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Thanks, Salem, for your favorable reviews of our work

When I asked for your reviews of our work so far, I was ready for anything.

In this era, folks are pretty free with their opinions – and sharing them. As a relatively young enterprise, Salem Reporter is still feeling its journalistic legs in town.

But what we received so far was surprising because it was overwhelmingly supportive of the work.

Two themes in particular stuck out to me.

One was the observation that readers didn’t detect bias in our work. That’s hugely important to us. In today’s news environment, people are suspicious that news sources are pushing some agenda. At Salem Reporter, we have no political or social agenda. We want to deliver information you can trust.

A second observation is that many of you recognize and appreciate our in-depth approach to local news. We spent considerable time on some stories, which means we sometimes cover fewer developments. But we received encouragement to keep digging, to keep providing stories with depth and nuance.

On the criticism side, the key one was logistical. Several of you would like a “search” function on Salem Reporter’s site. Duly noted, and we’ll talk to the folks who handle the engineering about doing so.

But enough of my comments. Here’s a sampling of what you told us. And if you want to add your voice, send an email directly to me and I will share with the staff: [email protected].

Your remarks:

I am a subscriber and have been quite pleased with your coverage of local and regional stories important to those of us in the mid-Willamette Valley, and more specifically Salem. Generally, the depth of your stories is appreciated. 

The stories are well researched and written factually. I don’t detect any political bias.

Overall, a great product and I expect to renew my subscription when it comes up!

You have done a good job being unbiased.

Please keep up the good work.   The articles have been very helpful.

I think your reporters are doing a good job reporting on events and issues in Salem. 

I am a regular reader and subscriber from rural West Salem and appreciate your work very much.

I enjoy the detailed, but interesting stories on the wide range of topics that you’ve covered. In particular, I think the reporting from the capitol has been useful and complete.

I can count on SR for accurate, entertaining, concise, varied, and timely reporting. Keep up the good work!

Keep up the excellent coverage of local government and take the City of Salem to the woodshed on their absurd attitude towards public records and transparency generally. They have a lot of good employees but a weird culture that needs adjustment.

With limited staffing, I would prefer to see the SR focus on in depth investigative reporting of government actions, including state, county, Salem City, and SK school district.

There is no strong bias that is apparent. Perhaps a little soft on the homeless issues, but those are very complex problems and they are about people and illness and such.

Are you state government focused, doing (mostly) the hard in-depth reporting of state policy issues (not just serving as a channel for state leaders to get their issue of the day/week/month out), leavened by occasional Capitol human interest? Or are you a Salem news outlet that happens to report a lot on state government because that’s what dominates Salem, like the capital newspapers of yore that saw part of their role as being the “newspaper of record” of a state capital?

There was an article early on about the local radio station KMUZ. It seemed like a couple unhappy people pulled the Salem Reporter in to a nonnews story. However, the story was fair.

One suggestion might be to make tabs for the areas covered by your current reporting staff. That would at least allow more links to past articles.

I use the search feature on OregonLive and Statesman Journal regularly and it’d be great to have that on your website. 

I miss not having local sports coverage.

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