Beat Check with The Oregonian

Portland voters have one of the most interesting City Hall races in years. Four of the five seats on City Council are up for grabs. The Oregonian/OregonLive's Everton Bailey Jr., who covers City Hall, previews those hotly contested races and discusses why this could be the beginning of the end of the city's unique commissioner form of government. Then, state politics reporter Hillary Borrud discus...

What can Oregonians learn from the coronavirus outbreak at two very different facilities – a veterans’ home in Lebanon and a Southeast Portland care facility that is now home to the state’s largest outbreak? Health reporter Fedor Zarkhin talks tried to answer that question and described his extensive reporting on the COVID-19 outbreaks at each of those two statewide hot spots. Here are five of Fed...

Kim Stafford is a rarity -- a second generation poet laureate. His father, William Stafford, was a famous poet who served in the state role appointed by Oregon's governor for 15 years. Stafford talks about his poetry during the pandemic, why he decided to share his thoughts and work on Instagram and how his view of the world has shifted during the coronavirus era. On the second half of the show, T...

There's still so much that we don't know about those Oregonians who have coronavirus. Despite pushing from The Oregonian/OregonLive reporters like Rob Davis, there are still many unknowns. Davis talks about what we now know, including racial demographics, but also what he is still hoping to learn about the virus in Oregon and how the state is responding. Plus, Shane Dixon Kavanaugh talks about his...

Laura Hillenbrand, the best-selling author of Unbroken and Seabiscuit, moved to Oregon a few years ago. For more than three weeks now, she's endured symptoms consistent with COVID-10, but her test results were negative. Hillenbrand said three doctors said she definitely has the coronavirus. On this bonus episode, The Oregonian/OregonLive's Noelle Crombie talks with Hillenbrand about her illness, h...

Jamie Goldberg and Joe Freeman, two of The Oregonian/OregonLive's sports reporters, had a ton on their plate in March. Goldberg was covering the Trail Blazers for the first time, and their playoff chase. Freeman, who covered the team for 13 seasons, was stepping back a bit and jumping into enterprise coverage and chasing Sabrina Ionescu and the Oregon Ducks. Then, coronavirus changed everything. G...

Therese Bottomly, The Oregonian/OregonLive's editor, talks about covering the coronavirus pandemic, the state of the local news industry and her career at the paper. Bottomly, a Portland native, first started working at the paper in 1983. If you value our journalism, please considering subscribing. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit m...

What are you doing to cope with extensive social distancing and the coronavirus pandemic? Grant Butler, an editor and reporter with The Oregonian/OregonLive, talks about what people and grocery stores are doing in response to the state crackdown. Some people turn to cooking, exercise or therapy. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit mega...

Oregon's economy took a savage hit one week into the potentially months-long reality where bars, restaurants and other social hot spots are shuttered in an attempt to combat the coronavirus. Plus, schools are shuttered through April. Eder Campuzano, The Oregonian/OregonLive's schools reporter, talks about the situation for PPS plus a recent story on how the virus is affecting places like one St. J...

The Oregonian/OregonLive's Michael Russell talks about the exceptional week that led more than 130 Portland restaurant and bar owners to demand Gov. Kate Brown take action to shut them down amid the coronavirus crisis, why some restaurants may never return and why delivery and to-go orders weren't in the cards for some of the city's biggest names in food. Tell us about how coronavirus has changed...

Melissa Graboyes and Alfredo Burlando are professors at the University of Oregon, but the married couple and their two kids on now on lockdown in Italy. We talked about what life is like in the quarantine, why Oregonians need to let go of social plans and hunker down and what they do to pass the time. Plus, we catch up with The Oregonian/OregonLive's Hillary Borrud to talk about the failed legisla...

Journalism is the search for truth, but what does a reporter do when a fast-breaking news story is filled with so many unknowns? As the coronovirus situation unfolds in the Portland area and around Oregon, The Oregonian's Fedor Zarkhin is working the phones and trying to get the best information possible. On this episode, Zarkhin talked about the challenges of covering a fast-moving story with so...

It’s been less than a week since Oregonians first learned that the state had a prospective case of the novel coronavirus. We checked in with Dr. Carlos Crespo, a community health professor and vice-provost at the OHSU-PSU School of Public Health to get his thoughts on the state’s response so far, why the state isn’t giving out lots of information about the cases we do know about, and why he said i...

Concordia University's path to financial ruin may have been sealed a decade ago. The private Lutheran university, which called Northeast Portland home for more than a century, hitched its fate to an educational technology company known as HotChalk. The Oregonian's Molly Young highlighted that problematic relationship in 2016, but according to documents obtained by Young and Jeff Manning, Concordia...

The Boy Scouts of America have declared bankruptcy, an unprecedented move that reverberated around the nation. The wave of sex abuse lawsuits against the nonprofit organization started in Portland a decade ago. A nearly $20 million ruling against the scouts set the stage for more cases nationally. But a lawsuit filed by The Oregonian and other news organizations during that same period may have pl...

The Unity Center for Behavioral Health in Northeast Portland was supposed to be a game changer for mental illness in the city. Three years after it opened, the hospital is struggling. The Oregonian/OregonLive's Molly Harbarger and Brad Schmidt talk about the variety of woes -- financial, social and otherwise -- facing the still new hospital. The hospital it was designed to emulate is also in crisi...

So many of Nicholas Kristof's friends, neighbors and classmates died young. The New York Times columnist and his wife, fellow Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Sheryl WuDunn tried to figure out what these tragic deaths of despair from so many Yamhill, Oregon friends and their family means and what it says about the United States. The resulting reporting led to "Tightrope: Americans Reaching for Ho...

Oregon's Legislature meets for the next 35 days in Salem, and a cap and trade bill is expected to be the centerpiece of the session. This comes less than a year after Senate Republicans walked out and left the state to prevent Democrats from moving forward with the climate change bill. The Oregonian's Hillary Borrud and Ted Sickinger preview that fight and other legislative battles expected this s...

Catlin Gabel is facing a reckoning. The Southwest Portland private school, known as a progressive educational institution that's educated the city's wealthy and elite for decades, released an explosive investigation in December that outlined serious sexual abuse allegations dating back decades. Jeff Manning, The Oregonian's senior investigative reporter, details the horrific details in the school'...

One of the darkest days in Portland's recent history will be back in the spotlight for the next five weeks. Jeremy Christian is on trial for fatally stabbing Ricky Best and Taliesin Namkai-Meche and seriously wounding Micah Fletcher on a MAX train May 26, 2017. The Oregonian's Aimee Green will be there for the entire trial. She talks about what to expect in the trial, including whether Christian m...

Danielle Outlaw arrived in Portland as police chief in 2017 to much acclaim. She talked about changing the bureau, repairing the relationship with the public and much more. She quietly left Portland to become Philadelphia's chief just before New Year's. Maxine Bernstein, who has covered every police chief since 1998, talks about Outlaw's legacy, the bureau's challenges and the new chief, Jami Resc...

Life comes at you fast. For Valerie Thompson, the driver of the Aurora-based Target 550 racing team, fast is never fast enough. Thompson is one of the fastest drivers in the world and one of a handful of women who get behind the wheel of the fastest internal combustion engine vehicles on the planet with the sole purpose of setting land speed records. We talked about her quest to set a new land spe...

A look back at the biggest stories in Oregon this year. The Oregonian/OregonLive's Everton Bailey and Kale Williams join Beat Check to talk about the memorable stories from 2019 and their broader meaning. The conversation touched on the Republican walkout in Salem, Portland protests, Gordon Sondland, Keanon Lowe and more. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information. Learn more about...

The Oregonian's Andre Meunier approached 2019 with a seemingly impossible task: to visit 49 breweries based in Portland (he squeezed in one more after recording) and designate the best shop in town this year. Meunier talked about his top 10 list, why so many legendary businesses closed up shop this year and how he approaches the job. We also talked about a special project he expects to launch in 2...

A conversation with Mike Rogoway about some of the biggest business stories of the past year. We talked about Intel and Nike's internal strife but continued profitability, Gert Boyle's death, massive layoffs at a food processing plant in the Willamette Valley and what to watch for in Oregon business developments as we enter 2020. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information. Learn mor...