To start this weekend, here’s your long read — but it takes place close to home. It’s a piece by Corvallis writer Jaclyn Moyer about the years-long fight over Republic Services’ proposal to expand the Coffin Butte Landfill. If you’re just getting up to speed on the issues involving the controversial expansion, this is a good place to start — Moyer takes the 10,000-foot view — but it also mostly is written as a history of how opposition to the proposal built over the years. (It’s also about our long love affair with throwing things away; I was about to say that’s another story, but it’s really not.)

Here’s a variation on a story you’re likely to see playing out in all sorts of different ways over the next couple of years, as local governments try to figure out ways to continue paying for their operations in the face of constantly rising costs: The city of Albany commissioned a couple of different surveys asking residents what they thought of a local gas tax — 10 cents a gallon, assessed for the next five years — to help pay for street maintenance. Respondents said “maybe” to the gas tax idea, but had much less support for a related idea, a monthly street maintenance fee, according to Hans Boyle, writing in the Gazette-Times. The timing of either proposal couldn’t be much worse, with some legislative Democrats pushing a transportation proposal that calls for doubling the state gas tax over a seven-year period. (The transportation package, by the way, may well be the last big bit of business the Legislature needs to tackle this session. The session is scheduled to end no later than June 29, so expect big news from Salem to break fast over the next three weeks.)

Dr. Casey Means is President Trump’s nominee to be surgeon general. Means has built her brand as a “wellness influencer” by arguing that America’s health care and nutrition industries have been corrupted by special interests motivated mostly by making money. Yet, as The Associated Press reports, Means herself isn’t above cashing in by striking business deals with products and services she endorses — deals that she has failed to disclose. In other words, Means should fit right in with the administration. (Means, by the way, earned her medical degree from Stanford but dropped out of her Oregon residency program in 2018. Her license to practice is inactive.)

You could make the case that Grant House, a former swimmer for Arizona State University, is the most influential person in the recent history of college sports. It’s his name on the antitrust lawsuit — actually, his is one of three lawsuits — that has revolutionized college sports and paved the way for schools to directly pay athletes. A federal judge this week authorized a $2.8 billion settlement in the cases, and the AP put together a primer on what it all means. (One thing is for certain: Schools with plenty of resources will do better than schools without.)

Nicholas Kristof, the New York Times columnist (and the keynote speaker at this year’s Oregon State University commencement ceremony) has a new piece in which he offers reasons for hope, even in the face of whatever new outrage the Trump administration whips up. Domestically, he writes, damage can be healed over time. But he thinks the international damage to the United States may be longer-lasting. OSU’s commencement ceremony is next Saturday, June 14.

The Nieman Lab features an interesting new piece from a doctoral student at the University of Wisconsin who’s studied why some communities lose their local news outlets and become so-called “news deserts,” while others manage to retain access to reliable news. While some of her findings are to be expected — wealthier communities stand a better chance to retain news sources — some are surprising.

Remember that ransomware attack earlier this year that crippled Lee Enterprises newspapers, including the Gazette-Times? Lee has confirmed — months after the attack — that it also resulted in the theft of personal data from current and former employees of the company, which — wait a second while I work this out — would include me. Now, I’m sure the company is doing everything it can to inform me about this data theft, so I probably should wrap up this week’s Reader to await further instructions from Lee.

While I’m waiting, a pair of additional notes:

Writing for The Poynter Institute’s website, Rick Edmonds checks in with The Salt Lake Tribune, which made the transition to nonprofit status in 2019 — and since has been held up as a model for other publications interested in following that route. But the Tribune faces a big challenge this year: If a special fundraising campaign raises $1 million, the Tribune will tear down its paywall and make all its content free. Part of the key to making that work is finding additional sources of revenue, such as philanthropy. It also helps, as Edmonds explains, to have an owner who understands the importance of keeping news sources independent. Not every news outlet is so fortunate.

And speaking of The Washington Post, here’s a piece from Amanda Katz, a former Post opinion editor, about that paper’s plans to use an artificial intelligence tool called Ember to help would-be op-ed writers sharpen their submissions. If this sounds like a bad idea to you — well, that’s because it almost certainly is, and Katz explains why.

That’s it for this week. Now, I need to figure out whether my Social Security number is making the rounds of Davenport, Iowa. We’ll gather here next weekend.