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Good journalism can change the world. Ours didn’t. But it did change Portland, little by little, thanks to WW reporters who compelled our leaders to pay attention to ways in which powerful people were abusing their authority. Here’s how Portland changed in 2025 because of our stories.
Portland Public Schools is bracing elementary schools for earthquakes.
Most novels don’t make a dent at the ballot box. Emma Pattee’s Tilt joins Uncle Tom’s Cabin and The Jungle on the short list of exceptions. Her book imagines the hours after a Cascadia subduction zone earthquake strikes Portland, including a wrenching scene of parents awaiting news of their children’s deaths outside a collapsed brick elementary school. WW published an excerpt in March—along with Pattee’s reporting, more than a year in the making, describing which 19 schools could meet the same fate when the Big One hits. The March 26 cover story, “Sticks and Stones,” spurred a revolt by parents at Beverly Cleary Elementary and other schools on that list, who demanded that seismic upgrades get moved to a top funding priority in the school district’s $1.8 billion bond measure. On May 6, the School Board caved—and formally pledged to prioritize earthquake safety over other maintenance spending. The bond voters passed two weeks later was a better bond.
Preschool for All is getting new leadership.
In July, the Oregon Secretary of State’s Office flagged four examples of “wasteful” spending by preschool providers bankrolled with state dollars. The report, however, did not name the four providers—an omission spotted by WW reporter Joanna Hou. Acting on a tip from a reader, she compared the expenses in the state investigation to the annual reports filed by a Northeast Portland preschool, Village Childcare Enterprises LLC. Its owner? Leslee Barnes, the director of preschool and early learning at Multnomah County. That meant Barnes was supervising the rollout of another government-subsidized preschool initiative, Preschool for All, while her own business failed to efficiently spend state dollars. County officials said they had no clue Barnes still owned a preschool. They’re still investigating their ethics rules—but within 48 hours, Barnes resigned her government post.
And so are the city’s tree inspectors.
City Hall reporter Sophie Peel first took note of Portland’s Urban Forestry division in the aftermath of a January 2024 winter storm that sent a 150-foot Douglas fir into the second story of Sarah and Joel Bonds’ Southwest Portland home. The Bonds had begged Urban Forestry for two years to let them remove the tree, to no avail. They were far from the only Portland homeowners with horror stories about the squad of 27 inspectors who police and issue permits to Portlanders seeking to trim or remove trees on or near their property. In a March cover story, “The Taking Tree,” Peel revealed that the tree regulation team had become the enforcement arm for one official: Jenn Cairo, the city forester, whose rulings were stronger than oak. Peel’s story drew fury from Cairo’s allies, but it also got the attention of the City Council, which wrested the enforcement division from Urban Forestry and Cairo in June.
Multnomah County contractors must disclose their lobbying.
One of every three dollars Multnomah County spends out of its $3.3 billion annual budget goes to contractors. That makes the county one of the region’s largest pass-through agencies—and a lot of that money goes to combating homelessness, voters’ top priority. Yet the contractors receiving the money didn’t have to say whose arm they twisted to get it—unlike at the city and Metro, no laws required disclosing the lobbying of county officials. WW reporter Anthony Effinger started hammering at that black box in February, with a story titled “Nothing to See Here,” and two months later the county passed a sunshine law. Effinger kept going: This fall, he found financial improprieties at one of the county’s largest shelter providers, and he is locked in a battle with the Oregon Community Foundation, which is trying to withhold the records of state shelter providers as trade secrets.
Sex traffickers can no longer operate with impunity in Portland neighborhoods.
It’s hard to miss the illicit massage parlors whose neon lights flash across the city, advertising businesses that regularly compel undocumented women to perform sex acts for customers. But lawmakers and cops largely ignored the phenomenon until WW contributor Eliza Aronson used data from a watchdog nonprofit in September 2024 to reveal that the number of such parlors in Portland had tripled in five years to 114. (Aronson began the project as an intern placed by the Charles Snowden Program for Excellence in Journalism.) Among the readers of “Nightmare in Plain Sight” was state Rep. Thuy Tran (D-Northeast Portland), who credits Aronson’s reporting for spurring her to write a bill that, among other things, increases the maximum charge for repeat offenders operating such businesses from a misdemeanor to a Class C felony, punishable by up to five years in prison and a $125,000 fine. In June, Gov. Tina Kotek signed the bill into law. As for Aronson? She’s now a reporter with The Daily Herald in Everett, Wash., where she’s covering the devastating floods in Snohomish County.
