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An independent newspaper covering the city of Oakridge will close in mid-September, its board announced, citing financial issues.
An independent newspaper covering the city of Oakridge will close in mid-September, its board announced, citing financial issues.Â
In an Aug. 22 website update and accompanying Facebook post, the Highway 58 Herald announced that it would be closing its doors for good on Sept. 15.Â
The post, written by board member and former Oakridge Mayor Kathy Holston, said the newspaper was “no longer able to continue operation” and will close next month.
The Herald, according to a February feature on the newspaper from the University of Oregon student newspaper The Daily Emerald, started in 2021 after a previous Oakridge newspaper, the weekly Dead Mountain Echo, closed after almost 50 years in operation.Â
The Highway 58 Herald’s first editor was journalist and Oakridge resident Doug Bates, who was part of the two-person team from The Oregonian that won a Pulitzer Prize in 2006 for editorials about abuse in the Oregon State Hospital.
In its five years of operation, the Highway 58 Herald covered local news and community events, the outdoors, public safety and more.Â
The paper operated thanks to contributing reporters, a volunteer board and the leadership of editor Ellie Graham, who took over at the paper in March after first coming to the paper as a graduate student through the University of Oregon’s School of Journalism and Communication.
“We have eagerly sought reporters and paid for those services,” reads the announcement of the paper’s impending closure. “We have kept the cost to the bare bones and looked for ways to save on the necessary services required. But, even with being frugal, the costs associated with licensing for the website platform, paying a service to keep it up and functioning, paying reporters and an editor have outpaced our income stream. A news source needs advertisers and financial supporters to pay the bills.”
It is the second independent newsroom to close in Lane County this month, after The Chronicle, the hyperlocal print newspaper covering the cities of Springfield, Cottage Grove, Creswell and Pleasant Hill since 1909, announced it would shut down in a column on Aug. 11.
Journalism lovers in Oakridge are encouraged to reach out to the Highway 58 Herald board with an email to general@highway58herald.org to weigh in on the future of rural journalism along Highway 58.
