Wyden still hasn't returned that crypto donation.

And other updates on the revolution, or at least minor uprising, in Oregon news media.

Not a real view of the Oregon Roundup’s newsroom.

At the beginning of this year, I took the Oregon Roundup in a slightly newsier direction. The theory was that all coverage of Oregon news in Oregon was from a progressive point of view. The imbalance created by information filtered through one set of political and policy biases contributed to “blind spots” for the Oregon electorate - a disconnection between Oregonians’ dismal view of the condition of their state and their habit of continuing to elect the people who caused those conditions.

My goal: to inject information into the bloodstream of Oregon political debate that otherwise wouldn’t be there. At least, as much injecting as one non-journalist dude with 1.5 (other) full-time jobs and a little help could muster.

And we have injected! From stories on crypto-currency donations to Oregon political figures to breaking exclusive news on the ongoing Oregon Liquor and Cannabis Commission bourbon scandal to an anti-natural gas lobby group’s position against a bill that would increase penalties for destroying natural gas pipelines, we’ve covered and emphasized stories that others have not. On the podcast, I’ve interviewed people in Oregon perspectives on the state that cuts against the dominant narratives of the political and media establishment. I’m proud of what the Oregon Roundup has done in a short amount of time with this new focus. We’re just getting started.

Four months in, it’s time for an update on some of the stories we’ve covered here at the Roundup. There’s some news and some amateur reporting stuff going on behind the scenes, not one of which warrants a stand-alone newsletter, in my opinion. So here’s the, um, roundup:

Ron Wyden still has not returned the election-eve donation he received from alleged crypto-fraudster Sam Bankman-Fried.

The Oregon Roundup broke the news that Sam Bankman-Fried, the subject of federal election and financial fraud charges, gave Oregon’s senior U.S. Senator and chairman of the Senate Finance Committee the maximum legal campaign contribution from Sam Bankman-Fried just prior to the 2022 election, and the bankruptcy of Bankman-Fried’s company, FTX.

National Review Online ran a story based on our report.

Last week, Wyden filed his quarterly spending and fundraising report with the Federal Elections Commission. As of March 31, he still had not returned the $2,900 donated by Sam Bankman-Fried, despite the request from allegedly defrauded FTX creditors that he do so.

Oregon Secretary of State Shemia Fagan still won’t give me public records related to her office calls an investigation into a donation by Bankman-Fried’s associate of $500,000 to the Democratic Party of Oregon in 2022.

In a series lovingly headlined “Fagan Files,” I dove into the unusual personnel practices and profound conflict of interest of Oregon Secretary of State Shemia Fagan, who is deeply partisan and badly conflicted in the above-referenced “investigation” but also has a tattoo of the word “Vote” emblazoned across an outline of the state of Oregon.

I filed a complaint regarding the donation with Oregon Attorney General Ellen Rosenblum to try to move the investigation to her office, where there are at least theoretically career prosecutors who would take a serious look at it. Rosenmblum’s office told me she was happy to let Fagan and the former assistant director of the Democratic Party of Oregon Molly Woon investigate, well, the Democratic Party of Oregon.

I submitted a public records request to Fagan’s office, seeking documents from that office related to the investigation. I made the request on March 10, and more than a month later, I have neither documents nor, as required by Oregon public records law, an estimate as to when I will have documents. Last week, I filed a petition with AG Rosenblum seeking an order requiring Fagan to comply with the law. Hopefully I have better luck with this one.

The Oregon Liquor and Cannabis Commission bourbon scandal is just the beginning.

We first dabbled in the world-famous OLCC bourbongate scandal by observing that it was odd that Oregon Governor Tina Kotek claims that no one in her administration knew of the scandal when she fired the OLCC director at almost exactly the same time the bourbongate scandal, which involved the director, was breaking.

The Oregon Roundup broke some news - a literal world exclusive! - when we were the first to report that some of the OLCC managers who were also implicated in the bourbongate scandal, had been terminated as well. The Oregonian eventually published a story about the termination without explaining that it was only because of the Oregon Roundup’s original report that it knew to contact the OLCC to ask about what we had reported.

I’m not a journalist, just a lawyer and political hack, but I’ve heard journalists have ethics but those must not include attributing a story to the outlet that originally broke it.

After learning that Kotek staff used her campaign email system for some communications related to the OLCC bourbongate mess (a move that subjects campaign emails to public records requests) I submitted a public records request to the Governor’s office seeking written communications regarding bourbongate, including communications to and from “tinafororegon.com” campaign email addresses. I submitted the request on March 1, clarified it at the request of staff on March 28, and have yet to receive either documents or an estimate for when I will receive the documents.

Roundup Podcast Guest Kevin Dahlgren is now a big deal.

I’m glad I booked Oregon homeless advocate Kevin Dahlgren as a podcast guest (“It’s a piece of cake being homeless in Portland”) when I did! Kevin’s since been on Fox News and other national outlets a bunch to talk about how Portland’s approach to homelessness is making the problem worse.

It’s been a hoot.

It’s been fun doing this work, and I plan to keep it up. I’ll continue to mix in opinion stuff and some “funny” stuff. I’m super-biased as well as vain but I’d stack the quality of the Oregon Roundup’s content against any other outlet in Oregon, including those with an actual journalist and more than one at that. OK, own horn sufficiently tooted.

And I want to thank each of you for reading and listening and supporting. As someone once famously said, it takes a village to fix Oregon’s blind spot. Or something like that.

If you’d like to help us keep growing what we can do, become a paid subscriber (only $5/month) if you’re not already, and tell your friends to sign up for a free or paid subscription. I know a lot of you forward these newsletters to other people, for which I am infinitely grateful, but I’d be somehow-more-than-infinitely grateful if you’d urge them to sign up when you do so. This game is all about increasing exposure to increase impact.

Actual view of the Oregon Roundup newsroom.

Onward. Upward.

Jeff