News / Clark County News

From the Newsroom: Catching up with Lou Brancaccio

By Craig Brown, Columbian Editor

Published: July 20, 2024, 6:10am

Columbian editor emeritus Lou Brancaccio, left, and current editor Craig Brown catch up at the Eighth Street Starbucks Coffee in downtown Vancouver on Wednesday. (Lou Branaccio)

Just in time for the primary election, he’s back!

I’m talking about Lou Brancaccio, retired Columbian editor and political columnist. A lot of readers loved his column, which was at its most memorable when it pointed to the greed, stupidity and self-righteousness in local politics, particularly on the Board of Clark County Commissioners. Some hated it, particularly the aforementioned commissioners.

I still get asked about Lou, who retired in February 2017, and even get an occasional letter from his fans who hate my column. My goal in writing a weekly column is not to talk about politics, but to help explain how and why we do what we do, and try to de-mystify “the media,” which in The Columbian’s case is less of a colossus and more of a family-owned small business.

But back to Lou. He and his wife, Maley, were in Vancouver this week for the first time since they sold their Salmon Creek home three years ago and decided to live full time in Florida, where they both have roots. I’ve been lucky enough to visit them at their Florida home, and I can tell you it looks like a pretty good life. If you follow Lou on Facebook, you know he and Maley enjoy their sunset walks, and Lou stays busy with cooking Italian dishes and the occasional trip to the local poker room for a friendly game of cards.

Lou and I met for coffee Wednesday at the downtown Vancouver Starbucks. He’s dropped a few pounds, probably from those sunset walks, and let his hair go silver, which looks good on him.

We talked about what’s going on at The Columbian, of course. The newsroom is much smaller now than when he led it, but he said he reads our ePaper every day and likes what he sees. I told him that our youngish staff of reporters has been on the job for a while now and have sharpened their reporting and writing skills. They’ve also learned a fair bit about Clark County’s recent past.

He asked about the lack of a Sunday paper and whether that creates gaps in news coverage. As you’ll recall, we combined the Saturday and Sunday papers so that our weekend edition could be delivered by the post office Saturday. I told him that most of the time it works, because there is rarely breaking news on Saturdays. When it does happen, we have whoever is staffing the Sports desk either publish the news on our website or call an editor in on overtime. An example of this occurred last Saturday, when a would-be assassin wounded Donald Trump at a campaign rally. Tim Martinez, our assistant sports editor, had the story online quickly and continued to update it for the rest of the shift.

Although he’d only been in town for one day, and it was hot, Lou said he had checked out the impressive Columbia River waterfront. Some of the buildings were already in place three years ago, but many more have been completed or are nearly complete, including the large parking garage. Downtown is also sporting several new buildings, many of which contain apartments. Even in future business downturns, a lot of people will still live downtown, which will help prevent the emptying out of the central business district that has occurred in Portland and some other places.

We also chatted about the gap between print and digital subscriptions. Although he hasn’t been retired all that long, the numbers have flipped since his day. Digital subscribers are now the majority at The Columbian and I suspect most other newspapers. Print customers are still important, but as a business we’ll want to keep in mind that our revenue growth potential is mostly on the digital side of the house. Social media is part of that strategy, with platforms including YouTube, TikTok, Facebook and Instagram being important ways to try to attract new, paid customers.

After an interesting and fast hour, we parted with a hug and a handshake. I hope we’ll see each other again soon.

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