Make the McKenzie Connection!
Make the McKenzie Connection!
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Next year, McKenzie River Reflections will turn 50. That’s a milestone my wife, Louise, probably didn’t have in mind when we picked up the first issue as it came off the press at the Springfield News. This newspaper hasn’t remained in business just by itself. Reflections has survived because generations of readers have subscribed, businesses have advertised, people have sent in photographs and story ideas, organizations have kept us informed and countless residents have said, or sent a note, beginning with some version of, “You ought to do a st...
Community newspapers are more than the articles that appear weekly. They’re part of the civic backbone of the communities they serve. For nearly fifty years, McKenzie River Reflections has filled that role in the McKenzie River Valley - covering schools and fire districts, county government and utilities, elections and public meetings, wildfires and rebuilding, businesses, volunteers and neighbors. If I, or someone else, catches a mistake, the next issue will include a correction. Reporting aims to preserve our community’s history. Years from n...
It seems McKenzie River Reflections should enter more competitions. That’s the message I got when the paper received an award for its website at this year’s Pacific Northwest News Publishing Contest. Sponsored by the Oregon Newspaper Publishers Association the competition included entries from Washington, Idaho and Oregon, judged by a panel from the New Jersey Press Association. It’s likely there wasn’t any locally influenced favoritism. But a surprise came when I was asked to go to the podium to accept a plaque for an “Elmo Smith Award of...
It’s been said that running a local newspaper can be one of the most frustrating, worthwhile, mundane, exciting, demanding, rewarding endeavors you can take on. Within the industry, the word is that “community journalism starts with community.” After decades of being part of a statewide newspaper publishers association, Reflections dropped out about 15 years ago. Why? Because the membership and the group’s activities seemed more aligned with larger publications. When River Reflections launch-ed in 1978 it wasn’t alone among startups that had...
“Volume 48, Issue 1” is in the “flag” section on the front page of this week’s edition. It marks the start of the 48th year since my wife, Louise, published this newspaper’s first edition. A lot of things have changed since then - ranging from the way it was originally laid out using a typewriter - to today’s digital format with “talking text” features. The cartoon to the right has been updated since it was first created for Reflections by Barry McWilliams back in September of 2012. Sadly, both Louise and Barry have passed away and are no l...
The Oregonian and the Seattle Times were the big winners in last weekend’s Pacific NW News Contest for dailies with 9,000+ paid circulation. The competition rated work submitted by similar sized newspapers from three states - Oregon, Idaho, and Washington. This year, I decided to rejoin the Oregon Newspaper Publishers Association, which sponsors the contest. The process, though, wasn’t as simple as renewing a membership that had expired. Back in the late 1970s, River Reflections was a traditional paper delivered to subscribers via the US Pos...
Last week, the Oregon Senate accepted testimony on a bill that could help some struggling newspapers. Here’s what I told them. My name is Ken Engelman. I own and publish the McKenzie River Reflections newspaper. I am a member of both the Oregon Newspaper Publishers Association and Local Independent Online News, or LION. For over 47 years, McKenzie River Reflections has provided in-depth local coverage for my area’s ten unincorporated rural towns in a way no other news outlet could. Today, McKenzie residents and businesses continue to look to Mc...
A UO School of Journalism and Communication project, underway since 2022, has been studying news needs around the state. Too often, they’ve found deep and yawning deficiencies. However, there are also some bright points, like the Institute for Nonprofit News, which has nearly doubled to 474 outlets, including eight in Oregon. Over the last year, readers have seen some of the benefits of “cooperative coverage” in the bylines of stories in River Reflections. They’ve been tagged to articles about investments in our forests' carbon offsets and cov...
Those were the bad news headlines in the Corvallis Gazette-Times this week. The article explained that the 188-year-old Brownsville Times newspaper had published a paper the week before and was quietly shuttered. The story from the Sweet Home New Era was that its former publishers had to take back the reins and were contemplating whether the 95-year-old publication would continue to exist after the end of December. As most readers know, River Reflections faced a similar fate back in 2022 when the costs of printing and mailing a weekly...
“Volume 47” appears on the top of the front page of this edition. Right beside it is “Issue 1.” Those numbers mark the start of the forty-seventh year that River Reflections will be reporting on life along the McKenzie River. In the weeks and months to come, some of the stories are likely to continue to inform on things people may not have thought about, others could be sad, and some at times silly. That last item got me thinking about what might have been lightening the mood of other publications. Here are a few samples. In the early days of...
