Portland Tribune will cease print publication after major newsroom layoffs

<p><img src="https://www.oregonlive.com/resizer/v2/6X4SLQ3VQJCFDGYL5NAHG5CINM.jpg?au…; alt="6X4SLQ3VQJCFDGYL5NAHG5CINM.jpg?auth=1031"></p><div><p>The Portland Tribune and two sister papers in Milwaukie and Oregon City plan to cease their print editions, according to the papers’ parent company, Carpenter Media. A third paper, the Gresham Outlook, will shift from two print editions a week to one.</p><p>All four will continue publishing online. The print cutbacks follow <a href="https://www.oregonlive.com/business/2025/06/fresh-layoffs-leave-portlan… last week that eliminated more than a dozen jobs in Carpenter’s local newsrooms</a>, including six journalists at the Portland Tribune. The layoffs left the Tribune with just two reporters and no editor.</p><div><div><div><div><div><div><div><div><span>MOMENT - Israeli airstrike targets Palestinian home in Gaza’s Bureij camp amid ongoing genocide</span><span></span><span>MOMENT - Israeli airstrike targets Palestinian home in Gaza’s Bureij camp amid ongoing genocide</span></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div><p>“We know the media landscape will never be unchanging for any length of time,” said John Carr, publisher of Carpenter’s papers in Oregon and North Carolina. “We are committed to continuously evolving to meet readers wherever they seek news and information.”</p><p>Industrialist Robert Pamplin founded the Tribune as a free, semiweekly paper with a staff of 50 in 2001. Many of Portland’s best-known journalists worked there at various times over the past 24 years. </p><p>Print journalism has been under mounting financial pressure for more than two decades, though, as readership and advertising moved online. The pressures are especially intense for community publications, whose readerships are too small to generate meaningful online revenue. </p><p>On Tuesday, the state Senate narrowly rejected a bill that would have required major tech companies to pay to support local journalism in Oregon. Tech companies fiercely opposed Senate Bill 686 and senators sent it back to committee for additional work. </p><p><a href="https://www.oregonlive.com/business/2024/06/pamplin-media-portland-trib… last year bought Pamplin Media</a>, an Oregon-based chain that owned the Portland Tribune and about two dozen papers in small communities around the state. Mississippi-based <a href="https://www.oregonlive.com/business/2024/10/oregon-newspaper-chain-eo-m… subsequently purchased EO Media</a>, which published The Bulletin newspaper in Bend, The Astorian and many other papers. </p><p>Pamplin and EO Media had already made a series of cuts in their publication schedules and newsrooms prior to the deal, but Carpenter has now had at least two rounds of layoffs at some of its Oregon papers in the past year. </p><p>The chain has also notified the Pacific Northwest Newspaper Guild, which represents employees at two Carpenter papers in Oregon, that it will expect reporters to publish at least two articles each day online. Some papers will require three articles daily, a pace that could leave little time for investigative and feature reporting.</p><p>Oregon newspapers have shed three-quarters of their jobs since 2001, <a href="https://www.oregonlive.com/business/2024/07/oregon-newspapers-have-lost… to state data</a>. Nearly 20 Oregon news outlets have shut down or merged with others over the past three years and many others have survived only by scaling back or shutting down their print editions.</p><p>Some larger papers have stopped printing as well. Advance Local, the parent company of The Oregonian/OregonLive, has ceased publishing print editions in two of the chain’s largest markets — New Jersey and Alabama. It also stopped publishing newspapers serving some of Portland’s suburbs between 2015 and 2017. </p><p>The Oregonian has cut back on print, too, from seven days a week to four. </p><p>Carpenter is focusing on local news and hopes to stay engaged with readers through newsletters, online media and other avenues, according to Carr. And he said the chain remains committed to community news.</p><p>“As much as possible we would like to get local stories that are unique,” Carr wrote in an email Tuesday. “As long as people want to know what is happening in their neighborhood, kids’ school, and with local elected officials, we believe we can create a business model to meet that need.”</p></div>