Carpenter Media axes 2 more newspapers in Clackamas County

A big player in Oregon’s small town media market is making more cuts in Clackamas County.

This time, Carpenter Media Group has stopped the presses for the Sandy Post and Estacada News, and the lone reporter working for the two newspapers has been laid off, according to a Wednesday note to readers from newly appointed publisher Vance W. Tong.

Tong said subscribers will now receive The Outlook, a weekly publication based in Gresham with one reporter on staff, while the Post and News’ websites will remain online.

“It should come as no surprise that the journalism industry has been facing financial challenges for several years,” Tong wrote. “We are no exception.”

Indeed, the media business has been in trouble for decades, driven by steep declines in classified and print advertisements, as well as new challenges like generative artificial intelligence, which can easily rewrite news articles without providing revenue to the original source.

A bill seeking to force search engine and tech companies to pay dividends to Oregon media companies failed to pass out of the state Senate last month.

Carpenter, a Mississippi-based conglomerate, became one of Oregon’s largest media companies when it purchased the Pamplin and Eastern Oregon media groups last year, which controlled dozens of suburban and rural weeklies.

The media group has gone through at least two rounds of layoffs since then, most recently shutting down the flagship Portland Tribune and two other papers in southern Clackamas County last month.

Layoffs included Steve Brown, former publisher of The Outlook, and Britt Allen, the associate editor for both the Post and News.

Allen is now working for The Mountain Times, which covers the Mount Hood area.

“I’m happy that I’ve found an opportunity to continue to serve those communities that I served for almost 10 years,” Allen said.

Three-quarters of all Oregon newspaper jobs have disappeared since 2001.

John Carr, the head of Carpenter’s operations in Oregon, didn’t respond to a request for comment.