The Register-Guard

• 1. Introduction

  ›

  The Register-Guard has served Eugene, Oregon continuously since the 1st of June 1867 - a run of more than a century and a half without a single missed edition after its founding month. That longevity is remarkable on its own. But the real story of this newspaper is about who owned it, who fought over it, and what it means when a local paper passes from a founding family into the hands of a national chain.

  When the paper was sold in 2018, ending 91 years of Baker family ownership, it was one of the last medium-sized family newspapers left in the United States. By 2023, the newsroom had shrunk from more than eighty employees to six. What happened in between - and what it took to get there - tells us something true about American journalism in the 21st century.

  The questions worth sitting with: How did a frontier-era Democratic party organ become one of Oregon's most important daily newspapers? Why did one family hold onto it for nearly a century? And what does it look like when that kind of institutional memory disappears?

• 2. A Paper Born in Partisan Fire

  ›

  John B. Alexander launched The Guard in Eugene City on a Saturday, the 1st of June, 1867. He had come to Oregon from Illinois in 1852 as a pioneer, first working as a farmer, then as a surveyor, then as a local justice of the peace. He learned the printing trade from the town's earlier pro-Southern newspapers before starting his own.

  The Guard entered a field that already had a Republican rival, the Oregon State Journal, published by Harrison R. Kincaid. From the start, Alexander positioned his paper as the voice of the states'-rights-oriented Democratic Party, and he was particularly vocal in his opposition to Reconstruction-era policies imposed on the South.

  Those views put him firmly at odds with most Oregonians. Republicans dominated Oregon politics through the last quarter of the 19th century, and Alexander's money-losing venture forced him to liquidate his stake in 1868 - barely a year after founding the paper.

  What Alexander left behind, though unintentionally, was a dynasty. Two of his sons would later publish The Guard after several intermediate owners held it. A grandson, George L. Alexander, would go on to edit another Oregon paper, the Lebanon Express.

• 3. Printers, Partners, and Survival

  ›

  After Alexander folded, a man named J. W. Skaggs took ownership and spent five weeks pushing the same Democratic agenda before concluding the paper was a financial trap. Rather than watch the paper fail on his watch, Skaggs gave it away outright to two of his printers, William Thompson and William Victor. He threw in two bundles of paper and two cords of firewood to sweeten the transfer.

  William Thompson was born in 1846 and had come to Oregon from Missouri on a wagon train during the 1850s. He had started working as a printer's devil for Eugene's Democratic newspapers at the age of 16. His only legal obligation in taking over The Guard was to run the paper and keep it alive.

  He did. Thompson sold the paper on the 24th of December, 1869, having earned a healthy $1,200 for his effort. He went on to found the Roseburg Plaindealer.

  The paper passed through George J. Buys, who bought out his partner Eltzroth in July 1870 and stayed at the publisher's desk for more than seven years. Buys sold to Alexander's sons, F. R. Alexander and W. R. Alexander, in May 1877. The brothers lasted barely a year before selling to John R. Campbell and Ira Campbell in November 1878. The Campbells would hold it for 30 years.

• 4. The Baker Era

  ›

  In 1927, publisher Alton F. Baker Sr. purchased The Guard. His father had published The Plain Dealer. Three years after acquiring The Guard, Baker bought the Morning Register and merged the two papers on the 17th of November, 1930. The first edition of the combined Register-Guard appeared the following afternoon. Reporter William Tugman, recruited from The Plain Dealer, became the managing editor of the new paper.

  The Baker family would hold the paper for 91 years, with family members serving as editor and publisher for nearly all of that time. Baker Sr. was succeeded by his son Alton F. "Bunky" Baker Jr., who inherited the paper in 1961 and later passed it to his brother Edwin. By the late 1980s it had reached the third generation, with Alton F. "Tony" Baker III serving as editor and publisher for more than 28 years.

  That unbroken tenure gave the paper a kind of institutional consistency rare in American journalism. When Tony Baker finally stepped down in May 2015, it marked the end of an 88-year span in which someone from the Baker family had headed the paper.

  What followed was brief and unstable. N. Christian Anderson III, who had been publisher of The Oregonian since 2009, took over on the 1st of June, 2015. He lasted less than seven months. Tony Baker returned, then handed the publisher role to Logan Molen in July 2016 while remaining as chairman.

• 5. Editorial Courage and Controversy

  ›

  In 1953, managing editor William Tugman joined three other editors in signing a declaration opposing Senator Joseph McCarthy's questioning of New York Post editor James Wechsler in closed Senate hearings. The other signers were Eugene S. Pulliam of The Indianapolis Star, J. R. Wiggins of The Washington Post, and Herbert Brucker of the Hartford Courant. The declaration called McCarthy's actions "a peril to American freedom."

  In August 1996, a Register-Guard photographer and reporter were arrested by the United States Forest Service for trespassing at the site of a timber protest in a national forest. The paper sued the Forest Service for violating First Amendment press freedoms. Criminal charges were later dropped and the civil suit was settled out of court.

  The paper's record on social issues was slower to evolve. In 2006, it drew protests for refusing to include birth announcements from same-sex couples. Managing editor Dave Baker was reported to have been responsive to early complaints from same-sex couples until, as one account put it, he talked to Alton Baker III and then stopped returning phone calls. In November 2008, the Register-Guard changed its policy and printed a birth announcement listing both female parents by name.

• 6. From Family Paper to Chain Property

  ›

  In January 2018, the Register-Guard announced its sale to GateHouse Media, a newspaper conglomerate. Ownership transferred officially on the 1st of March, 2018. Logan Molen was replaced as publisher by a GateHouse hire, Shanna Cannon. One of the first actions under new management was to close the statehouse bureau.

  In November 2019, GateHouse purchased Gannett, retaining the Gannett name. The Register-Guard moved into the Gannett network alongside Pacific Northwest newsrooms including the Statesman Journal in Salem, the Kitsap Sun in Bremerton, Washington, and the Great Falls Tribune in Montana.

  Cannon departed the paper in April 2020. Gannett eliminated the executive editor position on the 2nd of May, 2020. Managing Editor Michelle Maxwell became the highest-ranking editor in the Eugene newsroom.

  By May 2023, the scale of what had changed became clear. In the five years since the 2018 sale, the newsroom had contracted from more than eighty employees to six people - including only two reporters. The paper no longer employed a local editor, publisher, or advertising representatives. All advertising and editorial decisions were being made by the staff of Salem's Statesman-Journal, based 60 miles away. In March 2022, the Register-Guard had already dropped its printed Saturday edition, moving to a six-day schedule. As of 2019, the paper's supposed daily circulation stood at 18,886 - a number described even by the source as "supposed."

• 7. Labor, Law, and Recognition

  ›

  In 2000, during contract negotiations with its employees' union, the Register-Guard banned the use of company email for union-related communication. The National Labor Relations Board ruled in December 2007 that employers could lawfully ban pro-union emails from company systems.

  The NLRB revisited that ruling on the 26th of June, 2011, under a remand from the United States Court of Appeals in Washington, D.C. On review, the board agreed with the court that the Register-Guard had violated union members' rights by changing the email rules. A subsequent NLRB ruling on the 27th of December, 2014, through the Purple Communications case, gave union members the explicit right to send union-related emails during non-work time.

  The paper's journalism also earned formal recognition. In 1997, it won a tie for best feature photo from the Oregon Newspaper Publishers Association. The following year, it took first place for science reporting from the Pacific Northwest Society of Professional Journalists. In 1999, it was a Pulitzer Prize finalist for Spot News Photography, for its coverage of the community's response to shootings at Springfield's Thurston High School by student Kip Kinkel. In 2001, the same journalism competition awarded it first place for arts coverage. The Oregon Newspaper Publishers Association gave the paper its General Excellence Award and Best Overall Website award in 2010.