Although The Oregonian, Portland's mainstream newspaper, is struggling like so many others, I am amazed at the plethora of alternative and community newspapers available in this city. This row of vending boxes is typical of so many street corners, and they all have current, free newspapers available. One of them, Willamette Week, even won a Pulitzer Prize in 2005, for a series of investigative articles about Oregon's ex-governor Neil Goldschmidt's sexual abuse of a teenage girl in the 1970s. They also recently broke a story about another political scandal and scooped The Oregonian -- this time about Portland Mayor Sam Adams and his sexual relationship with a teenage legislative intern. (Is there a pattern here?) By the way, he's still mayor.
However, The Oregonian has been nominated for a Pulitzer Prize nearly every year since 1993. They've won a total of five in the last ten years. I recently had my opinion writing students read the 2006 Pulitzer-Prize winning series of editorials called "Oregon's Forgotten Hospital." It's a horrifying and moving account of the state of affairs in the state hospital in Salem, formerly known as the Oregon Asylum for the Insane. You may know it as the setting for the 1975 movie "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest."
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