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The email trail on a disagreement between Oregonian publisher N. Christian Anderson III and the group Portlanders for Schools, which is advocating for the passage of two measures on the May 17 ballot, is growing longer.
A post Monday detailed an email Anderson sent to Portland Public Schools superintendent Carole Smith. Anderson's email explained why The Oregonian wanted Portlanders for Schools to place a disclaimer on a print ad that the group wanted to purchase in the daily. The ad urged a "yes" vote on a $548 million capital bond and included quotes from newspapers, including a quotation from an Oregonian editorial back in November. Anderson wanted the ad to include a disclaimer making clear that the daily eventually recommended a "no" vote on the bond measure. Portlanders for Schools wouldn't agree and decided not to run the ad in the daily.
"In the context of allowing the use of our trademarked logo, we asked that a small line of type be placed below that logo," Anderson wrote in an April 28 email to Smith." We asked that it say: "The Oregonian has not endorsed the Portland School Bond." We were accused of censorship and the ad was withdrawn. I'm sorry that the campaign for the bond measure would choose to mislead voters about The Oregonian's position on the measure.
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The Oregonian's position irked Mark Wiener, a political consultant for Portlanders for Schools, (pictured at left).
Wiener, who is a political consultant for numerous tax hike campaigns in Oregon, including the current school measures, says an Oregonian ad rep originally solicited the ad and accepted the language Wiener provided, without asking for a disclaimer. The daily then back-tracked from that approval, Wiener says.
Given that The O editorialized against the capital bond (while supporting a smaller companion operating levy that will pay teachers' salaries), Wiener says it's only fair that his campaign get to present their side of the story—even if it means paying to do so—without being "censored."
There is clearly some history between The Oregonian and Wiener's clients. In 2010, Wiener was part of the successful campaign to pass Measures 66 and 67, which raised income taxes. The Oregonian editorialized against those measures, and Wiener believes that the newspaper bent over backwards to use its pages to help opponents of the tax hikes. As evidence, Wiener notes that never in the past two decades had the daily sold "spadea" (advertising that wraps around the front page) to political campaigns but did so to the "No on 66 and 67" campaign. (After Wiener complained, the "yes" campaign was later allowed to buy spadea advertising as well). Oregonian Publisher Anderson responded by pointing out that "Never in the past two decades had The Oregonian sold spadea advertising, period, until the fall of 2009, shortly before I became publisher. We began to accept a variety of ads in that format. As there were no elections after I became publisher until the Measures 66-67 campaign, it is misleading to suggest that we suddenly began selling political advertising in the spadea format."
The emails between Wiener and Oregonian ad rep Jim Gay, reproduced below, capture the some of the communication between the two parties after the campaign submitted the ad language and art on April 25 and 26 for publication April 28.
Here's Wiener's follow-up email after that conversation:
WWeek 2015