Highway 58 newspaper to appear online Sunday, Feb. 28

Doug Bates
Pulitzer Prize-winning writer and former Register-Guard Managing Editor Doug Bates at Greenwaters Park in Oakridge, Ore., on Saturday, March 13, 2021. Bates has come out of retirement to become the founding editor of the Highway 58 Herald. (Carl Davaz, 2021)

Three journalists with former ties to The Register-Guard are among the volunteers producing the non-profit Highway58Herald.org newspaper that will appear online for the first time Sunday, Feb. 28.

Doug Bates, former Register-Guard managing editor, edits the publication that will cover communities along the Oregon Highway 58 corridor. He and his wife, Gloria, graduated from Oakridge High School and later retired in that community.

Other members of the six-member board include Sandy Thoele, former owner-publisher of two weekly Lane County newspapers with her husband Mike, a former R-G city editor and reporter. Dean Rea, a former R-G staff member and university professor, is a volunteer reporter. Oakridge residents who serve as board members and helped launch the publication are George Custer, president, Joy Kingsbury and former resident Teiri Freborg.

The Herald fills a vacuum left when Oakridge’s weekly newspaper ceased publication. During the 1960s The Register-Guard operated a news bureau there.

Dean Rea
Retired journalist and educator Dean Rea in Eugene on Tuesday, Feb. 11, 2020. The 92-year-old former Register-Guard editor serves as a Highway 58 Herald board member and chief correspondent for the news site’s communities of Pleasant Hill, Dexter, Lowell, Fall Creek and Jasper.

Long-term objectives of the new publication include hiring an editor, adding a print edition and providing training opportunities for university journalism students.

The Herald is being funded by donations, grants and advertising.

Headquartered in Oakridge, Highway58Herald.org will serve the thriving as well as the struggling communities along the 87-mile length of Highway 58, which at various times of the year is the state’s busiest freight and tourist route between Oregon and California. Stretching from the southeastern outskirts of Eugene to the tiny hamlet of Crescent in Klamath County, the corridor is home to more than 26,000 Oregonians.

“What you will be seeing on Feb. 28 is quite possibly the future of community journalism, particularly in small markets,” Bates says. “In Oregon it’s already happening, thanks to former colleagues of mine from The Oregonian such as Quinton Smith (YachatsNews.com) and Les Zaitz (SalemReporter.com).

“We’ve stolen all their best ideas, he says, “with their blessings, of course.”

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— Dean Rea

RELATED STORY: Read more about the vision Doug Bates has for the Highway 58 Herald

RELATED STORY: News from Oakridge: Doug Bates and Dean Rea will be stepping down as volunteer journalists for The Herald

RELATED STORY: Doug Bates’ heroic effort to start and sustain a vibrant journalistic venture in Oakridge

RG Golden Era Steering Committee

The members of The Register-Guard Reunion Steering Committee are Ann Baker Mack, Donovan Mack, Paul Neville, Lloyd Paseman, Dean Rea, Mike Thoele and Sandy Thoele.

They can be reached at the email address [email protected].