In an effort to start a conversation about the things Portlanders like and dislike, I turned to Twitter.
I follow and have plenty of followers from Portland on Twitter, so I thought this would be a good place to start a conversation about Portlanders (saying I have followers makes me feel like David Koresh). I sent out two tweets. The first said, “Portlanders like ______ (fill in the blank).” The second said, “Portlanders hate _______ (fill in the blank).”
The first person to respond was Wayne Garcia, a news anchor at KPTV, aka Fox 12, here in Portland. His response to what Portlanders hate? Blanks. Very original Mr. Garcia. But his response did remind me of something Portlanders do hate- the television news, especially Fox News.
Before I ever moved to Portland, a friend who had lived here for years told me, “It’s a great place, just don’t watch the news. The news will lead you to believe that Portland is a really violent and dangerous place, but it’s not. Seriously, don’t watch the news, it will make you scared to leave your house.”
After moving here, I got a job at the Portland Tribune. The Trib has a news partnership with KPTV, Fox 12. As a part of this partnership, I was sent off to lunch with a group of people from Fox to discuss how our news coverage could be mutually beneficial. When discussing the areas we cover for news, I asked about Vancouver. “Do you cover news in Vancouver?”
“We love Vancouver,” he said. “Dog attacks and guys with no teeth…” Later on in the conversation, one of the guys even laughed and said, “Hey, if it bleeds it leads.”
That pretty much sums up local television news; if it bleeds, it leads. There are consistently plenty of news stories in our city which do not involving violence, yet every single night, Fox, and most of the other stations, lead off with the scariest news story they can dig up. Don’t believe me? I went over to Kptv’s web site last night and took a screen shot of their mobile home page. Notice the top news story, even though they didn’t have any details to include in the article…
It’s not hard to see why most Portlanders steer clear of the evening news and stick to OPB, The Oregonian, The Mercury, The Willamette Week, and other forms of media who don’t seem hell bent on making our city sound like the streets of a war zone.
Have some ideas for me of what Portlanders love or hate? Email them to me at oregonsportlanders@gmail.com
Tags: Fox News, KPTV, OPB, Portland Mercury, portland oregon, Portland Tribune, The Oregonian, Wayne Garcia, Willamette Week
