Willamette Week
Peter Ames Carlin, who joined the Oregonian as TV columnist in 2000, is quitting to work fulltime on a Bruce Springsteen biography. He tells Willamette Week that he’s been affected by cutbacks and changes at the Newhouse family-owned newspaper. “The paper’s needs and mission have shifted away from the kind of work I felt most interested in doing,” he says. [UPDATE: He tells more on his website: “I’ve never really had a spectacular, bitter romantic break-up, but now I’m in the midst of one at my now-ex-office.”] In January, he told readers that he’s “taking a four-month break in order to retreat to the basement for to work on a new book” and noted that “mucho time spent alone in a basement can have its, uh, disconcerting moments. At which point anything can happen.” Five years ago, Bill O’Reilly called Carlin “a far-left TV writer” and “an idiot” and said the Oregonian “just throw[s] anything in there [the paper], they don’t back it up, they don’t care.” After a back-and-forth with the Fox News host, Carlin went on to investigate a Portland news director who had “many ex-wives, Social Security numbers and kids he doesn’t see.” Last September, Jeff Alan Brent was sentenced to 18 months in jail for Social Security fraud.
* “Another prominent reporter leaves the Oregonian” [Willamette Week]
