For Media Advice, Governor, Call Charles Lewis.

[October 24th, 2007]

WINNERS

1 Credit Portland City Council candidate Charles Lewis for media chops. Lewis copped national TV attention last week when Stephen Colbert aired a clip Lewis sent of a bear munching Colbert’s new book. That in retaliation for the Comedy Central host having dissed Portland as a hippie stronghold. Think we’re above it all? Think again—video available on WWire at wweek.com.

2 Falling behind on your subprime home mortgage loan? Call the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry for some tips. Pending approval by OMSI’s board and the Legislature, OMSI has gotten the state to restructure an old loan, complete with some debt forgiveness. Try that the next time Countrywide nags you for loan repayment.

3Portland Public Schools’ effort to win voters’ OK next year of a construction bond issue got an early PR kick-start. Two weeks before the campaign’s public rollout, district officials ruled Lincoln High’s bleachers so unsafe that football games had to be moved.

LOSERS

1 Bad news for authoritarian school officials and parents who think the war on drugs can be won with little plastic cups. A new OHSU study says random testing of student athletes doesn’t curb drug or alcohol use. Maybe threatening athletes with running the bleacher stairs at Lincoln would work.

2 Some friendly advice to Gov. Ted Kulongoski : It’s not confidence-inspiring to run from a reporter’s questions about an Oregon State Bar investigation into whether you knew about former Gov. Neil Goldschmidt’s sexual abuse of a 14-year-old girl. The guv said later in the week there was no merit to the bar complaint filed by Lars Larson, but damage was already done by the fugitivelike clip on the TV news.

3 Cost in space? Proving once again that everything is for sale, a 30-pound chunk of the famous Willamette Meteorite will be sold at auction, over the objection of the tribes who venerate the entire 15.5-ton space rock as a sacred object. The meteorite probably wishes it had just stayed in orbit.

4 For the second time in less than two weeks, a cyclist was killed on a Portland street by a truck making a right turn. No snark here: Cyclists are having a sad stretch.