Eugene Weekly: Black, White, and In The Red

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0:35On December 10th, 2023, Camilla Mortensen, editor-in-chief of Eugene Weekly, was technically on vacation. She was visiting her parents in Florida, but even off the clock, she couldn't fully unplug. She was still checking in on the scrappy Oregon paper she'd called home since 2007, in. Stealing moments to make sure everything was running smoothly. That was the kind of tenacity that animated the Eugene Weekly. It was a labor of love, more than just a job for its employees. Well, at least for most of them. While Camilla was out of town, Alicia Young, the paper's bookkeeper, was looking after her dog, who suffered from epilepsy.

1:24That's just how things worked at the Weekly. They were a tight-knit crew. People kept asking, like, well, didn't you do any background check? Nobody's a criminal until they actually commit a crime. When Camilla got word that Alicia was in the hospital, having health issues of her own, Camilla reached out to see if she needed to make other arrangements for her pup. Alicia's husband reassured her that they had everything under control. This lie, however, masked a much larger betrayal. The bookkeeper was asking the owner of the paper to sometimes put money into the paper, which we had really never had to do.

2:09Camilla received a late night call from Alicia's husband a few days later. He had shocking news. Camilla and the entire staff of the Eugene Weekly had been betrayed. By someone they trusted. By one of their own. And he's like,$6 ,000? Like, double that and add a zero.

2:40This is The Opportunist, an original podcast from Podcast One. You're listening to a story told in one episode called Eugene Weekly, Black, White, and in the Red. I'm Sarah James McLaughlin. In this episode, we dive into the story of an Oregonian newspaper that was brought to the brink of ruin when it was sabotaged from within.

3:18You can't really tell the story of Eugene Weekly without first understanding the community it served. Eugene, a city of nearly 180 ,000 in Western Oregon, has a distinct vibe. A mix of urban and rural, liberal and conservative, free-spirited and deeply civically engaged. It's a place of contrast, and Eugene Weekly was right in the middle of it all. Here's Camilla Mortensen, editor-in-chief at the Weekly since 2016, and a local expert on the area. It's kind of an odd sort of mix, a big mishmash of different things, which makes it really fun to cover for the newspaper. This sense of fun was embedded in the paper from its earliest days back in 1982.

4:11So 40-something years we have been printing newspapers in Eugene. We have been around since about 1982. We were founded by, I've heard it referred to as a commune. I don't think they actually all lived together, but it was a group of mainly women who wanted to basically start off as a calendar. It was called the What's Happening Calendar. In the early 90s, new ownership took over the weekly, steering the publication toward breaking news, deeper investigative reporting, and stronger community engagement through local event coverage. The paper got going in the early 90s. It was purchased by Art and Anita Johnson, and they persuaded their friend Fred Taylor to buy into it.

4:58And Fred was the managing editor and editor of the Wall Street Journal. And that's when they began moving it to more of a newspaper where they wanted it to be more than a calendar and actually do news. For decades, two couples, Art and Anita Johnson and Fred and Georgia Taylor, ran the paper together. When you're in a very small newspaper environment and a really high stress environment where you are trying to get the newspaper out, you are trying to break news, you are pissing people off that are in power. it very much you trust the people to be doing what you're doing. Alongside hard news, the paper covers a wide range of human interest stories.

5:41While covering niche topics might not sound lucrative, the Eugene Weekly thrived for most of its 40 years in print. Local advertisers, bars, restaurants, and the like, kept things afloat, supporting a weekly print run of 30 ,000 copies. We were sort of bucking the trend as a newspaper financially in that people were picking us up. We still had advertising. We didn't have the problem that Daily Papers had in that we weren't subscription-based and we weren't, no one was coming to us for like last night's Supreme Court ruling. You're coming for local news and in-depth local news. It's important to note though that the the paper's owners never really cared about the bottom line.

6:27From the outset, the paper was more of a public service than a money-making venture. In fact, whenever the weekly turned a profit, they invested the gains right back into the enterprise.

6:41The owners of the paper historically never took any profit. So on the years we made money, they're like, great, we're getting new office furniture, we're getting new computers. They just, they owned it for the sake of having a newspaper and for the town, this area, having an alternative voice in a newspaper. So you don't think about somebody wanting to take money from a situation like that. The U-Teen Weekly was chugging along nicely, buoyed by a community with a thriving arts and dining scene. But then the pandemic happened. So it wasn't really until COVID that things financially really changed.

7:20We were really dependent upon bars, restaurants, like things people go out and do. That's why part of the reason you pick up an alternative weekly is to read about the things that people want to go out and do. With the uncertainty and social distancing of the pandemic, businesses like restaurants and event organizers scaled back or even shut down altogether. With fewer things happening, they didn't have a need to advertise. and that hit the Eugene Weekly hard. To make the numbers work, the paper began shrinking its page count. The horoscope section fell on the chopping block and Anita Johnson, one of the surviving owners of the paper, started reaching for her checkbook more and more often to cover things when the weekly fell short.

8:12COVID was a clear obstacle for the publication. But for the weekly's bookkeeper, it also presented an opportunity. Now she was the only one keeping an eye on things. And she was the only one writing checks. And that cleared the way for some creative accounting. The weirdest thing I've seen outside my house? Two baby-sized shoe prints in the snow on my porch step. No prints leading up, no prints going away. Just two perfect little impressions like a toddler materialized right in that spot and then just vanished. It wasn't a break-in and it wasn't remotely threatening. It was just mind-boggling.

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10:51For more than 40 years, the Eugene Weekly newspaper had been enriching and informing its community, funded by local advertising. But then in 2020, COVID-19 really ramped up and dealt a huge blow to the city's economy. That put the company's bookkeeper, Alicia Young, in a tough spot. Let's go back for a minute. Before Alicia was the bookkeeper, she worked at the front desk of the paper starting in 2018. They started at the front desk, sort of doing an office manager position, bringing in classified ads, managing sort of the phones, doing a certain amount of sales. And did that, I think, for about a year, maybe more than a year.

11:42And then our bookkeeper at the time was moving on, and this person was recommended to move into the position. There was zero hesitation in making Alicia the bookkeeper. The role came with more responsibility. She had close ties to the paper. Her husband worked there, too. And no one had any reason to believe she'd ever put the company's finances at risk. She was trusted. But how well can you really know your co-workers? And at that point, we knew them. They'd been around. I talked to someone the other day because people kept asking, like, well, didn't you do any background check? Didn't you see this coming?

12:26And it was pointed out to me that nobody's a criminal until they actually commit a crime. Alicia moved into a new office. Ironically, given what came out later, it was the one right next to Camilla's. They bonded over small talk, as co-workers tend to do. Camilla and Alicia had a casual and honest dialogue about the paper's finances. At least, that's how it felt. During COVID, I cut my hours to help pay for my reporter so that he could stay full-time. And so having those discussions, if I take five hours out of my paycheck to pay for Henry, does that help the paper keep going? Like those types of conversations all the time.

13:17Just as Alicia was elevated into this position, the paper's finances, understandably, took a huge hit. So it really wasn't suspicious at all when she reported that the paper was in dire straits and needed infusions of cash to stay afloat. The bookkeeper was asking the owner of the paper to sometimes put money into the paper, which we had really never had to do. We'd done it back during the Great Recession, but really hadn't been a thing. Eventually, the pandemic receded, reviving Eugene's social scene, and with it, Eugene Weekly's ad sales. But for some reason, the bookkeeper's reports didn't reflect the rebound.

14:04the paper still appeared to be losing money.

14:10Now, what was odd is as things started to improve around the country, as things started to open back up, we, and with my smaller staff, we were still struggling financially. I think one of the red flags you go back and look at and go, well, why in the world was that? But at the time, it didn't seem that out of keeping because we've been struggling for so long. Alicia set just one office over, but the divide between their roles created a perfect blind spot. Where missteps weren't just overlooked, they were quietly allowed to fuster. As the editor, I don't handle the money. So for me, it sort of fell on the end of things like I would authorize a freelance payment and the freelancer would be like, hey, I didn't get paid.

15:01And I'm like, well, that's really strange. And the bookkeeper's like, oh, the check must have been lost in the mail. Like, I'll resend it. Or someone would come in and be like, I never got that freelance check. And she'd be like, oh, no, I'll cut it for you right now. Like, why aren't we doing better? What could we be doing to be doing better? I was applying for grants, doing that type of thing. Like, how do we fill in these gaps? Despite the baffling ongoing financial issues, the paper managed to keep itself afloat. However, it was in an unpredictable ad hoc kind of way. The weekly was always just one bad week away from going under.

15:38With the paper's future hanging by a thread, Anita's son Derek Johnson stepped in, determined to get a handle on the business. But as he dug into the books, troubling signs began to surface. Hence that something was seriously wrong with the paper's finances. He asked for the 2022 financials, and the financials would be handed to an outside accounting firm to deal with. And this is late 2023, and the outside accounting firm had never gotten the 2022 financials. So he was like, this is ridiculous, like what is happening here? And began to put pressure on her to get those financials. Derek pressed Alicia for answers.

16:26But no matter how directly he pushed, she sidestepped and deflected every question. She was blaming the outside accounting firm. Oh, it's their fault. They haven't done what they need to do. And the outside accounting firm is like, yeah, we just need the books. But the owner's son was determined to get to the bottom of things. He demanded a report from Alicia on the paper's revenues, expenditures, and cash on hand. At first, she diverted and avoided giving him a straight answer. But her invasion techniques could only last so long. By November 2023, the facade was starting to collapse. He started coming to the meetings and just asking her some of the harder questions, and that's when things started to kind of show that something wasn't quite right.

17:17The bookkeeper finally did as Derek asked and gave the team an update about their finances. Her report painted a very rosy picture. She said that things were finally turning around for the post-pandemic Eugene Weekly. Alicia claimed the paper might need a bit more money from Anita early the next year. She promised smooth sailing after that. The problem? For one thing, her forecast came with no actual numbers, and no one else was allowed to see the books. Then, in December 2023, as the paper worked to close out its books for the year, more red flags surfaced. Which brings us back to where we started, Camilla on a working vacation getting unsettling news from the bookkeeper's husband.

18:09He told Camilla that Alicia was suffering from seizures And they had gotten so severe that doctors were going to put her in an induced coma Of course, Camilla's first concern was for her co-workers' health But as it turned out, just days later, Alicia was out of the hospital and back to work This time from home In fact, she insisted she didn't need any help with the year-end payroll, or any of her other responsibilities, despite her recent health scare. Furthermore, after reviewing the company's accounts on her own, she came back with grim news. So I get back to town. They're apparently doing payroll on their laptop from home.

19:01And they call Anita, the owner of the paper, and say, hey, I need$30 ,000 to make payroll. And Anita's like, that's strange. Like, we just had a meeting where we said we were totally fine and the paper didn't need any help. Still, Anita remained committed to keeping the paper afloat. So she wrote the check. But afterward, it just didn't sit right. Doubt crept in. And then suspicion. So she calls Derek. And Derek is like, no, we're putting a stop on that check. They managed to stop payment on the$30 ,000. But Derek was disturbed to realize something else. Up until that point, his mother had taken the bookkeeper at her word.

19:49No reports. No audits, just checks. And that blind faith would soon prove to be a serious mistake. Meanwhile, with questions mounting about the$30 ,000 shortfall, Camilla was still out of town. Spending the final days of her so-called vacation, juggling calls from a frantic Derek and periodic updates from Alicia's husband. who, in a moment of stress and panic, cracked. Not all the way. Just enough to let a few damning truths slip out. So I get back to town because I need to get my dog back. And I get my dog back and give the husband a call. And he's like, we got to talk. When she was being put under up in Portland, She was really frantic and upset.

20:47And she was worried that she had taken money from the weekly and that it was going to devastate Anita. The bookkeeper's husband said his wife had stolen about$6 ,000 from the paper. That she had done it to feed a compulsion that had gotten out of control. And I'm like, wait, what? and he says, well, she's got a cocaine addiction and she's been doing an eight ball a day. I thought it was under control because I knew about it before, but it's not. To clarify, an eight ball is an eighth of an ounce of cocaine, which is a lot. That's about the equivalent of snorting 100 milligrams, a hefty dose, 35 times a day.

21:37And as you can imagine, that was a very expensive addiction to maintain. In fact, it's around$420 a day, or$12 ,600 per month. Clearly way more than the$6 ,000 figure tossed out earlier on the phone. Even still, Camilla wasn't thinking about money at that point. She was more worried about her co-workers' well-being. well you know i off the top of my head originally it was sympathy because drug addiction is it's horrible and it's a disease it's not something someone can control and for someone to have you know an addiction like that my first thought is this what's causing the seizures like what's happening here was sympathy and sympathy for him because he was so upset and again i don't think i really understood like i believed in what he said maybe a couple thousand dollars that's that's what I'm hearing and it's like 10 o 'clock at night and I'm like, I don't even know what to do.

22:39Still reeling from the news, Camilla put in a call to a friend of hers who was an investigative reporter. Unfortunately, he gave her a sobering perspective on what was unfolding. So I reached out to my friend who's the investigative journalist and was like, like, hey, this is a call I just got. And he's like,$6 ,000? Like, double that and add a zero. And I'm like, you're so not funny. And that was actually very accurate, as it turns out.

23:17Toward the end of 2023, Camilla Mortensen, editor-in-chief of the Eugene Weekly, received some shocking news. The paper's bookkeeper, Alicia Young, had apparently embezzled money from the company to feed a cocaine addiction. This all came out on the heels of Alicia being hospitalized for seizures, which turned out to be connected to the drug abuse. Along with a few other factors, Alicia's unplanned absence from work helped finally uncover the theft, which had been going on for years. One of the things I've learned since all this is that one easy way to catch your financial person is make them take a vacation.

24:06Apparently, you take the financial person away and all the things they were hiding start to come out and that's why they wouldn't stop working. while in the moment the revelation felt like it came completely out of the blue in hindsight there had been signs for one thing alicia always seemed to be very high energy even hyper here's camilla reflecting on the years leading up to the bombshell discovery and the one thing that they were really into was always coming with this like giant thing of Dutch Bros. And like, they're coming in with like, you know, whipped cream up to here. And I always attributed the slightly hyper personality to that, because if I was drinking that much sugar and caffeine, I would be hyper too.

24:57Retrospectively, now that I know that they had a cocaine addiction, suddenly the hyperness makes a whole lot more sense. And in addition to the bookkeeper's apparent caffeine addiction, she was also going through a major life change, which could have made her more susceptible to developing a new addiction. And the other part was that they had a type of bariatric surgery in Mexico, I think in 2021. And so there was a great deal of weight loss. And one of the things that they told me was that they had been warned that sometimes when you have that kind of surgery and that amount of weight loss that sometimes it becomes an addiction switch and that you can't eat the food you were eating.

25:46And so your addiction moves from eating to something else, which honestly I thought was probably Dutch Brothers because apparently I'm not up on addiction. Retrospectively, it was cocaine. When he first admitted to the theft, the bookkeeper's husband put the figure around$6 ,000. No small sum, sure, but also not enough to make or break the Eugene Weekly. In fact, it felt like such a manageable number that he earnestly hoped that once she got clean, they could pay it back and continue to work for the paper. But the truth was, Alicia had stolen far more than anyone first realized. Well beyond the kind of money you can quietly return with an apology and expect to move on.

26:36After Alicia's husband came clean, things moved fast. Camilla and Derek Johnson, son of the paper's remaining owner, sprang into action. They alerted the bank, froze the Eugene Weekly's accounts, and went straight to the office to access the bookkeeper's computer. For the first time, they saw the numbers for themselves. And what they found was staggering. So what we saw right away was when we went into the accounts is we could see$90 ,000 of just reimbursements that they've made them to themselves right off the top. And then later when we're figuring out payroll and budget, a$30 ,000 unraised, unapproved raised.

27:19And so that was, you know, over a hundred thousand right there. And our gross a year on a good year is less than a

27:31$100 ,000. Way, way more than the$6 ,000 that Alicia's husband claimed had been stolen. And it got worse. And it was just the straight up mismanagement. You know, the unpaid printing bill, we do mail out some subscriptions and the mailing service has a line of credit. But it's like a 25 % interest line of credit that just wasn't getting paid. So that was like$20 ,000. On top of everything else, there was a massive unpaid bill from the Weakleast Printing Company, one the bookkeeper had somehow managed to dodge for months without raising suspicion. I mean, to put it this way, we owed our printer$70 ,000 and it only costs about$2 ,500 a week to print.

28:24So they've been persuading our printer for the past like seven months to not come after us. Because there was one time they actually forgot to put the words Eugene Weekly across the top of the paper. And we were like super pissed. We're like, no, like you have to put the name of the paper on the paper. And you would think they would come back at us and be like, well, you owe us$50 ,000,$60 ,000. What are you complaining about? And they didn't. And that's sort of how, I don't know, how able the bookkeeper was to persuade people and to hold up this front that everything was fine. In addition to stealing from the printing company that made it possible for the Eugene Weekly to exist, Alicia had also stolen from the employees themselves.