Our four-week Thanksgiving holiday is over at last, and there’s a whole bunch to catch up on.
For starters, here’s the report that came in a little while ago from Niki Hale Price (’88), who writes for/owns the Oregon Coast Today. If you can help it, don’t drool over this daily life:
Let’s see. The last 10 years, plus. Well, after graduation from UA in 1992, I played around in regional theatre in Baltimore before coming back to Arizona and writing features for the Sedona Red Rock News. I met and married the publisher of my hometown newspaper, the Payson Roundup, and was the editor there until 1996. Been riding the gravy train of community newspapers ever since.
In 1996, Dave answered an ad for a publisher in a small town on the coast of Oregon, and before I knew it, we were firmly transplanted.
I’ve done a variety of things since we moved to Oregon. While he was getting his MBA at OSU–and in between having two beautiful children–I was a copy editor for a daily in Corvallis. Along the way, I picked up a lot of visitor-guide and special-section freelance jobs, and found that I really enjoyed it.
In 2005, we decided that we had been newspaper Bedouins for long enough, and that in order to stay put, we had to start our own paper.
So we moved back to the beach town of Lincoln City, where we had contacts and friends, and where we knew there was a niche we could fill. Dave is the head of advertising, the graphic designer, the accountant, and the CEO. I’m the editorial department and director of child care. We both deliver papers.
The Oregon Coast Today, a free weekly, is geared towards visitors, but we have local readership, too. It’s all about making the most of your time on the coast–tide pools, crabbing, hiking, galleries, festivals, etc. My editorial philosophy is SIFI (Stuff I Find
Interesting)–and, occasionally, SMMFI (Stuff Mom Might Find Interesting). I try to complain, but sympathy evaporates when people see my stories about microbrews and clamming.Recent assignments: riding the dredger out to the oyster farm beds, chasing a turkey down the beach, learning how to make clam chowder, taking a Coast Guard motor lifeboat out to a seabird sanctuary and hunting for mushrooms in a patch of old-growth forest.
So, that’s us. We create the OCT out of tricked-out office in our renovated farmhouse, which we share with a 7 year-old daughter, a 5 year-old son, a 3-year-old dog and a cat, age unknown.