The Springfield Republic

The beginning story.

After experiencing the recent phenomena of the recently sold "Eugene Register Un-Guard" and reviewing the most recent week's publication of the local "Eugene Un-Weekly" Tonight"... the Republic begins its coverage of the arcane provincial loopholes in the local media that allow the status quo to generally survive here... and this also generally starts the Republic's effort to project a little daylight into a public press and public dialogue that lacks an alternative voice. Missing from the media is a willingness to truly investigate and inform, or to talk to people about all things rather than simply intervene when the interests of the paper itself are being threatened.

So, as of January 26, 2018, the Register Guard has been sold to GateHouse Media of New York, giving up any pretense of local or western style autonomy in the news, and the Weekly, champion of all that is "liberated progress" that enables the Eugene agenda and scene, has again "un-challenged" the status quo by publishing contemporaneously a screed patting Governor Brown on the back for little if any immediate address of the public's critical issues. (Covering her recent statements that she is "bisexual" and where she weighs in by "acknowledging" that there might be a problem in Oregon with homelessness and a shortage of affordable places to live.)

Worth mentioning, though the Weekly and RG really do not, is the fact that Eugene-Springfield area housing vacancies are now down to one percent, and, as Portland has declared a "Public Emergency in Housing" due to a drop in the vacancy rate there when it dropped from 4 to 3 percent. The City does not have a comprehensive plan to attract building, capital investment, or pay increases to keep housing from breaking most households here. It is possible to wonder too if the Governor was premature to team up with the SEIU and others to prevent a $15 dollar minimum wage initiative from coming onto the state ballot. The initiative was crushed in favor of making a deal to pacify impacted Oregon businesses and any perceived inequities in the rural and urban pay schemes. This created an Oregon law that has much smaller increases than the $15 figure, and, unfortunately, a permanent problem for those that work both in urban areas as well as rural Oregon..

For example, where a rental requires no more than 40% of ones wages as rent to be approved (up from what was a maximum 33% not too long ago) one needs to make $15 dollars an hour to rent a place that costs $1000 dollars a month. At 33% one would have needed to make $17.85. Unable to rent to underpaid workers, landlords have relaxed the requirements...

Right now, rents are still increasing statewide, and the 2016 legislature's true failure to act on this or make the playing field even, and the City of Eugene's failure to actually create inclusionary zoning and building incentives, are critical. The local news and the Weekly, are absent on this. And real life concerns of thousands here are lost in the misdirection towards fashionable topics and the serious lack of real investigative reporting, ... instead enshrining institutions that conform to someone's idea of 'what should be supported' in Eugene, like the Weekly's most recent promo piece on Governor Brown ... an article bereft of even a single politically useful perspective - even for Brown's base here.

http://www.eugeneweekly.com/20180125/lead-story/head-state

The news and the understanding of the world that it conveys needs to be more than an ideological formality. Look for more soon here -- and on the website being built to deliver a brand of propaganda relevant to the world of Eugene Springfield, without worrying about stylistic correctness as much as the nature of living here -- the nature of our area is beyond what we have come to expect as useless ad-churning of scandals and shock as news.

A news media cultural presence in Springfield OR... the fittest parts of Eugene's misfit sister, and a place where talking is doing...