The Eugene Weekly Halts Publication After Worker’s Embezzlement

A weekly newspaper in Oregon abruptly stopped publishing and laid off all of its staff after an worker embezzled tens of hundreds of {dollars} and left months of payments unpaid, its editor stated.

The newspaper, The Eugene Weekly, introduced on Thursday that it might cease printing after it found monetary issues, together with cash not being paid into worker retirement accounts and $70,000 of unpaid payments to the newspaper’s printer, Camilla Mortensen, the newspaper’s editor, stated on Sunday.

Your complete 10-person newspaper workers was laid off three days earlier than Christmas, although some staff, together with Ms. Mortensen, had been nonetheless volunteering to publish articles on-line.

The Eugene Weekly, a free newspaper, was based in 1982 and every week prints 30,000 copies, which will be present in shiny pink containers in and round Eugene, probably the most populous cities in Oregon.

Current articles described a New Year’s Day hike led by guides at a state park, the efforts of a close-by unincorporated neighborhood, Blue River, to recover from a 2020 wildfire, and a memorial to people who had died homeless in 2023.

Leaders of The Eugene Weekly stated in a letter to readers that the newspaper’s funds had been left in “shambles,” however they deliberate to combat to maintain the publication alive.

“The damage is more than most small businesses can bear,” the letter stated. “The scale of this moment is unlike anything we have ever faced. But we believe in this newspaper’s mission and we remain determined to keep EW alive.”

Melinda McLaughlin, a spokeswoman for the Eugene Police Division, stated that the police had been investigating however couldn’t present extra particulars whereas the inquiry was underway. The now-former worker accused of the embezzlement, who was concerned within the newspaper’s funds, was not publicly recognized.

Ms. Mortensen, who joined the paper in 2007 and have become editor in 2016, stated that costs had been filed towards the particular person accused of embezzlement, who had labored there for no less than 5 years.

The worker was out of the workplace earlier this month when questions arose about closing the monetary data for the 12 months and instantly a number of issues had been made obvious, Ms. Mortensen stated.

“Every time I find something out, I just get sick to my stomach,” she stated. “And again, this is someone we worked with who came to the office every day.”

These issues had been found because the newspaper tried to get well from monetary losses it had earlier in the Covid-19 pandemic, when companies, akin to native eating places and occasion organizers, had stopped shopping for adverts, Ms. Mortensen stated.

In recent times, as native newspapers have quickly shuttered and drastically decreased workers, The Eugene Weekly had taken steps to curb prices by reducing what number of pages it printed.

Virtually 2,900 newspapers have shut down since 2005, in response to a 2023 report by Northwestern College’s Medill College of Journalism, Media, Built-in Advertising Communications. All however about 100 of the shuttered newspapers had been weeklies. Most communities that lose a newspaper don’t get a alternative.

Earlier than the pandemic, The Eugene Weekly had finished nicely financially, Ms. Mortensen stated.

The house owners, Anita Johnson, who Ms. Mortensen stated is 94 years previous and visited the workplace twice per week, and Georga Taylor, have by no means taken the newspaper’s income and at all times put the cash again into the enterprise to pay for bills, akin to employee bonuses and new gear. In addition they lined the prices for the final print version of the paper, which got here out on Dec. 21.

Ms. Johnson and her husband, Artwork Johnson, and Ms. Taylor’s husband, Fred Taylor, bought the paper in the 1990s. Ms. Johnson had been a reporter at The Washington Publish and Mr. Taylor, who died in 2015, was a former executive editor of The Wall Avenue Journal.

Ms. Mortensen stated that whereas newspapers have centered plenty of consideration on their digital product, in Eugene and the agricultural cities that encompass it, “the print paper is still something that people really value.”

The Eugene Weekly is accepting donations to assist it publish once more and created an internet fund-raiser that had collected greater than $35,000 as of Sunday morning.

Ms. Mortensen stated that folks had additionally stopped by the workplace to make donations. A neighborhood bookseller who got here by cried as she described how she had informed guests at her store what occurred to the paper once they requested about getting a replica.

Assist has additionally come from sudden locations, akin to retired journalists from The Register-Guard, town’s every day newspaper, who volunteered enhancing assist.

Ms. Mortensen stated that the help had given her hope that the newspaper would possibly have the ability to print once more.

“I can think of $150,000 that we need to get to be a viable paper again,” Ms. Mortensen stated. “And I’m looking at some of the money and going, ‘Oh my God, can we do this?’”