A weekly newspaper in Oregon abruptly stopped publishing and laid off all of its workers after an employee embezzled tens of thousands of dollars and left months of bills unpaid, its editor said.
The newspaper, The Eugene Weekly, announced on Thursday that it would stop printing after it discovered financial problems, including money not being paid into employee retirement accounts and $70,000 of unpaid bills to the newspaper’s printer, Camilla Mortensen, the newspaper’s editor, said on Sunday.
The entire 10-person newspaper staff was laid off three days before Christmas, though some workers, including Ms. Mortensen, were still volunteering to publish articles online.
The Eugene Weekly, a free newspaper, was founded in 1982 and each week prints 30,000 copies, which can be found in bright red boxes in and around Eugene, one of the most populous cities in Oregon.
Recent articles described a New Year’s Day hike led by guides at a state park, the efforts of a nearby unincorporated community, Blue River, to recover from a 2020 wildfire, and a memorial to people who had died homeless in 2023.
Leaders of The Eugene Weekly said in a letter to readers that the newspaper’s finances had been left in “shambles,” but they planned to fight to keep the publication alive.
Source: | This article originally belongs to Nytimes.com
