We have a smattering of items for this week’s editor’s letter to readers.

Freedom of Information Act

First, we want to point out how our reporters work for you behind the scenes. Our government reporter Anna Kaminiski has been doggedly seeking files from the city of Gresham regarding former employee Kevin Dahlgren. You may recall that Dahlgren was hired as a consultant for Deschutes County this past summer to work with the homeless community. However, Dalhgren’s past methods did not sit well with those who work with the indigent day in and day out. He was dismissed from the county job the day Kaminiski’s story about his history hit the press.

Now, The Bulletin has been seeking Dalhgren’s employment records from the city of Gresham where he worked prior to coming to Central Oregon. The city has stonewalled us for months. Kaminski appealed to the district attorney and the city has been ordered to turn over the records to the DA for review.

These are the kinds of things reporters do day in and day out to get a story of importance to our readers. Without your support, we can’t do the deep investigative pieces. So thank you for supporting our efforts by subscribing.

Another way to support reporters

The Fund for Oregon Rural Journalism or FORJ, a local nonprofit, was recently awarded a $40,000 grant from The Roundhouse Foundation to support rural journalism across Oregon.

FORJ’s mission is to stabilize and sustain rural journalism by helping struggling papers with advice, resources and eventually training reporters. With this new funding, the FORJournalism Resource Center will expand to work with existing news publishers on many strategies including:

● Digital transformations

● Developing additional revenue streams

● Grants research

● Local collaborations

● Training for journalists

It is the best way to ensure rural Oregon residents are informed about what is happening in their local governments, schools and law enforcement throughout their communities

FORJ also runs a program for high school students to learn media literacy and the business model of journalism.

In this season of giving, please support FORJ if you can at forjournalism.org/donate.

End of the Parade

Parade Magazine ceased its hard copy publication about a year ago. It used to be a must-have for Sunday readers. Since then, it has been published in a weekly e-edition format with our Sunday digital version. It contains more content than the printed version.

However, as of Dec. 31, Parade will stop publishing that format and go to a newsletter format. We are unsure how that will look or resonate with readers, but it’s disconcerting to see such a staple of the Sunday news cycle disappear from our news site. You can sign up for their newsletter at www.parade.com/newsletter/daily.

New construction

Most Mondays we have a popular feature called “What’s going up” about new construction in Bend and Central Oregon. “What’s going up” reports the details of new construction, who the developer is, timelines for completion, etc.

We have covered some of the larger apartment and business sites, but there are many more that we may have missed. We are appealing to you, our readers, to drop us a note if you see a construction site that may be of interest.

Drop us a line at gobrien@bendbulletin.com and we’ll write it up.

Thanks for reading,

Gerry O’Brien, editor