After watching the stunning decline of their local newspaper, Eugene and Springfield residents will have a new alternative in the coming months.
Ken Doctor, noted newspaper business consultant turned publishing entrepreneur, said he will start a digital news site, Lookout Eugene-Springfield, late in 2024 or early in 2025. A graduate of the University of Oregon school of journalism, Doctor said he has raised $2.5 million from a number of Eugene-area foundations and families and said he plans to raise another $1.5 million.
The news site will have a staff of 20, Doctor said, 15 of them in the newsroom. That’s a third more than The Register-Guard currently boasts, according to that newspaper’s staff directory.
Lookout Santa Cruz, which Doctor founded four years ago, has a staff of 15. All but five are journalists, he said.
The largest donor to the Eugene startup so far is the Tykeson Charitable Family Trust, which pledged $1 million.
“We’re in a news crisis in the world right now,” said Amy Tykeson, trustee of the foundation. “The community deserves a high-quality, non-partisan, trusted news source, and Lookout Eugene could be it.”
The Tykesons offered the $1 million as a challenge grant, meaning it is conditioned on the organization raising at least $1 million from other donors.
“We wanted to inspire others,” Tykeson said.
Doctor worked for years as a consultant to the newspaper business. He consistently argued that a well-managed operation that offered quality watchdog journalism could make it even in the era of smart phones and social media.
In 2020, Doctor decided to put his words into action in Santa Cruz.
The California city has much in common with Eugene. Both are college towns with highly educated populations — and struggling newspapers.
Both The Register-Guard and the Santa Cruz Sentinel were acquired by private equity firms that aggressively cut expenses and the papers’ ability to cover local news.
By last summer, The Register-Guard had no local editor — its journalists reported to a sibling paper in Salem — no publisher, no physical newsroom and a news staff of six. It once had more than 80.
Register-Guard managers could not be reached for comment.