- The Twitters
Sigh. Another journalist leaves the industry and takes a PR job. This time it’s long-time Willamette Week managing news editor Hank Stern who’s leaving to take a public affairs job with Multnomah County. He’ll be one of the county’s spokesmen starting April 20th.
Stern has been the backbone of WWeek’s news department since 2005. Though, hey, he’s the competition, by I’ve always heard that Stern is an upstanding guy and definitely a well-respected journalist.
But a PR job at the county is certainly enticing. The job brings with it an $80,000 annual salary.
According to an anonymous source, WWeek publisher Mark Zusman “had a huge blow up” at Stern after he announced to staff that he would leave. “Things got really ugly. Zusman was really upset about how Hank taking the job at the county would affect the paper’s reputation,” says our source.
Stern says that is “completely untrue.” “He’s been perfectly fair with me,” says Stern, adding that from now until his last day he’ll be “completely walled off” from stories having to do with the county.
There goes their softball team’s chance of being decent again.
If journalists keep leaving to do PR, who will they pitch stories to?
Kind of off on topic, but Bruce of the Day has been owning anything pet related the Mercury has ever done.
http://wweek.com/portland/blogs-1-1-1-21-2…
considering the wweeks commentary when a mercury reporter made a similar move it is not surprising that his boss was worried about looking like a black pot…
Hank really is an upstanding guy and he’ll do great at the county. I wish him well.
One way to get him to fall in line, make him on of us!
that’s “one” of us…
typo king here
🙂
Have any Mercury reporters or editors ever been “completely walled off”? And how do you deal with the evidence when you move to a new building?
This is really gross, a man that works for the WW a paper which regularly attacked Karol Collymore is now hired by the man who replaced her.
“the paper’s reputation”???? Hah!!!