Skip to main contentNo story about "who knew" would be complete without a discussion of the role of The Oregonian-the Northwest's largest daily newspaper and the state's most powerful shaper of public opinion.
Local readers and media critics at publications including The Washington Post and the Columbia Journalism Review have hammered The Oregonian since May about its handling of the Goldschmidt story.They said the paper was too soft on Goldschmidt, allowing him to call what legally constituted statutory rape "an affair" while overstating its own role in uncovering the secret.
But it is The Oregonian's conduct before the story was broken that deserves more scrutiny.
WW has learned that the paper's first solid information about Goldschmidt's secret came 18 years ago, in 1986. At that time, Jack Ohman, the paper's nationally syndicated editorial cartoonist, heard a tip from a friend.
Ohman took the information to his boss, then-editorial page editor Robert Landauer, who still writes a twice-weekly column for the paper. (At daily papers, the newsgathering and editorial-page staffs work independently.)
In an interview last week, Landauer recalled that after speaking to Ohman, he interviewed Ohman's source, whom he would not identify, and found him to be credible.
Landauer says he immediately called a meeting with then-Editor William Hilliard and Managing Editor Peter Thompson, both since retired. "I said, 'Here's what's been told to me,' Landauer recalls. "'I'm looking at these allegations. They are serious and ought to be pursued in some manner, but this story requires more than the editorial department can do.'"
Today, both Hilliard say and Thompson say they have no memory of the meeting. In any case, the paper never printed a word relating to Ohman's tip.
Landauer says his conscience is clear. "I turned it over to news," he says. "I have no second thoughts about my behavior."
Ohman did not respond to phone calls or questions presented in writing.
In The Oregonian's own postmortem of its coverage of the Goldschmidt story, there has been no mention of the Ohman-Landauer episode. In May of this year, the paper's public editor, Michael Arrieta-Walden, wrote that back in December 2003, the daily got what he characterized as "a tip from an anonymous source" about Goldschmidt but failed to follow up.
That's not quite accurate. WW has learned that the "anonymous tip" was actually a comprehensive account of Goldschmidt's crime from a knowledgeable insider.
On Nov. 13, 2003, Gov. Kulongoski appointed Goldschmidt to the State Board of Higher Education.
A couple of weeks after the appointment, former Goldschmidt speechwriter Fred Leonhardt contacted Jeff Mapes, The Oregonian's senior political writer, whom he'd known for years.
Over lunch, Leonhardt says, he gave Mapes the victim's name, a chronology and the names of others who could confirm the story. (Leonhardt told WW he had promised himself that if Goldschmidt ever sought office again, or was appointed to a position of public responsibility, he would go to the media.)
Mapes, who declined to comment for this story, reportedly told his editors about Leonhardt's bombshell.
But there's no evidence that anybody in The Oregonian's 430-person newsroom pursued the story until the first week of May, when word leaked that WW was about to expose Goldschmidt. -NJ
WWeek 2015