Letter to our readers: The ‘Doug & Dean’ show is ending as new phase begins for Highway 58 Herald

By DOUG BATES/Editor/The Herald — The Upper Willamette’s experiment in community journalism will reach an important milestone on Oct. 26.

On that day, my 75th birthday, I will step down as editor of The Herald, and my dear colleague Dean Rea will retire as chief correspondent.

Our mission as volunteers was to create The Herald. We accomplished that, and now it’s time for the nonprofit news site to move on to its next important phase: fundraising and the development of paid staff.

The Herald’s board members, who have known about my retirement plans for months, are considering a number of options for continuing the operation and making it sustainable. The Herald has reached a pivotal point, exceeding its early readership goals and achieving nonprofit status so fundraising can begin in earnest.

Grants and charitable contributions, along with donations from readers, are the financial keys to the wave of nonprofit community journalism that has begun to spread in America. Advertising is still important but no longer adequate to support community newspapers. And The Herald, like almost all nonprofit news sites, is free to its readers — no pay wall, no paid subscriptions.

Putting out The Herald these past eight months with my former journalism professor Dean Rea has been among the most rewarding periods of a long career in news. If I were healthier, I would keep doing it.

But every member of Team Herald knew from the start that I was a short-timer, a septuagenarian with a leaky heart valve and a disabled spouse who needs me to stick around.

I offered to help create The Herald, not to run it. I need to get back to my real job, which is caregiver, chauffeur and chief cook in the kitchen. I also need to resume being a better companion instead of being off chasing news so much of the time.

Dean and I aren’t the hard-driving young journalists we used to be. Though I’m soon turning 75, I’m just the kid on our news staff. Dean will turn 93 on his next birthday, and he’s beginning to think he shouldn’t be out after dark on Highway 58 anymore, driving to meetings at night in the rain.

I gave up driving this highway at night a long time ago.

Each of us will be saying farewell to readers before we depart on the 26th, and I’m confident you’ll be hearing from The Herald’s president in this space, commenting on what happens next. In the meantime, I’ll offer a few well-deserved thank-yous.

To Dean Rea

The man is a legend among Oregon news people. He’s the oldest working journalist any of us know, and he’s still got all the tools for the job. I met him in 1967 when I took his law of the press class at the University of Oregon School of Journalism.

Years later, we found ourselves working side-by-side as editors at The Register-Guard in Eugene. He was among the best assignment editors I’ve ever known — creative, aggressive and smart.

Dean and his wife Lou befriended the younger Bateses and we stayed connected through the decades. After Lou passed away two years ago, Dean caught wind of this Highway 58 Herald project and sent me his entire first stimulus check. Then he volunteered to be our correspondent covering the “Lower 58” communities of Lowell, Dexter, Fall Creek and Pleasant Hill.

Without Dean Rea, The Herald would have no “Highway 58” in its name. There is no way I can adequately thank him for all he has done for The Herald.

To our contributors

More than once, members of our board have heard me say, “If we had five or six more Rob DeHarpports, we’d have this thing nailed.” Rob is the former mayor of Westfir who retired to the Crescent Lake community and writes a regular outdoors column for The Herald. He’s a fine writer who has found his voice as a columnist, and his pieces enjoy strong readership. Oh, and he can handle a camera, too, providing excellent photography to accompany his newsy reports.

Meanwhile, Oakridge musician Ben Olson has stepped up as volunteer entertainment editor and columnist, while multi-talented Oakridge artist Su Stella has emerged as The Herald’s expert arts writer and creator of our monthly Artist of the Month feature.

I must also thank Lydia Plahn, the Lowell High School student-athlete who wrote a popular column for The Herald during her sophomore year.

And finally, many thanks to Lloyd Paseman, the former Register-Guard editor whose weekly commentary on Oregon Ducks football has become a reader favorite in The Herald. Now that Eugene media no longer offer expert analysis of Duck football, Lloyd has been providing it weekly for Duck fans in the Highway 58 corridor, and his columns have been a hit.

The Herald’s next editor will do well to recruit more “community journalists” like Rob, Ben, Su, Lloyd and Lydia, and they should eventually be paid stipends for their work.

To The Herald’s board

George Custer and Joy Kingsbury are the founding board members who lured me to a meeting at George’s Uptown building almost exactly one year ago. Their agenda: Create something to replace the Dead Mountain Echo, the Oakridge weekly paper that had ceased publication after nearly half a century. The result of that meeting was many more meetings and the eventual creation of the nonprofit Highway 58 Herald.

From the start, The Herald has had a stellar cast of board members. They included banking expert and financial whiz Teiri Freborg, formerly of Oakridge, and retired weekly newspaper editor Sandy Thoele of Cheshire. Both have had to step down after making significant contributions to the birth of this enterprise.

Though Dean and I are stepping down from the board, both of us intend to assist in the transition to new journalists on the staff, helping with training and advising.

That leaves the board with Susan Knudsen Obermeyer, the retired Forest Service manager who brings a wealth of board experience, including her service as president of the Lane Electric Cooperative board of directors.

And then, of course, George and Joy, two of the Oakridge business community’s finest. Each has contributed hundreds of hours and thousands of dollars of their own resources to creating The Herald. They share a vision and a keen understanding of the critical need for strong community journalism as part of the backbone of towns like those in the Highway 58 corridor.

A tip of the hat as well to Amy Kelley, The Herald’s office manager and bookkeeper. She has provided the steadying hand that such an undertaking requires.

Thanks, everyone.

Herald Editor Doug Bates is a retired newspaper journalist who lives in Oakridge.