July 5, 2021 was a very different time for Street Roots, Portland and the entire United States.
We had a different governor, different city council and different newspaper staff. The COVID-19 delta variant had yet to grip the nation. The omicron variant was still months away. July 5, 2021 was also my first day as the inaugural Zuhl Editing Fellow, hired to ease the transition from longtime executive editor Joanne Zuhl to whoever replaced her. Zuhl and her staff were set to leave Street Roots by the end of the month.
Until Street Roots selected a new editor, it was up to me to ensure vendors had a quality paper to sell each week. My experience editing a daily newspaper in college made me confident I could get through 12 weeks without burning the figurative house down, but little else.
As an early career journalist from an unconventional background, it felt unlikely I would be Zuhl’s successor. I viewed my time at Street Roots as temporary anyway. I just left a low-paying job as a reporter at a different newspaper, determined to build a Rolodex of editors interested in working with me as a freelancer until an ideal permanent job became available.
In November 2021, I was honored to become Street Roots’ editor in chief, though I realized the “ideal permanent job” was staring me in the face months before.
Despite my respect and admiration for Street Roots, I viewed the fellowship as something to ease my own transition by providing me with a decent wage while I served Portlanders and plotted my next steps.
So, instead of sending pitches to editors as planned, I thought I’d spend a few months on the other side of that relationship. Two years later, that’s still the case. However, that’s one of the few things that hasn’t changed in the last 730 days.
As of this July 5, the newspaper has an editor in chief, editorial producer, investigative reporter, Indigenous affairs reporter and, currently, two stellar interns in Miles Silvey and Jeremiah Hayden. Its now-award-winning staff is awaiting a move to a new office on the corner of Northwest Third Avenue and West Burnside Street, which is currently undergoing renovations. Street Roots has a growing readership (up 40% and counting since January 2022) and an expanding base of incredible supporters.
At the beginning of August 2021, Street Roots didn’t have a single editorial staff member. Sales were lagging well behind pre-pandemic levels after Street Roots paused print production in 2020. I was still an independent contractor, and I made the newspaper by myself, leaning on excellent then-freelancers Henry Brannan and Jake Thomas (and some very, very shaky graphic design skills). Former editorial producer Monica Kwasnik, also on a contract at the time, and executive director Kaia Sand assisted with digital production.
Kanani Cortez, Street Roots’ current editorial producer, started Aug. 24, 2021, providing an immediate and much-needed stabilizing force regarding print layout and digital production. In less than two years, Cortez led a painstaking redesign of the paper, including new fonts, new layouts and new page orders. She’s also substantially grown Street Roots’ digital reach via its website, newsletter and social media accounts.
Mobile Journalism, or MoJo, coordinator Gary Barker was then, and remains now, an integral member of the Street Roots staff. In addition to working countless hours to build a program educating Street Roots vendors about journalism, he lent his passion and keen eye to the process of assembling the Street Roots editorial staff in late 2021 and early 2022.
Street Roots was fortunate to add Piper McDaniel as its first staff investigative reporter in March 2022. She’s contributed much to the paper’s growing reputation for hard-hitting accountability journalism, digging deep into oft-ignored topics like prison deaths, renters’ rights and business interests’ outsized (and largely unmonitored) influence on local policy. She just won the Oregon Society of Professional Journalists’ 2022 Rookie of the Year award for her efforts.
Melanie Henshaw became Street Roots’ first Indigenous affairs reporter in July 2022, after three months as the Zuhl Fellow. Henshaw immediately reinforced just how lucky the paper was to publish her work, offering incredible stories on a wide array of topics, including reproductive rights, prison deaths and her award-winning coverage of Ervin Jones’ family’s quest to correct the record surrounding his 1945 death at the hands of Portland police. After transitioning to her Indigenous affairs role, Henshaw quickly became one of the preeminent journalists covering Indigenous affairs in the region, localizing impactful Supreme Court cases, covering funding and staffing woes at local Indian Health Service facilities and providing much-needed coverage of Native art and artists.
Freelancer Aurora Biggers started working with Street Roots in August 2021, as well. Her first work with Street Roots was an impactful series on the Oregon Emergency Rental Assistance Program, or OERAP, designed to provide pandemic rent relief. Biggers was the first to report despite OERAP funds going out in other counties throughout the state, Multnomah County had yet to distribute a dime. Within a couple of weeks, other papers caught on to the story, ultimately forcing the state to step in and ensure the program started paying out.
In the category of things that haven’t changed, Street Roots is still privileged to work with talented, dedicated freelancers like Biggers, Ellen Clarke, Tom Henderson, Henry Latourette Miller, Diego Diaz, Caroline Arya, Allison Barr and Terah Bennett, who also served as a volunteer fact-checker for over a year.
As a volunteer, Bennett joined the ranks of other invaluable folks, like volunteer copy editors Kathleen McFall, Mark Oldani and Jon Raymond, or volunteer puzzle maker Camber Hansen-Carr, or volunteer columnists Martin Hart-Landsberg and Mary King.
Vendor profile writers Jessica Hamilton, Bruno Crolla, Robin Havenick, Meg Eberle, Emily Emanuel and Sasha Azizi Rosenfeld are volunteers, as well.
While they’re not volunteers, Street Roots’ vendors, customers and supporters make the work of everyone above possible.
Vendors, many of whom live outside, confront weather, inconsistent consumer patterns and a shifting legal landscape each week to serve their community and earn an income. Their customers make their time and effort worthwhile.
Since vendors buy papers roughly at cost (25 cents each) and sell them for a dollar, keeping the profit, the newspaper doesn’t profit from sales. We rely entirely on donations and grants to produce the impactful journalism customers expect to read when they open the paper. The continued and growing support the newspaper has experienced in the last two years has been nothing short of amazing.
With public records costs, technology expenses, a commitment to pay staff a living wage and a desire to improve our public service as a newspaper, we’re grateful for continued support, and we hope it continues to grow so we can, too.
Whether you’re a vendor, customer, supporter, staff member, freelancer or volunteer, I want to thank you for an incredible first two years, and express my excitement for the years to come. I, and the newspaper, couldn’t do it without you.
Sincerely,
K. Rambo
Street Roots editor in chief
Street Roots is an award-winning weekly investigative publication covering economic, environmental and social inequity. The newspaper is sold in Portland, Oregon, by people experiencing homelessness and/or extreme poverty as means of earning an income with dignity. Street Roots newspaper operates independently of Street Roots advocacy and is a part of the Street Roots organization. Learn more about Street Roots. Support your community newspaper by making a one-time or recurring gift today.
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