Bend Don't Break: Clayton Franke, Reporter for LIOF

In this episode of Bend Don’t Break, Aaron Switzer sits down with Clayton Franke, reporter for the Lay It Out Foundation and The Source, to talk about local journalism, community accountability, and what it means to report from the inside of a rapidly changing city. Clayton shares his path from growing up in Missoula to studying journalism at the University of Oregon, then building his reporting experience at small newspapers across Oregon and Washington before landing in Bend.

Clayton and Aaron explore the realities of reporting on local government, housing, transportation, and urban planning in Central Oregon. They discuss the responsibility that comes with telling people’s stories, the challenges facing modern journalism, and why local reporting still matters deeply to the health of a community.

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:00

Welcome to the Ben Don't Break Podcast. We are powered by the Source, Ben's locally owned media company and weekly newspaper. This podcast is our eddy in the rushing waters of local journalism. We are glad that you're taking some of your time to listen to us chat with the people who shape our local community. Support us through our member program at BenStores.com.

SPEAKER_00 0:22

Thank you to our presenting sponsor, Remax Key Properties, a family-owned full-service real estate brokerage specializing in residential, luxury, commercial, new construction, and ranch and land properties. Their new state-of-the-art facility at 42 Greenwood Avenue is a modern collaborative space and the new home of the Ben Don't Break Podcast Recording Studio.

SPEAKER_02 0:46

I'm Aaron Sweitzer, publisher of The Source and producer with Megan Burton off-screen of this fine podcast, Ben Don't Break. Today we're doing a little navel gazing segment. We're talking to Clayton Frank, who is now a reporter for the Lay It Out Foundation and writing for the Source Ben Source. Source, Source Weekly. His work regularly appears in The Source Now. And previously he covered local government for the Bulletin for a small newspaper on the Washington Coast and some other publications. Graduated from the University of Oregon with a degree in journalism in 2022. And when not reporting, he enjoys skiing, hiking, and live music. Clayton, thanks for coming on the podcast.

SPEAKER_01 1:31

Thanks for having me, Aaron. Appreciate it.

SPEAKER_02 1:34

So let's before we get into how awesome it is to have you as part of our team and and being on in the foundation now, and we'll talk a little about the foundation. Um you are originally from Missoula, Montana.

SPEAKER_01 1:48

That's right. Population for when you were growing up. When I was growing up, um I think it was 60 or 70,000. I think um it's grown a little bit larger in the last, yeah, 10 or 15 years. Is it 60, 70 when school's in session or out of session? I think that's including college kids. Yeah. It feels the town is very similar to Ben. Yeah. Um, I don't think it's grown quite as much as Ben has.

SPEAKER_03 2:17

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 2:18

Um, but it's it's a little bit more college town feeling than Ben, but it also has a river wave. Um it's got, you know, mountain biking and skiing, yeah, and fly fishing right next to the you know the city.

SPEAKER_02 2:32

So we look we went up and looked at doing a happy girl run in Missoula. And so I scoped the town out and I I dug it. I thought it was a really good size, and it's got a thriving university, so great youth culture there. A lot of a lot of that kind of college stuff that Ben wants to have but doesn't quite have yet, you know, yeah associated with OSU.

SPEAKER_01 2:54

It's got a lot, it's got a lot going for it. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 2:57

And you um after uh what did you do in Missoula? What were was that where you fell in love with hiking, biking?

SPEAKER_01 3:05

That's where, yeah, that's where I kind of got into um outdoor activities. Um played a lot of baseball growing up there too, which was pretty fun. Played some other sports. Um, and then yeah, in the summers and stuff, would go um outdoors with the family, yeah, kind of got into fly fishing, um, all the stereotypical kind of like Slantana stuff things, yeah, that you think about when you think about Montana. Uh but yeah, I mean there's there's some other stuff going on there too, but um but went to um college at at U of O and Eugene, which was kind of like a fun, fun change up too.

SPEAKER_02 3:46

So did you know you wanted to go into journalism when you was that why you selected U of O?

SPEAKER_01 3:51

Um it wasn't specifically. I was looking around at some different schools and didn't really have anything in mind uh for a like a major. Um I knew that journalism was it was kind of on my radar when I went into college, but I didn't know much about it at all. It was kind of just uh fortuitous that UVO happened to have a pretty good journalism program. Right. And that's what I what I chose.

SPEAKER_02 4:16

Was there a um what was the what was your first assignment when you were working for UVO? Or and maybe not first assignment, but what was the assignment that was like, wow, that this is cool?

SPEAKER_01 4:28

Well, I started writing for the Daily Emerald uh sports desk, which was um, like I said, I played baseball in high school. Um, that was something I was passionate about. Were you competitive? Yeah, like we we didn't have high school baseball in Montana, yeah, but um it was too small, so we just kind of combined the whole town into one American Legion baseball team, is what it's called. Um, so I wanted to kind of continue, stay involved with that. I was playing on the club baseball team at University of Oregon, um, which is more a little more laid back than the real team, but um started riding for the sports desk, um, was covering anything from baseball to like the acrobatics and tumbling team. Yeah, uh like tennis events. Uh they had us doing all kinds of stuff, which is kind of fun. Like yeah, I kind of like um even still, like I kind of like that the um activeness of sports writing. Like I feel like that having a background in that kind of writing helps with news quite a bit because you're able to you know come up with these verbs and like descriptions of stuff.

SPEAKER_02 5:34

Um and you're going to cool games, and I mean, I love that aspect of it. I mean, you get to you you get to follow base follow sports, and I'm a huge sports fan. So and you're more than just an amateur observer, you're exactly like into it and tracking numbers and who's good.

SPEAKER_01 5:50

And that's why I wanted to write, because it was like you get, yeah, other than rather than just go into the games, you get to be involved in something that you're passionate about. And covering, like I remember on the sports desk, it was pretty the football games specifically were like very coveted events, like only people, you know, like the upperclassmen got to cover football because that was um that was what everyone wanted to cover. And so kind of when I came in as a freshman, I was covering all the stuff you don't want to want.

SPEAKER_02 6:19

It probably was bigger than news.

SPEAKER_01 6:20

I mean covering ducks was well every week they'd come out with the game day, Oregon Game Day issue. Yeah, and we'd all write. Like, I think I I would write for that issue and write about football a little bit, but we'd all, I mean, we had a team of like five or six people and we'd all write stories and fill out this whole paper that was just the sports, you know. So it was pretty like fun thing. Everybody's like pretty tuned into that um at U of O. So it was a good experience. But um COVID hit um my sophomore year of college. Okay, and I kind of transitioned a little bit um away from from sports writing as much as fun, as much fun as that was. I was kind of like, I'm looking for something a little more um more like the human interest aspect to well, COVID sports got kind of weird. That too, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 7:07

Yeah, like they're I mean, I remember the my son played for the ultimate frisbee team at OSU and they were doing weird rules where they didn't have to get close to each other and they could still throw, and I was like, well, that's not yeah, that's not the sport.

SPEAKER_01 7:21

I can't remember if UO had any games that spring or not. I think everything just got yeah canceled and yeah. Um but that uh that summer 2020 was or fall, I guess, was the late the summer of the Labor Day fires in Oregon. Oh yeah. Um and the McKenzie River Valley by Eugene. Um couple towns got totally burned. Um, I mean, I think that fire was like 140,000 acres or something like that.

SPEAKER_02 7:51

Yeah, we I mean that that that was from Eugene to Bend. I mean, that was that was yeah, everybody was paying attention to that.

SPEAKER_01 7:59

Yeah, yeah. And that fall I started working for the um student magazine. It's called Ethos Magazine over there. Um, and it's all independent, like student, student run. One of my first stories there was covering um the story of someone trying to rebuild after the holiday farm fire in Blue River, Oregon, which is like 40 miles east of Eugene, I think. Okay. Um and that was pretty eye-opening. Like we went out and we went out into the field. I remember like not knowing at all how to get in touch with, you know, some of these fire victims. Like I was kind of this was like the first story of this type that I had ever done. And we just went out, drove out, saw people picking around in the rubble, and pulled off to the side of the road and talked to them about their stories, and that was kind of eye-opening. Like, there's this whole other side to journalism that I wasn't really on my radar before this, um, you know, and it's pretty seems like pretty interesting, like rewarding work.

SPEAKER_02 9:04

So yeah, I remember when I first did those types of stories. I mean, the thing that strikes you is one, access, like you're right in these people's lives, and because you're a journalist, they're gonna talk to you, you know. For I mean, of course, you'll always have the people who are a little standoff isher, but but in many cases, the that they become an open book, and you're like I I I remember initially, because I used to report for the Boise Weekly, was where I got my start. I was I was blown away, you know, when you're first doing your stories, and there's somebody like a fire victim, or in the case that I had, there was it was a car accident, and we were talking about the impact of of that. And um they j you're you're just blown away that you are the vessel by which these people are gonna talk and and get this stuff out, and it's a huge responsibility. Like when you're young, I mean I remember being like, man, what am I gonna do with this? Like I gotta, I gotta get real, right?

SPEAKER_01 10:02

You know, yeah, it kind of makes you uh mature a little bit almost. For sure. Like for sure. Yeah, like we're talking about real, um, you know, impactful stuff.

SPEAKER_02 10:12

So yeah, we're not talking about hitting a home run.

SPEAKER_01 10:14

Right, exactly.

SPEAKER_02 10:15

You know, these people lost their homes. And um, so yeah, so then from the magazine, what where did that lead you?

SPEAKER_01 10:22

That led me. Um, I wrote a few stories for the magazine. Um, and I actually started working for uh Eugene Weekly over there. Yeah. Um that's they have a pretty solid uh you know reputation for helping uh student journalists kind of get get their start. Um and a lot of us, like a lot of sort of my cohort was working for Eugene Weekly, writing stories as as interns. Yeah. Um, and I think we'd write, you know, like a story every couple of weeks, or that's how it was for me. You know, it wasn't a lot, but it was a way that was like my first foot in the door and like professional publication, um, which was definitely super valuable. Um, and they yeah, like they do a good job like training you um to be front lines.

SPEAKER_02 11:12

Yeah, exactly. Throwing on the front lines.

SPEAKER_01 11:14

And I think let me think about what are some of the stories there. I remember covering, um, I was interested in kind of environmental stuff after doing the the fire wildfire reporting. And I remember covering some salmon and you know, salmon and dams issues, um, Columbia Basin stuff. Um, I remember writing like sort of a first-person story about bull trout fishing on the Metolius uh river, um, which was pretty fun to kind of explore that aspect. And then writing a little bit about the city. Um they have kind of had kind of a fiasco with their city hall at one point.

SPEAKER_03 11:54

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 11:54

Um, trying to find where is their city hall gonna be. Um, and I wrote about that and plans, some other plans for like a new farmer's market pavilion in Eugene, which is right, super nice building they just built.

SPEAKER_02 12:05

So and you're when you're moving from well, I don't know what the circulation of the Emerald is, but I I'm assuming that the Eugene Little Weekly was much larger, citywide, you know, bigger reach. That also starts to impact you where you start realizing like, hey, I'm uh, you know, these these pieces I'm writing, these words I'm putting down are starting to get to a much broader audience. Uh, and it expands again the responsibility you got when you're when you're covering that stuff.

SPEAKER_01 12:32

Definitely, yeah. That was that was definitely an important step. And you're still in, yeah, you're still in college, like, but you're getting all this, you know, all this experience. So helps a lot.

SPEAKER_02 12:44

So out of the university, so you graduate and now you're thrown into the late or the 2023 you graduated?

SPEAKER_01 12:52

2022.

SPEAKER_02 12:53

2022.

SPEAKER_01 12:54

Yep.

SPEAKER_02 12:54

And uh, I mean, we're still a little bit in the pandemic, uh, and you're looking for work as a journalist out there. What was that like?

SPEAKER_01 13:03

Um, well, I right after college, I did an internship through the U of O, um, where you sort of just apply for this program and they place you at a newspaper in Oregon. Um, and I got sent out to uh Baker City, you know, town of like 10,000. I had no clue what Baker City was, but I ended up actually kind of liking it. It was only for three months.

SPEAKER_02 13:27

So you're a Missoula kid, so yeah, it wasn't like they took somebody from the valley and took out there.

SPEAKER_01 13:33

I think people, yeah, I remember talking to some friends who got sent to Vail, and they were the closest people, you know, to Baker City. So I think we met up for a camping trip or something, and they were like they were having a tough time in Vail, even though the the paper there was pretty strong.

SPEAKER_02 13:49

Yeah, there was uh I I'm drawing a blank on the person's name, but they were uh it was a good paper.

SPEAKER_01 13:54

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 13:55

Um I don't think it's still there.

SPEAKER_01 13:57

No, I think yeah, Mallier Enterprise um they closed, but uh that was definitely a good experience. Got to just kind of have fun and like um write about a bunch of different stuff, you know. Even in like I remember writing about uh it was right after they overturned Roe v. Wade, the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade. Yeah, and uh there was a protest in Baker City.

unknown 14:19

Right.

SPEAKER_01 14:19

So I was kind of covering that. It was kind of funny. Um but yeah, that I had a I had a good time there just getting started at like this tiny little paper and getting to write kind of how many how many rather writers were there when you were there? I think they had two other reporters, maybe one was part-time or something like that, but pretty small shot.

SPEAKER_02 14:40

When you're getting into one of those those type of newspapers and those communities, you're doing a lot of heavy lifting. I mean, I'm sure you're working on your speed.

SPEAKER_01 14:48

Yeah, definitely. I mean, I don't think I um had as maybe quite as many assignments as the other reporters there, but I think part of the purpose of that internship is like they just throw you into the fire, and you know, you kind of have to learn how to be a be a reporter and what the day-to-day is like, you know, going from writing a story once every couple weeks at the Eugene Weekly to like, okay, I'm doing this all day, every day now, and it's like were they daily? They were they they printed um three times a week. I think so. But I remember like, you know, not kind of sitting around waiting for an assignment from my editor. But of course, you know, he's busy, he's off producing the the paper and um doing that. So it kind of forces you to like expand your comfort zone and learn how to find stories. Yeah, you know, and from Baker, you're on to From there I moved to uh Aberdeen, Washington, which is a tiny town, small town on the coast of Washington. Um Kirk. It's the hometown of Kirk Cobain, yeah. That's the people know. Yeah, definitely. So that I was uh interesting.

SPEAKER_02 16:02

Anytime I think Aberdeen, I think, yeah, well, it's gray.

SPEAKER_01 16:05

It's pretty gray. It's pretty gray, yeah. It was um law long winter there for sure. Yeah, quite different from Ben. Um, but all types of stuff going on there. You got like the Olympic Peninsula.

SPEAKER_02 16:17

And you weren't interning at that point.

SPEAKER_01 16:18

You were no, that was my first gig full-time gig. Yep. Just as a GA reporter, general assignment. Um that was just one of the, you know, one of the things that popped up when I was it's a pretty rough town. I mean, where you're definitely you had a lot to write about. Yeah, it was it was at one point the logging capital of the world. Um, I think at one point they were like exporting more logs out of the port than any other place. Um, but you know, like logging industry went downhill and they haven't really, you know, had any revitalization uh there. So they're kind of you know struggling a little bit economically. Um, and you know, they had a homelessness problem. Um drugs. Yeah, that type of thing is is definitely prevalent there. Obviously, you know, there was a lot, sort of a lot to cover at the at the newspaper, but it's it was an interesting place to be a reporter.

SPEAKER_02 17:13

Yeah. I just went through Aberdeen this past summer on my way up to the Olympics. So, and we we got out and kicked it there because I was like, we're in Aberdeen, it's a thing, you know. I know, you know, and I wanted to get a sense of the town. And uh yeah, it looks it looks much the same as it probably looked, you know, 50 years ago.

SPEAKER_01 17:34

Yeah, uh but it seems like there's pretty big potential. Like in my opinion, I I always thought like, man, there's all this waterfront area and uh really good recreation, like Olympic National Park's right there, the coast is right there. So I know they they're um they're building a new downtown museum dedicated to Kirk Cobain and Nirvana. So that was like kind of this big swell of excitement as uh you you and I live there. Right. So I'm not sure. I think it it's probably open now. So um it'd be interesting to go back and check that out and see.

SPEAKER_02 18:10

Yeah. And then uh from how long were you there?

SPEAKER_01 18:13

I was there about a year and a half.

SPEAKER_02 18:15

Okay. And then uh next next assignment was Then I came to Bend.

SPEAKER_01 18:19

Okay. Took a job with the bulletin.

SPEAKER_02 18:21

What brought you to Bend? I mean, was it the job?

SPEAKER_01 18:24

Yeah, mostly it was mostly the job, and I sort of had a community here from U of O people who had who had moved here uh after college. So and I knew I knew it'd be a pretty good fit.

SPEAKER_02 18:34

I'd come down and visited before, so what would what did you find when you first started reporting about Bend? I mean, what were you struck by with with regard to the town?

SPEAKER_01 18:45

I think um because you're not another you've only you haven't been here that long. Um I don't know. I mean I I think I was focused on local government specifically and like housing development and and transportation was kind of my um the two biggies focus area. Yeah. And so um Aside from homelessness. I guess, yeah, like the more that you learn about kind of the nitty-gritty like planning, city planning process, um the more that you can kind of understand why things look the way they do, I guess. Absolutely. Um which was pretty cool because I had never, you know, I think when I took the when I took that job, I I hadn't really like I'd done some government reporting, but definitely not um a lot. So I it was new concepts coming into it.

SPEAKER_03 19:43

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 19:44

Um, and I've definitely become much more interested in urban planning and kind of like, you know, street layouts and zoning and that type of thing since then.

SPEAKER_02 19:54

So well, here I I imagine here, and well, I you know, I don't have to imagine we see it every day, even as we're walking to this podcast that um I mean Ben's in a dynamic period with regard to its planning and its transportation and housing and all these things. I gotta think you're coming from Aberdeen to the bulletin, it changed gears pretty quick.

SPEAKER_01 20:18

Yeah. I mean, I remember um actually I remember walking around town, going to a city council meeting, kind of my first couple weeks, and just thinking like everybody in Ben is very looks very happy and healthy, and everyone's really fit. Uh and it was like I was kind of just like you know, entering like the Bend bubble, I guess. Uh and it took a little bit of getting used to. At first, I was a little caught off guard, and I was thinking, like, I don't know about this place. It seems a little too like it's too nice, too pumped up. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, it's got kind of the shine, you know, like the shininess a little bit.

SPEAKER_02 21:00

Yeah. I mean, I don't want to keep bashing on Aberdeen, but you know, you're fine for any Aberdeen listeners out there, it's nothing personal, but you know, uh you're you're making a a leap from a community that's in decline where you know they're the I don't you know nobody's nobody's moving there because they want to be the next great mountain biker. Right. And and they are here. I mean, for however delusional they are, they you know, are coming here because they imagine they're going to work 12 hours a week and mountain bike 20. And and some of that rubs off, you know, yeah, you do have some uh some of that excitement and you know, and everybody's pretty everything's moving. There's still you're still building things. You got tons of stuff to comment on.

SPEAKER_01 21:51

Yeah, yeah. There is kind of that buzz, sort of the the buzz of like, you know, activity and development and sort of the future. In Ben, that it's sort of palpable, almost.

SPEAKER_02 22:03

I mean, also given given where you came from, aside from Eugene, I mean, you're coming into a community that's got a pretty progressive, at this time at least, city council. So you also must have had a little bit of a shock in terms of I don't know what Aberdeen's city council and politics are like, but it it can't have been like Ben's.

SPEAKER_01 22:24

No, yeah, it was it was.

SPEAKER_02 22:26

I mean, with sort of an electrification and you know, house hardening and things that are pretty cutting edge for the state.

SPEAKER_01 22:33

Yeah, no, there's nothing of that sort in Aberdeen, but it was yeah, it was kind of a mix, um, kind of interesting politically. I mean, Washington is obviously really blue state, but um I think the Aberdeen City Council was uh almost half and half, but leaning more conservative and old logging town um carrying that forward.

SPEAKER_02 22:55

So that's good because when I'm imagining it, that's exactly what I think.

SPEAKER_01 22:59

Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Um yeah, it was a little bit of a that was part of part of a shift to come into Ben. It was like, okay, this is yeah, this is more progressive city, but right.

SPEAKER_02 23:11

Do you um I mean, given your beat, I mean this is showing my bias. Like, how do you make it so it's not boring? Like you're you're talking about transportation. I mean, you're talking about urban planning. It and I I remember when we we used to have this moratorium on sewer stories at the forest. Like they'd come up, there were all this controversy around. We're like, no, like we just you write a couple lines, sewer problem. We're not we're just not going there. And it wasn't the nature of our paper at the time, but I kind of there's part of me that's still like, you gotta make it interesting, yeah. And how do you do that?

SPEAKER_01 23:50

I mean, I think I've written a couple of sewer stories since I've been here.

SPEAKER_02 23:54

Well, you won't write another one.

SPEAKER_01 23:57

I'll be chopping out the bit for sewer stories. I think, I mean, one way to make it more interesting is is money. Like, I think people, everyone's interested in how much is this gonna cost me? You know, most people are anyway. Um, and trying to connect that back to like, you know, individual people. Um, how are we all either sharing the cost or who's who's paying for, you know, something as basic as uh you know the ability to flush your toilet, right? Um is something that you know you like you don't think about that often. But if you can put that in like the most basic terms possible, like this is who's fronting the costs, um, or if you can talk about like some individual person's story, that always makes it more interesting. But it's like something I work on a lot, is like, okay, how do I make this road story relevant?

SPEAKER_02 24:52

You know, absolutely, and I I think that's a that's a a challenge. And obviously, I've read your writing and your previous writing, and you do a great job of it. You know, you keep it so that individuals can relate to it. Thanks. Although nonetheless, we're we're not writing any more sewer stories.

SPEAKER_01 25:07

Yeah, I think like no matter what, the yeah, like the urban development beat, there's gonna be some more boring stories.

SPEAKER_02 25:14

Not to say that they're not important though, and like not that we shouldn't be doing them, but um now that so I'm also curious, like in your um in in the current journalism environment, especially especially in our paper where you know you've got small stories, medium stories, feature stories, they're all being thrown at you, you're bopping from here, it's you're you're not on a beat. You you now get to pick what you want to report on for the most part. And um while that I know that's exciting, how do you keep from becoming schizophrenic in the process?

SPEAKER_01 25:48

Yeah, no, it's tough. I mean, um, I mean, I think I'll still I'm still sort of focusing on that local government um, you know, angle, but maybe um, you know, a little bit more room to kind of explore some other stuff that that I'm interested in. Like I kind of tend to think if I'm you know interested in a story and sort of engaging with it that other people, you know, readers are gonna be hopefully you know seeing that perspective as well.

SPEAKER_02 26:19

And so um I think it's fair, I think it's fair to say in our in our the way our newsroom is set up, we're open to and flexible. Where it's not top-down. Yeah, you know, we're very much um appreciative and tuned into reporter input, you know. Where you know, you had mentioned I I think at one point wanting to do more environmental writing and and uh that's great.

SPEAKER_01 26:44

Yeah. Yeah, I think um I'm just hoping to kind of follow my interests wherever wherever they might take me next, you know, and and um if I can, you know, maybe go down a rabbit hole, maybe hopefully not too deep, but just kind of follow threads here and there and and see where it takes me.

SPEAKER_02 27:03

Yeah. When you um, I mean, you're young and you look at the journalistic landscape. I mean, what what are your thoughts from the looking from the inside out on uh where journalism's headed?

SPEAKER_01 27:17

Yeah, it's definitely a little uh depressing getting into it at this moment in time for sure. Um I think uh the one in sort of inspiring thing is I think people I think people always value journalism. And um I think there is, you know, sort of a collective mindset of you know, we want to preserve journalism. Uh is there a way to to kind of bolster it, whether it's like through some sort of government um, you know, action or other models that we're coming up with. Um, you know, I think there's that like collective motivation to to preserve it. Um, but we're still trying to figure out like what's you know, what's the best way to do that. But I've definitely heard a lot in the last, you know, I've been, I guess, a journalist for a couple of years now, and um I've been in several, you know, wide open, empty offices with a ton of computers and desks and not a lot of people. Um in Aberdeen, we had remember that we had the this huge uh press room in the back and all the equipment, old equipment was back there and go back there from time to time and check it out, and it was like kind of a throwback.

SPEAKER_02 28:40

But um well, you can visit the old the the the bulletin building.

SPEAKER_01 28:45

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 28:45

Go up to the title company and you walk through that big arch and you're like, all of this space?

SPEAKER_01 28:50

Yeah, you know. Yeah, definitely. I've heard quite a few stories about, you know, like what it was like back in the day with yeah, dozens of reporters and editors and photographers and everything like that. And it's kind of like um it's obvious like the golden days of of newspapers are are behind us. So um, but there's a glimmer of hope sort of for what's next.

SPEAKER_02 29:14

I think that a lot of a lot of what you uh the way you look at journalism today depends on perspective. You know, I mean, certainly in your case, you're you're looking back and hearing stories of a golden age. Um, but it it was fraught with peril at the time as well. And certainly a a lot of the, I mean, you can watch The Wire if you want to see, you know, a great, I think a great show on on what the what the potential was for that environment. But, you know, for our paper, we've never been bigger. I mean, bringing being able to use different models and uh find the best of those models and pull those models together have allowed us to continue to expand and grow the kind of journalism that we do, which is, I think it it's just a little more like I was saying, it's more based on the journalists who are working there and what they find exciting, which I think got is a much better way than kind of top-down editors who are sending you out on something that might be, you know, worthless and you're coming back and you're gotta put it in the print anyways, because man, that's what's gotta happen today. And um digital's a little more flexible in that there's no prescribed hole. You want to you definitely want content up there, but there's not that excruciating pressure to fill like a column and a half today by 130. There's just, hey, we need this story. Is it big? Is it small? What does it warrant? You know, you're not we're not pressing on that. But I remain really optimistic because what I have seen through all these changes, and you know, I've been doing this since we were doing paste up, so is content will out, you know, like people, I shouldn't say content, you know, people care about their community and they want information on the community. And what is the best way to get them that information, in my opinion, you hire smart people who who have gone to college for this, you get an editor who knows how to filter this stuff, you put them in a room together, and you get really great content, you know, as opposed to what is being served up in most of the digital environment. And I have faith, Megan's heard me talk way too much about how much I hate social media. I'm gonna just talk about it again. There's a little bit of reckoning, right? Now, uh on social media. And and, you know, I loved seeing those images of Mark Zuckerberg walking down those stairs, being held a little bit liable for the sewer that has been flowing. And uh, you know, I've always said we we could never do that. You know, we could we publish a letter that's a bunch of bullshit and we're gonna get sued, you know? And here's this whole media outlets like a telecommunications company, and they're they're absolved from that. So you can say anything you want. And it's it it hamstrung all of the media outlets because of course we can't do that. We could do we want to be salacious and get clicks and say whatever the hell we want. I mean, I don't want to, but God knows you can make a ton of money doing it. And um I I kind of go it just goes back to what I think is his perspective is uh you see some of that kind of stuff and it gives you a little hope. Like, you know, maybe maybe there is going to be an assessment of value. And um, and I think it's the reason that there's a lot of opportunity for someone like yourself, you know, who's who is skilled, who is working with a team of other people that are skilled, and and it's you know, the motivation for us to bring someone like you on board is like, yeah, we want more scrutiny on City Hall, and we don't want anybody running in there. We want somebody who's got some experience and knows these people, isn't gonna, isn't gonna put them on a pedestal, but again, isn't interested in just like throwing, you know, cat poo up there either.

SPEAKER_01 33:18

So yeah, yeah. Yeah, I mean, I think you're right. There always will be um, you know, uh sort of appetite for local news, local information. I mean, I think even in Ben, like you see social media pages on Facebook or Reddit or whatever it is, um, like sort of these stories, you know, not from like a newspaper stories sort of spiraling out of control. And it seems like that's sort of a a you know, a product of um, you know, a shrinking newspaper, um, and and uh, you know, I guess just less, maybe less sources of viable information, you know, in the community. Um, but yeah.

SPEAKER_02 34:04

I think in some cases, in those situations, also, no desire to even go work, put in the work and effort to go find those sources. I mean, the reality is that it, you know, it's a ton of work to make sure that what you are writing is actually accurate and factual and is not gonna end you throw end you up in a court of law where these other people who are putting out whatever, I mean, they'll they skirt a lot of that stuff, but sometimes they just flat out, you know, they'll just they'll just throw it out there. Hey, what do you think?

SPEAKER_01 34:37

Right.

SPEAKER_02 34:38

It's like, well, I didn't need you to prompt the conversation, I needed to know what was true.

SPEAKER_01 34:43

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 34:44

So yeah, I think that's that's another piece of it.

SPEAKER_01 34:47

Yeah, yeah. Um, yeah, I'm I'm sort of uh sort of optimistic, but um, yeah, I know there was a a bill in the Oregon legislature past couple years to um to fund newspapers through um charging Google for quite closely. Yeah, that's an it's an interesting one. I I mean I'm sure it'll be coming back into the legislature in the next couple of years. So we'll see see where that goes.

SPEAKER_02 35:16

But it was a lot of lobbying for and against that. It's I I'm not sure. I mean, personally, I'm not I don't trust that, you know. The although we were, you know, there was a lot of hope that those funds were gonna come to small publishers like ourselves. However, um, the more you got into it, the more the language around that was like, well, okay, a lot of the publishing uh houses, like the Bulletin or like Gannette and and Eugene, they don't need those funds. You know, they're incredibly large. And but you're gonna give government funds to to those companies where those monies are immediately gonna go out of market. And if you if you're not, how do you get into the minutiae of who gets those funds? Like is and and what the format is, and there's a lot. That's a tar baby.

SPEAKER_01 36:18

Yeah, you know how it's complicated.

SPEAKER_02 36:19

How are you gonna get in there, FNASA? And I think in that first run, they got pretty close, and maybe that's why I didn't go. But also, people just need to be aware when those bills go up. I mean, there's a lot of lobbying. A lot of those tech companies are like, no, no, no, no, no.

SPEAKER_01 36:31

Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 36:32

Yeah, they don't want to straw, put in their proceeds, and they some of them have been very good. Like I gotta say, we've we've received grants from Google, and Google has, I think, been legit in helping develop helping newspapers develop digital strategies they couldn't otherwise perform. So um it's fascinating. I find it fascinating. You know, it's like it's another one of those things where you you can be optimistic if you're just like not holding on to some golden age model. And all weeklies were came up in a in a model where we were just trying to tear those that golden age down anyway. So well, Clayton, we're at the end of our time. Um, anything that I might not have touched on that you want readers or listeners to uh take away from this?

SPEAKER_01 37:20

I don't think so, but um excited to be working at the source and looking forward to hearing from readers about story ideas.

SPEAKER_02 37:28

Yeah, if you want Clayton to do a particular story on you, you can reach out to Clayton at uh layitout foundation.org. Um and yeah, great to have you on. And uh, and I'm really looking forward to our expanded newsroom. And we're gonna be uh for readers and viewers, we're gonna be coming out with more information about how cool it is that we are as uh have grown the way we are and the abilities that we have now to do more reporting. It's super exciting. Um and thank you for listening to the Ben Don't Break Podcast. If you like what you heard and you want more of it, go to bendesaurus.com, click on the uh donate button, and support us because it allows us to do more uh more of the fringe fun stuff like this, as opposed to the heavy lifting that Clayton's got.

SPEAKER_01 38:21

Sewer stories.

SPEAKER_02 38:22

Exactly. Help us not do sewer stories. Actually, you could donate and just put that on a line. I'll bring it to the editorial meeting. So hey, thanks for uh thanks for being here.com