Oregonian to print retraction for erroneous photo, headline

Posted on 11. Feb, 2010 by crowley in Blog, General

The Oregonian’s early editions of the Sunday February 7th paper (printed on Saturday the 6th, called a “bulldog” edition) raised alarms around our community with a terribly misleading photo and headline… The headline was, “Picture a hundred turbines here” pasted across a beautiful photo of the High Steens.

Of course, there will be ZERO turbines in the High Steens or any part of the Wilderness. The editors apparently felt they could drum up interest with that headline and photo. Happily, they realized their mistake when we called them on it. They apparently agreed that it is reasonable that when a newspaper says “here,” they mean “here.” Once we discussed it, the editors agreed to change the paper substantially for the later editions that were delivered to Portland area subscribers.

But people outside the Portland area, or those who bought the “bulldog” in stores or coin boxes, saw the erroneous version and it did have an impact. Here’s an example we found on one web site that was posted after The Oregonian story ran.

Even we got a laugh out of this, kind of…

We love the Steens as much as anyone. We believe strongly that our projects there, on private property, outside of any federal or restricted land, will supply a vital link in the Northwest’ renewable energy mix with winter-peaking wind power and help rebuild a community eager to join the green economy.

Click here to view what the turbines will really look like. You’ll need to use the zoom tool in the pdf link to see the turbines in many of the viewpoints.

We appreciate The Oregonian’s willingness to correct the error. A retraction will appear in The Sunday Oregonian on Valentine’s Day, February 14th.