Turnover at Willy Week
City Hall reporter Beth Slovic joins news editor Hank Stern in quitting Willamette Week. But while Stern has moved into the ranks of Multnomah County p.r. flacks, Slovic's going in the opposite direction, taking Stern's old job at the Oregonian.
Her fiancee, Nick Budnick, is another ex-WW writer, and he's leaving the Bend Bulletin to come back to Portland and work at the O, too. Good luck to both of them -- we suspect they will need it. One wonders which will come first, their buyout offers or their first W-2s.
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Comments (9)
So Stern will create the ready to print or ready to teleprompter read news stories and Slovic scans them into the O's data base.
That is what we call the News Business today.
Posted by Abe | April 28, 2011 10:03 AM
I'll admit that WW Has done a good job of targeting readership. But, its readers are creative techo creatures with all the passion, education, temperament, and judgement of a pretty smart high school sophmore passing thru a pretty rotten public school.
Power to the people right on. Slovic and Stern's shift to the Oregon will satisfy the sophmore aging into ossification.
Destiny. Power to the people right on.
Posted by ll | April 28, 2011 10:17 AM
Isn't being a PR flack for Multnomah County basically the same as being a reporter at the Oregonian?
The same work, with paychecks from two different sources.
Posted by MachineShedFred | April 28, 2011 11:08 AM
Good to have Nick Budnick back in Portland.
Wonder what these two might do on the Bull Run Water issue and Reservoirs.
As far as I know, I may have missed an article, Willamette Week has been remarkably quiet on this.
Posted by clinamen | April 28, 2011 2:04 PM
Do your profession proud, Nick.
Posted by Jack Bog | April 28, 2011 2:28 PM
I find Beth Slovic's reporting to be thoughtful and certainly more in depth than the others in town who fail to dig deeper and are satisfied with regurgitating the "press" releases put out to puff up whatever entity/cause is trying to get noticed.
Posted by teresa | April 28, 2011 3:15 PM
Why wish her luck?
On one end of the spectrum, you have real journalists in countries like Mexico and Russia who put their lives at risk reporting on corruption. On the other end, you have sycophants like Slovic.
What passes for journalism here in Portland is garbage. I've dealt with Slovic, and "sophomoric" is too polite a word to describe her.
Posted by Peter Apanel | April 28, 2011 8:41 PM
Anyone securing a job in journalism at this moment in the occupation has realized success:
"The Daily Beast has weighed in with the most useless college majors.
And journalism is the most useless of a futile lot. The profession lost 4,400 jobs from 2008 to 2010. And yet, about 78,000 people graduated with journalism degrees in 2008-2009."
http://blog.seattlepi.com/thebigblog/2011/04/28/and-the-most-useless-college-major-is-the-daily-beast/
Posted by Gardiner Menefree | April 28, 2011 9:19 PM
It should also be noted that Corey Pein will return to WW in June. This is not a representative piece:
http://www.wweek.com/portland/blog-27032-portland_might_one_day_grow_up_to_marry_a_prince.html
OTOH, this piece suggests the work he used to do:
"A few days after a Portland City Auditor's report on the directionless Office of Neighborhood Involvement, Bojack has dug up a shockingly paranoid and unintentionally hilarious 'Safety in the City' newsletter just released by the $6.5 million bureau.
What's most striking about the document, produced by two staffers in ONI's crime prevention division (salary range $41,000-$54,000 a year), is the level of condescension on display. That is, condescension toward the general public, on the part of the bureaucracy.
Or...are we really this stupid?"
http://www.wweek.com/portland/print-blog-7514-print.html
Condescension remains a prominent feature of the Office of Neighborhood Interference (ONI).
Posted by Gardiner Menefree | May 1, 2011 1:53 PM