Bob Passaro

Copy Editor

Bob Passaro has been an editor in various forms for 30 years. Maybe longer, actually, as there was that high school yearbook he assembled — under appallingly lax supervision — which was later removed from the school’s library due to its irreverence.

And so began his love of press freedom. Bob studied English at Occidental College and journalism at the University of Arizona. He worked at The Associated Press, The Post Register in Idaho Falls, Idaho, and The Salt Lake Tribune.

In 1998 he moved to Eugene to take a copy editing job at The Register-Guard. Not a month later, the Thurston High School shooting happened, and he was amazed by the quality of the journalists in the newsroom he had recently joined. He worked at the R-G for 14 years, through various ups and downs. It was a good run. But as the web began to erode the newspaper business, and after watching too many good people be laid off, he decided somewhat reluctantly to flee the newspaper business himself.

In a moment of “if you can’t beat em, join ’em,” he began to learn how to code websites, while working as a writer and editor at the Eugene marketing agency Cawood. Eventually Bob became co-owner of a Eugene design and web agency called Figoli Quinn. Over the next several years, he built dozens of websites and participated in website activities like “content strategy,” “information architecture,” and “content development.” As he tells people: “Those are all just fancy terms for ‘editing’.”

Bob was so excited to come back to journalism that he wanted to quote Gen. Douglas MacArthur — “I have returned!” — but that felt overly grand and dramatic. Suffice it to say, he was happy to join Lookout and be a part of a team that is building a new era of local news in Eugene-Springfield.

When he is not at work, Bob enjoys cycling — mountain, road, whatever — and he plays the piano poorly, but joyfully.