PORTLAND, Ore. — An Oregon weekly paper has had to lay off its whole personnel and stop print after 40 years since its funds were embezzled by a previous worker, its editor stated, in a ravaging blow to a publication that serves as an essential source of details in a neighborhood that, like lotsof others acrossthecountry, is havingahardtime with growing spaces in regional news protection.
About a week before Christmas, the Eugene Weekly discovered errors in its accounting, editor Camilla Mortensen stated. It found that a previous staffmember who was “heavily included” with the paper’s financialresources had utilized its bank account to pay themselves $90,000 because at least 2022, she stated.
The paper likewise endedupbeing conscious of at least $100,000 in overdue costs — consistingof to the paper’s printer — extending back numerous months, she stated.
Additionally, numerous staffmembers, consistingof Mortensen, recognized that cash from their incomes that was expected to be going into retirement accounts was neverever transferred.
When the paper understood it couldn’t make the next payroll, it was required to lay off all of its 10 personnel members and stop its print edition, Mortensen stated. The option weekly, established in 1982, printed 30,000 copies each week to disperse for totallyfree in Eugene, the third-largest city in the state and home to the University of Oregon.
“To lay off a entire household’s earnings 3 days before Christmas is the outright worst,” Mortensen stated, expressing her sense of destruction. “It was not on my radar that anything like this might have tookplace or was takingplace.”
The presumed staffmember had worked for the paper for about 4 years and has because been fired, Mortensen stated.
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