Willamette Week
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Willamette Week
Cover (with a logo that predates the paper's September 2007 redesign).[1]
Type	Alternative weekly
Format	Tabloid
Owner	City of Roses Newspapers
Publisher	Richard Meeker
Editor	Mark Zusman
Founded	November 1974
Headquarters	2220 NW Quimby St. Portland, OR 97210  United States
Circulation	89,807[2]
Website: wweek.com

Willamette Week (WW) is an alternative weekly newspaper published in Portland, Oregon, United States. It features reports on local news, politics, and culture.

Willamette Week is the only alternative periodical^{citation needed} to have one of its reporters win a Pulitzer Prize for Investigative Reporting.^[3] During 2007, WW had more 18- to 34-year-old Portland-area readers than the weekly editions of The Oregonian and more than A&E, the latter's weekly arts and entertainment publication.^[4]

Features

As part of its news coverage, WW features the "Rogue of the Week", in which a recent action by a local person or organization is criticized. It also spotlights "Winners and losers", recapping major news events of the week, from the perspective of who benefited and who did not.

The paper publishes "Callahan", a long-standing comic by John Callahan.

Notable stories

Notable stories first reported by WW include:

• Making public Neil Goldschmidt's long-concealed sexual misconduct with a fourteen-year-old girl. Goldschmidt, a former Oregon Governor, was mayor of Portland at the time of the abuse. After the Willamette Week contacted him for comments on their impending story, Goldschmidt confessed to the relationship in an interview published in the Oregonian before the Week story was set to print. However, the alternative weekly first broke the story on its website.^[5] Nigel Jaquiss won the 2005 Pulitzer Prize for investigative reporting for his work on the story. It was only the fifth time in the prize's 88-year history that a Pulitzer was awarded to a weekly paper, the only time the Pulitzer Prize for investigative reporting has been awarded to a weekly and the first time it was awarded to a paper that first broke the story on-line.

• Revealing that Lewis & Clark College president Michael Mooney had made an unauthorized loan to an energy startup on which the company had defaulted.^[6] The story lead to Mooney's eventual resignation.

• Sifting through the trash of the Portland's mayor, police chief, and the district attorney for Multnomah County, after prosecutors argued that refuse was not protected by the Fourth Amendment.^[7]

• In 1984, WW published a story that revealed a number of falsehoods in the stated biography of Pat Gillis, a Portland legislator who had been considered by many to be the future of the Republican Party. Gillis was recalled from office.^{citation needed}

• A 1987 article by Mark Zusman and Kay Durham about homeless activist Michael Stoops, founder of the Baloney Joe's homeless shelter. Their story charged Stoops with extorting sex from homeless male teenagers in return for shelter and food. While a subsequent investigation confirmed the article's charges (including evidence that a number of boys had contracted gonorrhea of the throat), Stoops was fired and Baloney Joe's eventually closed. Nevertheless, the article resulted in a backlash at Willamette Week and a significant loss of advertising revenue.^[8]

• In 1990, reporter Jim Redden (now with the Portland Tribune) breaks a story alleging that Larry Hurwitz, the owner of Starry Night Nightclub (now the Roseland), was responsible for the disappearance of Tim Moreau, an employee. Hurwitz sues WW for libel. The case is thrown out. Redden leaves the Willamette Week and founds PDXS, a bi-weekly tabloid that sustains a heavy focus on the Hurwitz case. Following the confession of George Castagnola, who allegedly aided Hurwitz in the murder, Hurwitz plead no contest to the murder.^[9]

• In 1998, reporter Maureen O'Hagan (who later goes to the Washington Post and becomes a Pulitzer finalist at the Seattle Times) breaks the story of two Grant high school kids, one who was the student body president and the other a track star and homecoming prince, who were responsible for 20 armed robberies. Both boys go to prison.^{citation needed}

• A 2004 exposé on Mary Manin Morrissey and her Living Enrichment Center.^{citation needed}

Finances

The paper is free; it generates over 80% of its revenue through display advertising.^[4] For 2007, its revenue is expected to be about $6.25 million, a four or five percent increase over 2006, a growth that occurred in spite of a significant decline in classified advertising that the publisher attributes to competition from Craigslist.^[4] Its pre-tax profit is around 5%, a third to a half of what large mass media companies require.^[4]

Trivia

Lists of miscellaneous information should be avoided. Please relocate any relevant information into appropriate sections or articles. (April 2008)

• In recent years, Publisher Richard Meeker (who authored a book about the founder of the Newhouse media empire) has grown the paper's charitable efforts. In 2006, it raised and donated almost $250,000 to Portland area non-profits.^{citation needed}

• WW is also the producer of MusicFest Northwest, a three-day music festival that has become a regional draw.^{citation needed}

• WW is the co-founder of Candidates Gone Wild (with the Bus Project), a series of political debates/performance art.^{citation needed}

• WW alumni include Katherine Dunn, Janet Weiss (of Sleater-Kinney), Susan Orlean.^{citation needed}

• Meeker and Zusman also publish a weekly newspaper in Santa Fe, New Mexico called the Santa Fe Reporter.^{citation needed}

References