Portland Stories of the Year

Reporting is a lonely business. Sure, you talk to people—earning their trust that you can tell their story with sympathy and honesty—but when you sit down at the keyboard and review your notebook, you do it alone. (Until your editor texts to ask where the draft is.) The hours between sending an investigative report to press and its debut online are an anxious, isolated time.

All of which is to say: It means a lot when a colleague admires your work.

As we wrap up 2025, our news team asked if they could express some mutual appreciation. We borrowed a page from Bloomberg Businessweek, which annually publishes an “envy list” of stories its staffers wish they’d written. (Our own Anthony Effinger made the Bloomberg list this year for his account of tripping on discount mushrooms.) Our project is more like a Secret Santa gift exchange: We assigned each reporter to pick two stories by a colleague that stood out in 2025. We then had the recipient of the compliment pass it on—but not before penning an update to the tales.

A little self-indulgent? Perhaps. But the exercise might also prove instructive. The most common question we receive from readers is some variation of “Why is this a story?” What follows is an answer to that question: a diagram of what our reporters value in the journalism we produce each week. This is why.

Read the first story.