Four hundred miles southeast of Portland, in a town of 2,000 near the Idaho border, one of Oregon’s best newspapers is up for sale. Aspiring owners of the Malheur Enterprise have until March 1 to write an essay convincing Les Zaitz, publisher and editor, that they’ll be good stewards of the century-old paper his family bought in 2015.
Harder than the essay, though, may be maintaining the high bar for local reporting set by Zaitz, a dean of investigative journalism in Oregon.
As for the business side, Zaitz and others say small papers providing quality coverage can still be a decent investment despite the industry’s struggles.
Zaitz won acclaim at The New York Times and The Oregonian before he and his wife, journalist Scotta Callister, bought the Enterprise. They since distinguished the paper by combining strong community news coverage with unrelenting pursuit of wrongdoing and public records. It’s a model of public service building a strong local news business.
To reveal that an accused murderer was released early from the state mental hospital, despite warnings that he was dangerous, the Enterprise engaged in a battle for public records that eventually involved the governor’s intervention. It won the national FOI Award from the national Investigative Reporters and Editors organization. The Enterprise also routinely wins buckets of awards in Oregon Newspaper Publishers Association contests.
Fortunately Zaitz, 66, isn’t actually retiring. From his ranch in Malheur County, he’s now editing the Oregon Capital Chronicle, the Salem outpost of States Newsroom, a nonprofit network of statehouse bureaus. He’s also editing The Salem Reporter, a local news startup he co-founded in 2018, and his family publishes the Keizertimes in Keizer, Ore.
It’s encouraging to hear that in a country that’s divided and increasingly skeptical of “the media.” Small papers can play an important role in rebuilding trust in the press and the civic engagement it nurtures. Zaitz said he’s built trust in a conservative area by being transparent “about how we do our work and why we do the things we do.”
Overall the Enterprise has about 3,000 subscribers plus support from local advertisers. It prints a weekly paper and a digital edition. It sells them as separate products and charges more for digital access. That supports a staff of six, plus four interns in summers.
The paper is in Vale, a town about an hour from Boise, which is thriving and spreading growth into surrounding areas.
In his announcement, Zaitz said he wants to know about potential owners’ financial strength. He offered consulting to help the owner get started and said the “entry cost will be manageable, to preserve capital for a new owner to operate successfully.”
That covers the three indicators of a newspapers’ likely success, according to Penelope Muse Abernathy, a Northwestern University professor who studies the business. They are a publisher who knows and responds to community needs and expectations; capital to invest for at least five years; and good demographics (although Malheur County isn’t wealthy, the greater region is growing).
Zaitz said it may take time to sell the paper but he’s not in rush, despite the deadline for essays.
“If by March 1 I don’t get a single response that tells me that in this day and age … well, OK,” he said, trailing off briefly. “We’ll go to plan B, whatever that is.”
Brier Dudley is editor of The Seattle Times Save the Free Press Initiative. Reach him at bdudley@seattletimes.com
