Cafe 420 has been operating as a cannabis cafe for some time now. Rumpspankers will be the second in the city.

 

I will ask the 2011 legislature to give Metro authority over all housing authorities in Multnomah, Clackamas and Washington counties. Equitable Distribution of Public Housing will be the touchstone.

 

Come on Willy Week, you're going after the interns now? That's some kid who landed a sweet but unpaying job, and is industrious enough to grab a freelance gig on the side to pay bills. I really doubt the Merc's interns are high-level enough to dole out special treatment anyways. The job market in this town is especially rough on the recent grads without the experience to grab a salaried job, and as someone who's doing a fair bit of unpaid work himself, I can only say: "What the eff, yo?"

 

I'm with Ryan here. As a big fan of strong journalism ethics, the point is not without merit: the issue of working at an agency that the publication reports on can lend a perception of bias. But the Merc's editors appear to have addressed this by keeping Breslin off that beat.

The bigger issue here is that Breslin is an unpaid intern. In a city with double-digit unemployment, he has a right to earn a living, while getting the needed experience of working at a paper. Mr. Bivins comes off as out-of-touch with the industry climate, considering most of his graduates are likely finding themselves in similar dilemmas as Breslin. And as for the paper, the column -- without any direct proof of wrong-doing by Breslin -- comes off as petty, rotten-egg lobbing. At an intern, no less.

 

You raise some great issues in your Murmur about Metro and the Portland Mercury. From my perspective as Metro's communications director, I want the agency to be absolutely transparent to the public.

We temporarily hired an unemployed reporter (unpaid Mercury intern Sean Breslin) to "cover" a series of conversations we were having with a variety of people and groups across the region because we don't generally get covered by Willamette Week or other traditional media. Our sole goal was to ensure that the public had a chance to learn what we were hearing in as unfiltered and yet concise way as possible. In other words, we were trying to give voice to the public, especially our critics.

The instructions we provided Mr. Breslin were to "report what you hear." Other than spelling, style and title corrections, etc., we didn't edit him. Instead, we posted his work directly to our web page -- even when he was reporting critical comments about our work.

It seems to me that at the very time traditional media have fewer resources to cover government process the public’s expectations for transparency and good information are increasing based on the ubiquity of new media. In this environment, the line between "reporters" and government is blurring. Certainly, the lack of ability of traditional media to provide detailed coverage of government actions raises interesting challenges and opportunities for all of us (and new ethical considerations as well -- particularly for government).

I'm grateful to WW for raising the issue and motivated to create more transparency at Metro in ways that are relentlessly ethical. I stand by the decisions we made and strongly believe that we took a strong and sound step towards improved transparency by temporarily hiring Mr. Breslin. If anyone erred, it was Metro. Perhaps we shouldn’t have hired someone who was associated – even in an unpaid intern capacity – with a commercial news organization. That said, I think the work he did advanced very ethical goals.

More importantly, I believe that Mr. Breslin behaved ethically. In no way did he compromise his journalistic integrity. He reported what he heard and took the gig with Metro with the understanding that he would be allowed to do do so. If you want to look at Mr. Breslin's coverage, point your browser to www.oregonmetro.gov/planningnews. Because of his unique status as a temporary reporter, we bylined all of Breslin's work (other Metro staff don't get bylines but maybe they should???).

Thanks again for the coverage of a very interesting topic.