A Legendary Oregon Investigative Reporter Puts Down His Pen

When the Malheur Enterprise closes at the end of May, Les Zaitz says he will have written his last investigative story.

Zaitz, 69, bought the 115-year-old Enterprise in 2015 along with his wife and business partner, Scotta Callister, after a long and distinguished career as an investigative reporter at The Oregonian. Zaitz edited and reported for the paper while Callister initially served as publisher.

Zaitz announced the paper’s closure on May 6.

“The Enterprise is a strong business and represents the very best in community journalism,” he said. “With no successor in sight, it’s time for us to step back from decades of journalism to a slower pace with a renewed focus on family and friends.”

During the course of his career at The Oregonian, Zaitz covered some of the region’s biggest stories, including the 1980 eruption of Mount St. Helens and the bizarre reign of Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh. Zaitz co-wrote a 20-part series on the Central Oregon cult leader, whose takeover of the town of Antelope, criminal plotting, and fleet of Rolls-Royces were the subject of the Netflix series Wild Wild Country.

Zaitz earned a reputation as a relentless reporter and an expert at using Oregon’s public records law to extract information. His investigations of abuses of disabled workers and Mexican drug cartels operating in Oregon were finalists for Pulitzer Prizes in 2007 and 2013, respectively.

In Malheur County, which by at least one key measure, Medicaid enrollment, is the state’s poorest, Zaitz brought his decades of high-level experience to bear on a variety of pressing issues, including a five-part series, “Children in Crisis.”

An evangelist for the importance of journalism as a building block of democracy and community, Zaitz found national organizations willing to share his commitment to rural Oregon. The Enterprise partnered with ProPublica, the award-winning national investigative news nonprofit, USC’s Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism, and Report for America.

Zaitz also made time to co-found and edit Salem Reporter and serve as interim editor of Keizertimes, a Marion County paper his family owns. But while juggling all of his duties at three publications, Zaitz made the time to do what he does best: shoe-leather reporting.

Over the past five years, Zaitz has investigated the state’s longest-serving legislator, state Rep. Greg Smith (R-Heppner). Drawing on a ceaseless flow of public records requests, Zaitz investigated Smith’s business dealings throughout Central and Eastern Oregon.

On May 5, Zaitz won this year’s Bruce Baer Award, Oregon’s top journalism prize, for his reporting on Smith. He’s now won the honor six times, more than any other journalist.

“[Zaitz’s] investigations brought to light ethical and financial entanglements that had long gone unchallenged,” the awards panel wrote. “Those included serious conflicts of interest, mismanagement and a pattern of evasion by Smith.”

Nick Budnick, editor of The Lund Report and a board member of the Society of Professional Journalists’ Oregon chapter, says Zaitz has long served as an inspiration and mentor to journalists around the state.

“Years ago, I heard Les say that reporters should not be sitting around waiting for someone to come in and save journalism: They needed to roll up their sleeves and save it themselves while, above all, serving their communities,” Budnick says. “He has lived that principle, but what’s truly remarkable is that despite his responsibilities and deadlines he still manages to, without fail, turn on a dime to help other reporters and then broadcast their accomplishments. He’s been a giant in the journalism landscape.”

In an interview, Zaitz says he’ll keep his hand in journalism at Salem Reporter and Keizertimes, but he’s finished with investigations: “I’m going to spend more time on a horse than on a courthouse bench.”

This story was produced by the Oregon Journalism Project, a nonprofit newsroom covering the state.