department
had heard of a recent surge of overdoses. But outside detox
centers, inside rescue missions and along the streets of
Old Town, the buzz was strong.
"We've seen a ton of that, down on the waterfront," said
one man on his way to the park to smoke marijuana. "They
walk out of the bathroom and they flop."
At the west side of the Burnside Bridge, a man trying to
kick his habit said everybody knew about the super-lethal
heroin. "It isn't that it's bad stuff," he said. "It's really
good. Too good." At Southwest 12th Avenue and Alder Street,
a woman said she had heard of nine overdose deaths in the
past month, and "bodies are turning up everywhere."
But according to official figures, fatal heroin overdoses
dropped 43 percent in the first half of this year to 68
deaths statewide. Is the trend already reversing?
"We have not seen an increase in overdoses in the past
two weeks," said statistician Gene Gray of the Oregon Medical
Examiner's office. According to Gray, there was a "clustering"
of four overdose deaths in one 48-hour period last month,
but since then the deaths have been sporadic.
It turns out that the motivation behind the flyers was
more emotional than scientific. Last month, a young heroin
user known on the street as Curtis died of a heroin overdose.
After his funeral, a group of mentors--recovering addicts
who help current addicts stay clean--posted the fliers as
warnings. Curtis was a client in the mentor program when
he died.
The flier may overstate the recent upsurge of ODs, but
it doesn't exaggerate Portland's heroin problem. "We're
in the midst of an epidemic," said David Eisen of Portland
Addictions Acupuncture Center. Ed Blackburn of the Hooper
Detox Center reports that the center is flooded with applicants.
Some days, he says, he has to turn away 30 or 40 desperate
drug addicts back onto the street.
--Ben Jacklet
SEEDS OF DOUBT
Seems a few bad seeds couldn't spoil Watermelon Day in
Pioneer Courthouse Square. The Hermiston City Council challenged
Mayor Vera Katz to a seed-spitting contest, while a dozen
Hermiston kids handed out a truckload of potatoes, cantaloupe
and the mother of all fruit--the watermelon--to the sun-baked
crowd with the grizzled panache of rock stars flinging sweat
towels.
But the telltale logo of the Umatilla Chemical Depot on
the doors of the blue flatbed truck left a few onlookers
with a sour taste in their mouths. In an age when consumers
are increasingly worried about pesticides, why would Hermiston
farmers choose to associate themselves with chemical weapons?
In fact, there is no connection between the watermelons
and the depot, except that the depot lent a truck for the
event. But the reality is that the depot is deeply woven
into the social and economic fabric of Hermiston. It generates
$9 million in wages at a time when the economics of farming
are as stony as ever, and depot commander Tom Woloszyn (whose
two sons were melon slingers that afternoon) joined the
Hermiston commissioners in the festivities.
Woloszyn stayed cucumber-cool when WW asked if consumers
should have any concerns about fruit grown in the shadow
of one of the nation's largest stockpiles of chemical weapons--after
all, some of Umatilla's orchards sit only about three miles
north of K Block, where the neurotoxins are stored.
So about that watermelon...
"Would it help if I ate some of it?" asked the depot boss.
Hell yes it would, Tom.
For the record, Woloszyn sank his teeth into the melons
on numerous occasions and racked up a respectable score
in the seed-spitting contest.
--Kelly Clarke
Let Sleeping
Dogs Lie
"Sam, things are getting ugly," Mike Hess, an aide to Mayor
Vera Katz, wrote to chief of staff Sam Adams in a July 31
email. He wasn't exaggerating.
Hess staffs a citizens' task force that two months ago
set out to chart a course to revamp the way Portland roots
out police misconduct. Today, however, the group is foundering
in a sea of bickering and personal attacks.
On July 27, Alan Graf, a committee member who supports
an independent watchdog agency, sparked an email conflagration
by accusing fellow committee member and police union attorney
Will Aitchison of "using legal opinions ...as a tool to
disrupt, obstruct and throw into chaos" the committee's
work.
"Thank you for giving me a few yuks on a busy Friday,"
shot back committee member Ray Mathis, calling Graf's comments
"laughable" and "ridiculous."
It was just the latest chapter in the polarization of the
committee, one that threatens the credibility of its efforts.
The only two African Americans on the group, state Rep.
JoAnne Bowman and NAACP activist Bruce Broussard, are both
threatening to quit the group. Bowman contends that the
obstacles faced by the committee, including a lack of cooperation
by city staff, add up to "a concerted effort to ensure that
this committee does not complete its work."
Meanwhile, one of Bowman and Broussard's philosophical
opponents, Lisa Botsko, former staffer to the city's current
oversight body, says she stopped attending meetings two
weeks ago because the committee barely looked at the city's
current system, the Police Internal Investigations Auditing
Committee, before deciding to scrap it.
Dan Handelman, a volunteer for Copwatch, echoes Botsko
when he says, "There's a lot of people sitting on the committee
that don't really know what PIIAC already does, and I think
that's a problem."
The committee has set a deadline of next month to submit
its final recommendations.
--Nick Budnick
MURMURS
IDLE GOSSIP, RANK SPECULATION & BIZARRE QUOTES
* Ouch! Last month the Portland Business Journal tweaked
motel mogul Mark Hemstreet in its Winners & Losers
column for "poor taste" in outfitting cystic fibrosis victim
Brandy Stroeder and her family with Shilo Inn T-shirts.
Now Hemstreet has retaliated by yanking Shilo's weekly advertising--which
approaches $20,000 a year--from the journal. Hemstreet's not
talking to WW, but apparently his view is that Brandy,
whose lung-liver transplant he is paying for, requested the
Shilo name on the T-shirts. The PBJ's publisher, Mike Consol,
says the paper will run a correction. "The mistake we made
was that the item implied it was all a cheap marketing stunt
and that is not the case," he says. But editor Dan Cook
remains unrepentant, describing the T-shirt affair as a tawdry
promotion that spoiled what should have been a philanthropic
gesture. * Green Party presidential candidate Ralph Nader
has long criticized his mainstream opponents for being bought
and paid for by special interests. So Ralph is taking a decidedly
unorthodox approach to fund-raising: He's charging admission
to his own speeches. On Aug. 25, in what is either a demonstration
of hopeless naïveté or fiendish cunning, Nader
will hold a rally in the Memorial Coliseum. Tickets
cost $7 each, but Nader's Crusaders say no one will be turned
away. * Contrary to the received wisdom that Ruth Scott
resigned her position as executive director of the Association
for Portland Progress, Murmurs has learned that she was
forced out for, among other things, not telling businesses
about Multnomah County's decision to relocate a parole and
probation office downtown.
* Another one bites the dust. After 12 years at KXL, veteran
reporter Dawn Phillips has put aside her tape recorder
to become communications director for House Speaker Lynn
Snodgrass.
* The Big Chill Boils Over: The always-active League
of Women Voters has sided with Multnomah County Chair
Beverly Stein in the spat over the North/Northeast Portland
urban renewal district, asking whether the city has
overstepped its powers in a Aug. 2 letter to Mayor Vera
Katz.
* Forget Brian Grant--the September issue of high-gloss
hip-hop magazine The Source declares Multnomah
County Commissioner Serena Cruz a full-fledged "Trailblazer"
in a look at up-and-coming ethnic politicians. The magazine
did not rate Cruz's Shaq-stopping abilities.
* Heard on the Street: "The law is my passion.
For some people, it's just a hobby, but for me, it's a passion."
--Check-out clerk at the Stadium Fred Meyer on West Burnside
Street, after refusing to sell a six-pack of Mike's Hard
Lemonade to an already-intoxicated patron.
Night Cabbie
BY Willie Milkis
willie_milkis@hotmail.com
2ND AND BURNSIDE is a disgusting sight at 3:30 am, but
we're not there long. A repulsive older woman with red hair
comes up to the cab. My fare opens the door invitingly and
she slides in, just like that. "Hi! My name's Dee!" She's
a sad old junkie reduced to hanging out down here in the
middle of the night. Her voice is ragged, and her face is
puffy. She's cheerful like abused dogs are cheerful towards
anyone who doesn't beat them. "All right, cabbie, you know
the routine. Back up into the hills." That's my guy. I've
had enough of this, but I've got a hundred-dollar bill rolled
between my fingers, so we head back up to the hills and
drive around in silence while they smoke and rustle around
back there. This is the second time for this guy tonight,
and I'm thinking who is this guy, a good-looking black guy
in his thirties, in good shape, and he's got money to burn
on cabs, crack and whores, so why is he choosing such a
cheap and risky way to have a good time? With that money,
he can buy good drugs and younger women, yet he's choosing
to pick up both on the street within blocks of a cop shop.
We drive around Skyline, Barnes, Cornell, Burnside. I make
big loops past expensive houses until I'm told to head downtown
again; we're out of drugs.
(...to be continued...)
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