Anita Johnson, one of the founders of Eugene Weekly, died last month at the age of 95. Now, her children plan to transfer her share of the newspaper’s ownership to its current editor-in-chief.

In 2017, Johnson appeared at the City Club of Eugene to accept an award for her outstanding work in the local community. On stage, she recalled something she heard as a child that had stuck with her for 80 years.

“There are three kinds of people in the world,” said Johnson. ”One — doesn’t even know the world turns. Two — knows the world turns, but doesn’t want to do anything about it. Three — knows the world turns, and thinks ‘I want to do what little bit I can to make it better.’”

Johnson was born in 1929. As a young woman, she served as the editor of the University of Oregon’s student publication, the Oregon Daily Emerald, and as a writer at the Washington Post.

Throughout her life, she’d advocate for changes to Oregon state law, and help found the environmental advocacy group now known as Beyond Toxics. Her son, Derek Johnson, said she understood the value of being civically engaged.

“If you’re having a bad day, go do something for somebody else. Go do some hard work, get something done,” said Derek. “And that’s what she did.”

In 1991, Anita, her husband Art and her former classmate Fred Taylor decided to go into the newspaper business together. They bought into What’s Happening, an events calendar and guide, and soon renamed it to Eugene Weekly.

Derek said the Weekly became a full-fledged newspaper under his mother’s watch, offering perspectives that the city’s most prominent paper — the Register-Guard — sometimes overlooked.

“That ability to talk to people from all different kinds of walks of life, and find out from them what was going on and what they thought was important — she had those skills," said Derek. “And so people wanted to come and talk to her, because eventually they realize, ‘oh, wait a minute — she might be a vehicle for me to get my story out.‘”

For decades, Anita served as a contributing editor for the Weekly, and as the paper’s unofficial publisher. She wrote for the Slant column, and continued to attend editorial meetings until just weeks before her death.

Camilla Mortensen, the Weekly’s editor-in-chief since 2016, said Anita was one of her mentors, and taught her about critical journalistic values — including the pledge to “do no harm.”

“For Anita, people mattered more than glory,” said Mortensen. ”I’ve been around some news sources where it’s ‘break the news at all cost.’ And that was never her.”

Mortensen said Anita pushed the Weekly staff to cover issues she believed in. Currently, the paper is working on a story about the loss of sitting space for homeless people in Eugene, based on a suggestion Anita made before she passed.

“She would give you a tip, and if you didn’t follow it, and she really wanted that story covered, she would bring up that tip the next week,” said Mortensen. “And then the next week. And then the next week.”

At the same time, Mortensen said Anita also taught her that creating the alt-weekly should be fun.

“She always wanted something a little quirky, a little funny, a little different, not just to be an ordinary paper,” said Mortensen. ”She wanted to surprise people.”

Embezzlement

In December 2023, Eugene Weekly announced it had been the victim of an alleged embezzlement, leaving it in debt. The paper laid off its entire staff, and didn’t print new physical issues for nearly two months.

Derek said his mother was pragmatic, and weighed shutting down the paper. But when the Weekly asked the public for donations, money began flooding in, eventually reaching $100,000.

Mortensen said as hard as the embezzlement was, she’s glad that Anita got to see that public response in the last year of her life.

“We didn’t have some major donor come in and give us a million dollars to keep going,” said Mortensen. “It was all small individual donations from people, anything from $5, from these everyday people who this paper mattered to.”

Derek said his mother was heartened by the public support for the struggling alt-weekly.

“It confirmed what she knew about how important the paper was to the community,” he said.

New ownership

With Anita’s death, her approximately 60% stake in the Weekly now goes into a family trust for her four children. Art Johnson, her husband, passed away in 2022.

Derek said his siblings are prepared to give up their share to Mortensen. He said his mother loved the paper’s current editor-in-chief, and she had hoped this would happen once she was gone.

“She wanted [the Weekly] to continue being a voice in the community, taking on city hall, that old line,” said Derek. ”She did not want to sell it to someone from Chicago, or Gannett. She wanted it to be local, and the best way to have it be local was to have the people who knew how to run the paper take it over.”

Mortensen said she’s ready to take on that role. She said the paper’s other partial owner — Georga Taylor, Fred’s widow — also approves of the plan.

However, Mortensen said her majority ownership may be short-lived. Moving forward, she’s looking to make the Weekly a community-owned newspaper, using a nonprofit or a perpetual-purpose trust.

Jody Rolnick, the Weekly’s publisher, said that transition could go happen as early as a year. In the meantime, Mortensen said the public likely won’t notice any changes to the Weekly, which continues to release new issues each Thursday.

This story comes to you from the Northwest News Network, a collaboration between public media organizations in Oregon and Washington.

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News Source : https://www.opb.org/article/2025/01/03/anita-johnson-eugene-weekly-obit/