As of yesterday, KOHD news is no more.

The first story I saw about it was this one Thursday evening, twittered by KTVZ's Nina Mehlhaf.

Employees at the ABC affiliate were informed this morning [Thursday] that the station will become a Bend bureau for KEZI, Chambers Communications' sister station in Eugene. Bend employees will then create local packages for KEZI-produced Bend cut-ins.

Their last locally-produced newscast was last night at 11pm.

Yesterday morning KOHD posted their official notice/letter on their Facebook page:

Unfortunately, KOHD News viewer’s habits are not reflected positively in Nielson ratings. Factor in the dramatic impact of the economic conditions since The Great Depression, we now are taking the next logical step and changing our news product that better matches the current trend of how people get their news.

The result, after careful thought and review, KOHD-TV has made the decision to discontinue the station’s current schedule of news programming. KOHD will air its last regularly scheduled newscast in its current form at 11 PM on March 5th.. However, a news team will remain at KOHD, providing solid local coverage for the Bend market with news and weather updates – both on-air and online – throughout the day. These updates will air more frequently than the current long form shows, including reports every half hour in the morning, weather updates every hour during the day, and news updates again in the evening at 5, 6 and 7pm. At 11pm there will be a 10 minute broadcast that will give viewers all the day's local news, weather and sports.

It's unfortunate that this (once again) gives KTVZ a virtual monopoly on local TV. I think KTVZ upped their quality when they had serious competition, despite the sometimes painful-to-watch efforts of their newcomers, but I remember back before KOHD (and Fox) offered any alternatives, KTVZ was really frustrating: such is the quality of the lone TV station in a small market.

Is Bend/Central Oregon large enough to support more than one local TV station/news program? Obviously three years ago we all thought so, but now the answer apparently appears to be "no." Which sucks.

Couple of email dispatches from the Deschutes County offices:

First, the County has a new draft of the "Comprehensive Plan" that they're offering open houses over the next couple of months for residents to offer feedback on. What is it?

The Comprehensive Plan is a blueprint of how and where growth and development occur and natural resources are protected in the unincorporated areas of the County for the next 20 years. The draft Plan is based on public input received over the past year, changes to state law, coordination with other agencies and organizations and analysis of current conditions and trends.

It's the first time a new draft has been prepared since 1979. This type of thing sounds like it could be rife with controversy.

Here's their schedule of public meetings:

• 10-27-09 Brothers - Brothers School 6-8 p.m.
• 10-28-09 Redmond - Redmond Fire Station 6-8 p.m.
• 11-10-09 La Pine - Mid-State Electric Building 6-8 p.m.
• 11-30-09 Sunriver - Three Rivers School 6-8 p.m.
• 12-7-09 Bend - Deschutes County Services Center  6-8 p.m.
• 12-9-09 Sisters - Sisters Library 6-8 p.m.

Next, the Cascade Lakes Highway is being closed tomorrow, the 27th, at 9am. The weather's moving in, folks. They're talking about snow in the weather reports.

The NY Times this evening published a doozy: Slump Dashes Oregon Dreams of Californians.

The freefall has made Bend a succinct symbol for the economic perils of “lifestyle destinations” in the so-called New West, recreation-heavy communities where jobs have been heavily tilted toward construction and services and where many of the new residents were self-made exiles from California cashing in on their overpriced real estate.

Now the Californians who contributed to Oregon’s growth are in some cases adding to its economic struggle.... While some other states with high unemployment, including Michigan, have seen their labor forces shrink, Oregon’s labor force has grown. Economists say some of the growth appears to be driven by people who moved here with money they made in California, whether from real estate or stock market investments, and expected to get by but now must look for work.

Overall a good article, succinct in laying out where Bend has largely gone wrong. (Hint: it's not all Californians.)

One interesting tidbit that I did not know: Bend Living, the ultra-glossy local magazine, has folded (a "casualty" in the article's terms). I was wondering why I hadn't seen a new issue lately.

Two items from May 1st which got missed the first time around, both dealing with the local news media's economic troubles:

• Oregon Media Insiders reports Major Cuts at KOHD: "Non-renewed contracts, I'm told, include sports reporter Rachel Azevedo, reporter Allison Martin (once the weekend anchor when they had a weekend show) and anchor Jay Frank, who's still got a year on his contract. The 5 pm producer/assignment editor is an outright layoff..."
• And over at The Source, H. Bruce Miller says Bulletin Employees Hit With Pay Cut: "The tough times that have battered newspapers across the country have hit home in Bend: Staffers at The Bulletin and its parent company, Western Communications Inc., were told yesterday that they’ll be taking pay cuts of up to 10%."

Also read the comments; interesting stuff to be found there.

Of course, it's not just the economy hurting the news these days; in this age of the internet (and blogs and twitter and craigslist and social media), traditional media is taking big hits.

Baker City Kina has some interesting comments following up on this too (street cred: she used to work for the Bulletin).

Yes, according to this article in today's Bulletin, The Paper Place downtown—between Cork and U.S. Bank—is for sale for only one dollar.

The gimmick, of course, is that the "inventory" is for sale for $65,000 to $70,000.

Schiefelbine said she’s leaving in late October for California, regardless. If no one purchases the business by the end of September, Schiefelbine said she will hold a “huge blowout sale” throughout October to sell off as much inventory as possible. She’ll also have to break her lease, but Schiefelbine said she has her landlord’s approval.

But closing the business is not her preference. She said The Paper Place has been a fixture downtown for 24 years, albeit with different owners, and she would hate to see it go.

“One dollar — that’s how bad I want it to stay open,” Schiefelbine said. “Downtown is so quaint, I would hate for it to lose a local, family-run store. I’d rather someone keep the store open for Bend.”

I agree with that last line—it's the type of store downtown does need, so I hope someone buys it.

On the other hand, what if I don't care about the inventory? Can I just buy the space for the buck?

The Bend Bulletin has rolled out their new and improved website today (announced the other day here). Overall it's a much, much better interface, with better use of space and design and flow. The default fonts—at least on Firefox—might be a bit large for my tastes; it's possible to be well-designed and yet use too much space (six screenfuls on the home page), but by and large the site now looks like a current news site.

They still have the E-edition problem, as Jake points out—the very fact it exists is, essentially, the "problem." Another problem is the comment system: the fact that they are willing to accept and post user comments online is great, but—you have to be a subscriber (either E-edition or print) to do so. Ouch.

Still, it's a step in the right direction. Hopefully not the last.

Last month I had been invited to be on media panel at the Deschutes County offices, as the resident blogging expert representing how blogging and "new media" are becoming more prevalent in news and reporting and such. (The "expert" notion is up for debate, of course. I just do what I do.) The panel was to supplement media communications training for County employees and was held today—and I have to say, it was interesting and enlightening, and definitely something I'd do again if asked.

With me on the panel were Barney Lerten, of KTVZ; Heather Roberts, of KOHD; Heidi Hagemeier, of the Bulletin; and R.L. Garrigus from the Bend Radio Group. I've known Barney from back when he was still Bend.com, and had known of the others but not met them before. All very nice folks, and I was pleasantly surprised to find out they were already familiar with Hack Bend(!).

For the most part, it was as much a learning experience for me as for the County employees, I suspect; I talked a bit about the blogging aspect of things as it pertains to media and reporting and communication, but to a large extent I just listened to the others, all of whom come from more established channels with much more background than I.

And a big thanks to Anna Johnson, the Public Communications Coordinator with the County, for inviting me and arranging it all. Thanks!

...along with a bunch of local bloggers. Here's the link to the online article; the dead-tree version appeared on the front page. It's a pretty good article, gives a good overall picture of how blogs can affect the media and the community.

Not much more to say. I just like the meta-ness of me pointing to the Bulletin pointing back to me.

Tipster Stanislaw Funk today let drop that the Bulletin will soon be doing something new: offering free "E-Edition" access to subscribers of their dead-tree edition.

If true, it's a step in the right direction—when we had our Bulletin subscription I often wished I could also have online access to those "extras" I had already paid for—but it's not enough. They need to do away with paid access for the online stuff entirely, make it free for everyone. I don't know of anyone who pays for online news, and the Bulletin would benefit hugely from opening up the "extras" and the archives to everybody.

Jake points out tonight that KOHD's new website has gone live. Much better than it was before. Jake didn't like the video auto-playing on the front page, but that didn't happen to me, so I guess they fixed it? Anywho, yet another source of local online news, which is always a good thing.

No RSS feeds yet, though. That'd be helpful. (Not that KTVZ's any better on that front... they keep breaking theirs and I have to go rediscover them again.)

So we've been watching a bit of the KOHD news since it launched this week, and I have some initial impressions.

• Very polished-looking, high production values, technology is there
• The newscasters seem comfortable, not too many mistakes or stuttering
• They seem to have an interactive portion of the (6 o'clock, at least) newscast, where they take and address user emails in real time... interesting...
• Very professional-looking
• They have none of the (extremely) poor video/broadcast quality that plagued KFXO when they started; and in fact, their quality is so good that it looks to me to even leapfrog right over KTVZ's
• I'd say where they lag behind KTVZ is the weather, though they do a very good job of it

All in all, I think it's a very successful, very well-done newscast. It certainly looks to me like it 'casts out of a bigger city/studio, not what we've come to expect locally.

Thoughts?

I have more details on Oregon Public Broadcasting's new News Bureau that's opening up next month. I spoke with Morgan Holm, Vice President of News and Public Affairs at OPB, last week and he was more than happy to fill in the blanks for me.

First off, it's primarily for OPB Radio, though the stories will be posted on their website as well. The Bureau will cover all of Central Oregon, not just Bend, and what strikes me as being very cool is the fact that this is almost more of a "virtual" bureau—the reporter will record and file stories on a laptop (with portable audio equipment) and post them to the OPB server (either via email or FTP) as MP3 files. No studio necessary.

This is a much more grassroots and modern direction to take, and definitely shows that OPB is thinking a lot about these issues and about how to do radio (and news) in the modern era of wireless, ubiquitous internet and blogs and podcasts. (OPB does have a podcast feed, incidentally, and you can listen to their radio stream live online.)

Here's a few snippets from the article Holm wrote for the OPB July Member Guide, which he was kind enough to forward to me:

OPB Radio began broadcasting in Bend in 1986. Since that time, OPB has been represented in the area primarily by excellent engineers who work hard to keep both our radio and television signals on the air. Beginning in July, though, we will open our first news bureau in the region to expand our coverage of central Oregon. We are re-assigning a position from our Portland newsroom, and we have hired Ethan Lindsey to fill that position.

In the early 1990’s, OPB brought Oregon Considered, our daily news program, to Bend for an entire week each summer. Back then, it took two people and a trunkload of cassette tape machines, reel-to-reel tape decks, phone coupler units and microphones to produce the show. Central Oregon Community College allowed us to use their board room to set up a mini-studio for our live broadcast each afternoon. Those shows “on the road” were great opportunities for us to meet people and hear stories that we wouldn’t have encountered during a quick trip to the area or through covering a story by phone.

Today, we can put together news stories and entire shows with much less equipment. OPB’s reporters record interviews on machines that use Flash card memory (the same little cards you find in a digital camera). A laptop computer has all the necessary software to produce top-quality audio stories. And instead of filing those stories by phone, our reporters can e-mail them or send them to an FTP server, often using a wireless connection. All of that equipment fits in a modest bag that can be carried over the shoulder. In short, it’s much cheaper and easier to set up a bureau virtually anywhere, and our reporters can file the same high quality stories as they can when working out of a studio.

(I added the links and emphasis.)

This is also their first satellite bureau (outside of one in Salem), so this will be something of an experiment for OPB as well. In addition, assuming all goes well with the News Bureau, Holm talked about exploring the possibility of isolating a radio signal in Bend in order to be able to broadcast for Bend only—hyper-local and not piggybacking on another signal/station. That's still up in the air, though, so there's no saying (yet) whether that would consist of all-local news or general OPB broadcasts.

Also a possibility: launching a local talk show/call-in show around the first of the year. Again, up in the air, but it sounds like they might send another reporter over to Bend for that.

This is all very cool. I've subscribed to a number of the OPB RSS feeds and I'll be watching closely in July to see when they go live (most likely the second week) and keep track of the local news being generated. I'm quite sure I'll be blogging more about this during that time.

Here's a bit of interesting news that I haven't seen anybody break yet: Oregon Public Broadcasting is opening a new News Bureau here next month. I don't know if this is for general news or if it's for OPB Radio, TV, or what, but I got a confirmation email from OPB saying, "Final touches are now being put into place. The reporter has been hired and will begin working in early July."

I got the tip on this from the reporter himself, who emailed me about it (but didn't want to run anything til I got official confirmation). I'll post more details as I find them out.

Just some odds and ends I noticed this week that I hadn't blogged about yet.

Greg's Grill in the Old Mill District is open for business. They'd been "coming soon" for quite awhile now, originally set to open last fall or something. I believe they're a steakhouse; anyone tried it yet?

In the paper today, an article about Pilot Butte Drive-In changing hands. The new owners are longtime residents and have been working closely with the former owners, so everything should stay the same. Maybe they'll bring back dinner, though!

Also in the paper this week, a blurb about Trader Joe's breaking ground in their new location on the north end. I believe they estimated a Spring 2008 opening... only a year to go.

I blogged about the Oxford Hotel coming to town a while ago; the Bulletin had a new article on it this week, with a concept sketch. Construction is about to begin, and should last about 18 months. Should make a right mess of downtown at Minnesota and Lava Road.

Finally, Wildfire Brewing beer is now being served on tap at JC's. Haven't had a chance to try it yet; hope to soon.

More pictures from the house fire across the street. I don't have any of the fire itself—when we first watched, there was still smoke rising from the roof—but I took several of the fire fighters clearing away roofing material, wood, and the chimney from the roof.

Apologies for the mediocre quality of these pictures... it was dusk and the low-light conditions along with the zoom was enough to get the point, but some came out shaky. And actually, when it was starting to get really dark, they brought one of the engines over with a set of bright spotlights to illuminate the scene:

You can see the light pole sprouting up from the top of the truck. And here's a shot of the lighted-up scene at full dark:

The house is behind the juniper trees there; unfortunately, that was the best angle from the street that the truck with the lights was able to get. There's actually quite a bit of light reaching the house, though.

Breaking, real-time news: the house across the street was on fire; firefighters were on the scene relatively quickly and were able to contain the flames. Trucks started arriving around 6:15 or 6:20, I believe; we heard the rumbling outside during dinner, but didn't know what was causing it until we looked outside. (They weren't running with sirens.)

The house, located in the northeast Bend neighborhood of Terrango, is an older one, with a wood shake roof; the fire was (apparently) localized to the roof area around the chimney.

We had four fire engines, one SUV, an ambulance, and at least one police car (closing the street) on the scene. Thankfully, it appears nobody was hurt, the fire was caught in time.

More as I find out about it...

I just found out today that The Redmond Spokesman—Redmond's local weekly newspaper—has a blog, where they seem to be posting both bullet-point summaries of their news and longer articles. Good deal; they actually have a domain name but no site or other online presence out there—nice to see they've set up something.

And, their blog gives them a leg-up on the Bulletin, too—they have an RSS feed so their content can be syndicated and read in news aggregators. The Bulletin doesn't do that; I have a cobbled-together RSS feed for the Bulletin that slurps their free headlines, but that's just a workaround. Plus, most of the Bulletin's online content is behind a paywall anyway.

+1 Redmond Spokesman.