Dear HCN:
Had reporter Kathie
Durbin been more thorough in her examination of the facts (about
the hanging in effigy in Joseph, Ore., of two environmentalists
(HCN, 11/14/94), she would have discovered the unemployment rate in
Wallowa County is nearly twice as high as she erroneously reported
in her exposé on our ugly little town. Her mistake was in not
including the 68 workers who lost their jobs in October when the
R-Y Timber sawmill in Joseph shut down. According to the Oregon
Employment Division, the unemployment rate adjusted for the mill
closure is 9.4 percent, not 5.3 percent. That gives Wallowa County
the distinction of having the highest unemployment rate of any
county in Oregon.
The error is compounded when it
leads the reporter to the faulty assumption the local economy is
“robust.” That may be the view from the ivory towers of Portland or
Paonia, Colo., but is a long way from reality in Joseph, Ore.,
population 1,000, which has lost two sawmills and 120 jobs in six
months.
By the way, the name of the county
commissioner quoted is Ben Boswell, not Bob. As journalists we all
have our biases and sometimes they show up in print. That is to be
expected. However, there is no substitute for
accuracy.
Rick
Swart
Enterprise,
Oregon
The writer is editor of
the Wallowa County Chieftain.
Dear
Rick,
I resent the ivory tower crack. In the
early 1980s, this town lost 600 out of 700 coal mining jobs and
half the houses emptied out.
Accuracy is
important. But so is a moral standard. Even a mock lynching is
inexcusable.
Ed Marston, HCN publisher
This article appeared in the print edition of the magazine with the headline Oregon’s Wallowa County is suffering.
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