"I think that for the people of Salem, we are far more of a benefit as a government watchdog than anything else." - Tim King
(SALEM, Ore.) - Some people have written to us lately, asking why there are not more Salem, Oregon stories showing up in our mix, and there are specific reasons for this. While we have contacted a fair number of businesses in Oregon's capitol city for advertising and support, you will only find a small handful on our site.
Primarily as a result of this, we see Salem-News.com becoming more of a service for the state of Oregon, than the city that in many ways, has been slow to catch on and support us.
Electric Wheels, Adam's Ribs, Steele's Karate, Walery's Pizza, Best 'Lil Roadhouse and the Salem Riverfront Carousel, are some of the main Salem organizations that have believed in us. There are others that have helped, but in truth the list is very small.
For us, the poison may be that we only put ample time into generating the news, and not beating down the doors of local businesses. Heck, I don't even like sales people half the time, so it is a hard role to fill.
Some other Salem groups backed my trip to cover the war in Afghanistan last winter, and that is appreciated. But in the end, most of our advertisers are national, and some are from the Portland area.
We did not think it would evolve this way, and we know it will not stay this way, but I fear that Salem residents will not come out as winners in the end.
It matters to us, our News Director Kevin Hays is born and raised here, the son of a distinguished Oregon State Policeman. General Manager Bonnie King was raised 30-minutes from Salem.
But this local talent is now being used for writing national and Oregon stories, because they drive our numbers and offer the most potential for eventually seeing the business community come out of the woodwork and support us.
All of it confirms the notion that Oregon is always ten years behind California in terms of general advancement. This was supposed to end with the World Wide Web, but instead it goes on and on.
In a few years people here will wake up and say, "look at all of the great information on this news site," but for now they have blank stares and a lack of understanding.
This is not good for people who live in a city that largely has no identity, except for being an overly-conservative place where kids are arrested and cited for cruising their cars on summer nights, and others are hassled for playing Hacky-Sack on a sidewalk.
Then of course, you have all the problems generated by the small army of mentally and physically disabled people wandering the streets, who lost their federal support during the Regan era. An abandoned facility called Fairview that was used to care for these folks is now becoming exclusive, private housing. Great job Salem, way to go Oregon.
Salem and the state of Oregon just allow it to go on and on while they enact more harsh punishments, often at the hand of a sad little man named Kevin Mannix who has no idea what the people here need.
Then they ignore people like David Beem, an advocate from the special needs community, who proposed a day center for the mentally and physically handicapped. This is something that could completely change Salem, and not one legislator brought the idea forward. It is hard not to become cynical after seeing much of this up close.
Salem's Art Community and the Elimination of Views
Salem lacks the vitality of other Oregon cities, and the creativity here is something few people boast of. During the summer, one Wednesday a month is reserved for art on the street in downtown Salem. Is that really the mark of a creative city with so many great artists?
I suggest that people who are happy with it stay clear of other cities on the west coast, because the contrast is alarming.
Two festivals at the Riverfront Park took huge dives this summer. I was told that the Bite of Salem had all of six food booths. The World Beat is another great idea that seems to have fallen off the edge in 2007.
All they had to do to be featured on our site with a video report was to be nice and ask us. Again, too many people in Salem are asleep at the wheel when it comes to this type of thing.
Then there is Salem's Riverfront Park, intentionally designed to prevent people from seeing the mighty Willamette River until they exit their car and walk to the southwest edge of the parking lot. Maybe someone should tell Salem that it rains half the year in Oregon.
Part of the goal in designing the park was to rid the river bank of homeless people. The construction of the park did nothing to help the homeless populace, it just kicked them out of the area. Some Salem people are proud of that kind of thing. Another reason was probably to keep youth from congregating at a place with a view, by people here who are literally, scared of tens.
It is ironic when you look at the recent history of the Salem/Keizer schools. A seemingly endless list of reports about teachers who are sex predators, seems to make the young have more to fear from the old than the other way around.
We complain about meth use, then enact cruising "bans" and curfew laws. All it does is send kids indoors and what do you think they do then? It is always interesting to hear the police talk about cruising too, because they all did it growing up, but it was legal in those years.
I grew up in California and car touring was one of my parent's greatest pleasures. We used to buy burritos and watch the ships enter Los Angeles Harbor at Long Beach. We would drive places and take in the view, but I don't suppose we did it in Salem, Oregon then, not much to see.
Over the last year, the one spot where people could park and watch local airplanes take off and land has been blocked by hangars that could have been placed somewhere else. Funny, the mayor is an avid airplane enthusiast, I had hoped that would matter.
To make things equally difficult, the city government of Salem, Oregon is far more secretive than it is open or transparent. The police rarely issue press releases about events that happen in the area, even though this is the state capitol, and the city hall public information office seems non-existent, though I'm sure it costs the taxpayers plenty to maintain.
This makes little sense to most reporters in Oregon, and they all talk about this aspect of Salem. It is no wonder that our perception problems exist.
Keizer, Marion County and even some Polk County law agencies, send out regular updates on news events, but Salem P.D. sends out a comparatively small amount of information.
It sure isn't because crime never happens around here.
The local fire agencies are all good in communicating with us, and we cover them the very best we can. Taxpayers see the result of their investment, it works well for these publicly supported emergency responders.
The Wal Mart Connection
As a city, Salem seems far more interested in attracting businesses like Wal Mart to the area and "call centers" like Wachovia that offer little to nothing in terms of good for the people here. I sincerely question the underlying motives of the city on many levels.
Then there is all the fluff about an airline flying from Salem to Salt Lake City. I'm sorry, but who cares? Why didn't they get a plane that goes to Reno, or Vegas or even Honolulu? Nobody goes to Salt Lake City, it isn't a destination.
How about the multi-million dollar convention center? Where is everybody? The largest crowd I have ever seen there was the one who came to protest a visit from Colin Powell, what an honor that was. I think Salem could benefit from such a facility, but then who knows about it? They sure don't advertise it here, through Salem's largest news Website.
So while our Salem coverage is not where we would like it to be, our greater coverage of Oregon as a state has increased, much to the thanks of residents from all over the state.
These people in other areas that have also been ignored by the Portland media, write letters thanking us frequently. Canby Fire was covered by a crew from FOX News in New York because they caught the story about Canby Fire on Salem-News.com.
Things like this happen all the time, but the city of Salem is increasingly having less to do with it.
It is sad because Salem really needs us, and if we don't get involved in the myriad problems, then they will go unresolved for years and years. Of course you guys have the Statesman Journal to watch out for your better interests, I'm sure that makes you feel better.
Not to mention that the city's priorities and ours will probably eventually fly in the face of one another, because we believe in youth and freedom and many things that the city only seems interested in stepping on. Ask a Salem teenager what they think of the city, it can be very enlightening to those who have had their heads in the sand.
We began this entire business because we felt the capitol city of Oregon was getting the short stick in terms of media coverage, then three years later learn that we receive as many visitors from Corvallis each day as we do from Salem. Of course we see more than four times the traffic coming in from the Portland area, not counting SW Washington.
We never thought the site would be more supported by our neighbors to the north in Portland. It is interesting because I left my job as a reporter/photojournalist at KATU Channel-2 in Portland to make this happen, believing in Salem all the way, even possibly to the detriment of my own career in news, and now I am increasingly understanding why Portland is taken so much more seriously as an Oregon city.
Salem-News.com, going places
With the realization that Salem was perhaps too much of an uphill business battle, the Salem-News.com staff has divided around the NW region more equally. We still have staff in Salem, but have branched out now to include the Dundee Hills area, Molalla, Bend, Oregon and SW Washington.
I predict that this trend will continue, because Salem, Oregon has been ignored by large market media for too many years and we are concluding that the people of this city will probably go on missing out for the most part.
The businesses in Salem in all fairness, have been pounded by salespeople from one single local newspaper for too long, and they generally have little left to work with after paying the exorbitant amounts that dailies are still charging for a few inches on a piece of paper.
I was just told by a friend last week that a small help wanted ad running for a month would cost more than two thousand dollars, I say tell them to go jump in a lake. We may have attitude, but we are loyal to our viewers and we have no obligation to shareholders, just information.
Salem-News.com has recently signed with three national ad agencies, and two months during the summer saw 16,000 unique visitors on our site each day. It is a fact that many of those visitors are from the greater northwest and the rest of the nation, but they are helping our business grow and we are thankful.
I would still like to be an advocate for the Salem community, and I look forward to the day when that dedication reciprocates. I think that for the people of Salem, we are far more of a benefit as a government watchdog than anything else. In the meanwhile we will bring you the information Salem is willing to part with.
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Tim King is a former U.S. Marine with almost twenty years experience on the west coast as a television news producer, photojournalist and reporter. Today, in addition to his role as a war correspondent in Afghanistan where he spent the winter of 2006/07, this Los Angeles native serves as Salem-News.com's Executive News Editor. Salem-News.com is the nation's only truly independent high traffic news Website, affiliated only with Google News. You can send Tim an email at this address: newsroom@salem-news.com
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