We’ve got breaking news about local journalism to start this weekend: The Gazette-Times (and the Democrat-Herald, which is the same newspaper these days, just with a different masthead) has a new editor, Paul W. Smith. Best wishes to him. 

Alert readers of the G-T story about Smith’s appointment may have asked themselves a question: What happened to the previous editor, Penny Rosenberg? The story doesn’t answer that question, I would guess because it was made clear to the writer that that particular subject was verboten. 

But The Corvallis Advocate has the answer, thanks to a story from Tom Henderson, who has worked a couple of stints at the G-T: Rosenberg was shown the door, somewhat suddenly, for reasons no one is talking about on the record. Rosenberg told Henderson that, per the advice of her attorneys, she had nothing to say about Lee Enterprises, the owners of the G-T and the D-H.

By my count, Smith is the fifth editor at the G-T and D-H since the end of 2019, when I was laid off. (I was suddenly shown the door, but was laid off as a cost-cutting measure; Lee executives said my position – the editor’s job – had been eliminated. The position was reinstated some time later, but by then I had signed a severance deal that I thought was adequate. The paper, to its credit, did run a story about my departure.)

All of this, of course, comes in the wake of Lee’s move to essentially require its papers to run a flattering three-story, 4,000-word package about David Hoffmann, the Florida billionaire who has acquired a majority stake in Lee and has become the company’s chair. The G-T and D-H dutifully ran the stories. 

Hoffmann said he wants to reinvest in Lee newsrooms, although the track record of billionaires running news operations has not been encouraging. To be fair, the G-T/D-H has added another reporter, Joshua Perry, which brings its newsroom staff to seven, but it’s not clear if Hoffmann had any role in prompting the new hire. 

Lee Enterprises, by the way, figures in this essay lamenting the decline of editorial and opinion pages in newspapers. 

Corvallis voters this November will get to decide on a city charter amendment that would represent the first significant overhaul to the City Council in my memory. A task force has proposed reducing the number of city councilors from nine to six and expanding their terms from two years to four. 

The four-year terms are a no-brainer: I have long argued that two years simply is not enough time for a new councilor to learn the ins and outs of city governance. And I don’t think I have a significant issue with reducing the number of councilors, because it would be a step toward finding enough candidates to ensure most wards have contested races. I’m not sure six is the correct number, though, in part because I presume tie votes would have to be settled by the mayor. Who’s for seven? 

Remember that proposed initiative that essentially would have banned hunting and fishing in Oregon – you know, the one that even people who aren’t hunters or anglers thought was a terrible idea? It turns out it won’t be on the November ballot after all. 

Looking for a way to cut back on the confusion that comes with modern life? The Associated Press has an intriguing suggestion: Make a deliberate choice to make fewer choices.

Were you troubled by the report last week that one of OpenAI’s advanced AI models broke out of the company’s internal systems and hacked into the databases of another tech firm, Hugging Face? Matteo Wong, writing in The Atlantic, says you should be. In the meantime, I’m also worried by the possibility that the name Hugging Face may be an “Alien” reference. 

“Pensive but pretty” is how The New York Times describes the Oregon Coast, and that seems about right. This week, a writer for the Times outlined how to best spend 36 hours on the coast in a trip that begins in Astoria and wraps up at Cannon Beach. I’m thinking the 36 hours don’t include the time necessary to drive to Astoria, but that’s OK. Road trip! 

“Pensive but pretty” are not words anyone would use to describe the annual White House Correspondents’ Association dinner, which was held Friday night after the previous attempt to hold the dinner was disrupted by a gunman. I suspect that after you read the Times’ account of this week’s dinner, you’ll have the same question I did: Why is this event still a thing? 

President Donald Trump has ordered the Department of the Interior to post signs outside the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History alleging that “the current leadership of both the Smithsonian Institution and the museum cannot be trusted to tell America’s story with honesty and gratitude.” Fortunately, as The Atlantic explains, the institution enjoys a measure of protection against the historical sanitizing that the administration has ordered at other locations.

Benton County skies have been reasonably clear of wildfire smoke so far this summer, but we all know that won’t last. Here’s an Associated Press story about ways to keep the air inside your home clean during wildfires – including a relatively inexpensive but effective technique in which you basically duct-tape furnace air filters to a box fan. (The story frequently quotes experts at the University of Oregon Center for Wildfire Smoke Research and Practice.) 

A few weeks ago, I mentioned the High School Journalism Institute at Oregon State University, which has been running for decades now thanks in large measure to The Oregonian. Two of my colleagues at Lookout Eugene-Springfield, Lilly St. Angelo and Tyson Alger, were among the faculty members at this year’s institute, and here’s a sample of the students’ work, a feature about Gathering Together Farm, now searching for new owners, that might be of interest to Weekend Reader readers.

That’s it for this weekend. Let’s gather here next weekend and share notes about one or two decisions we’ve decided to cut out of our lives.