PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) — An Oregon weekly newspaper that had to lay off its entire staff after its funds were embezzled by a former employee will relaunch its print edition next month, its editor said, a move made possible in large part by fundraising campaigns and community contributions.
The Eugene Weekly will return to newsstands on Feb. 8 with roughly 25,000 copies, about six weeks after the embezzlement forced the decades-old publication to halt its print edition, editor Camilla Mortensen said Saturday.
“It has been both terrifying and wonderful,” Mortensen told The Associated Press, describing the emotional rollercoaster of the last few weeks. “I thought it was hard to run a paper. It’s much harder to resurrect a paper.”
The alternative weekly, founded in 1982 and distributed for free in Eugene, one of the largest cities in Oregon, had to lay off its entire 10-person staff right before Christmas. It was around that time that the paper became aware of at least $100,000 in unpaid bills and discovered that a now-former employee who had been involved with the paper’s finances had used its bank account to pay themselves around $90,000, Mortensen said.
Additionally, multiple employees, including Mortensen, realized that money from their paychecks that was supposed to be going into retirement accounts was never deposited.
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