Shuttered Oregon Weekly Relaunches Print Edition

An Oregon weekly newspaper that had to lay off its entire staff after its funds were embezzled by a former employee will relaunch its print edition next month, its editor said, a move made possible in large part by fundraising campaigns and community contributions, Claire Rush reported for the Associated Press (AP).

The Eugene Weekly will return to newsstands on February 8 with roughly 25,000 copies.

The Eugene Weekly will return to newsstands on February 8 with roughly 25,000 copies, about six weeks after the embezzlement forced the decades-old publication to halt its print edition, editor Camilla Mortensen said Saturday.

“It has been both terrifying and wonderful,” Mortensen told AP, describing the emotional rollercoaster of the last few weeks.

“I thought it was hard to run a paper. It’s much harder to resurrect a paper.” The alternative weekly, founded in 1982 and distributed for free in Eugene, one of the largest cities in Oregon, had to lay off its entire 10-person staff right before Christmas.

It was around that time that the paper became aware of at least $100,000 in unpaid bills and discovered that a now-former employee who had been involved with the paper’s finances had used its bank account to pay themselves around $90,000, Mortensen said.

The paper has raised roughly $150,000 since December, Mortensen said.

The majority of the money came from an online GoFundMe campaign, but financial support also came from local businesses, artists, and readers. The paper even received checks from people living as far away as Iowa and New York after news outlets across the country picked up the story.

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