Kittelman, Jaques buy Roseburg Beacon

Note: This story has been updated, June 3, 10 a.m.

Douglas County Commissioner Marilyn Kittelman and her campaign manager and adviser David Jaques have bought The Roseburg Beacon.

“We bought it together,” Jaques said today, declining to divulge any more details of the purchase. He referred a reporter to the upcoming Wednesday issue of The Roseburg Beacon for more information on their purchase of the weekly newspaper, which began publishing in the summer of 2007.

Kittelman, who has been a county commissioner since 2004, recently lost her bid for re-election to state Rep. Susan Morgan and will be leaving office at the end of the year. Jaques is an area real estate broker who serves on the county Planning Commission.

Glennis Peterson, the former owner and editor of The Roseburg Beacon, said she returned ownership of the newspaper two weeks ago to Lake Oswego businessman Erik Jonsson, owner of Beacon Communications. She was in charge of operations for three months, but said that their business arrangement had not yet required her to make any payments for the Beacon.

“When I took it over it was horribly in the red,” Peterson said.

Jean Ivey, editor and owner of The Coquille Valley Sentinel — another Beacon Communications publication — said Jonsson was unavailable for comment because he is in Uzbekistan, where he runs an orphanage.

Last week’s issue of The Roseburg Beacon was combined with the Douglas County News, formerly known as the North County News. That arrangement ended with the sale of The Roseburg Beacon to Kittelman and Jaques.

“I was taken by surprise,” Becky Holm, editor and owner of the Douglas County News, said about being asked by Jonsson to absorb the Beacon and then a week later being told it was sold.

Holm noted the electricity has been turned off at The Roseburg Beacon’s downtown office for more than a week, and that much of this week’s upcoming Beacon issue was worked on by Umpqua Community College students in the office of the college newspaper, The Mainstream.

Melinda Benton, who heads The Mainstream’s office and is also head of the journalism department at UCC, said the new owners of The Roseburg Beacon approached the college newspaper about collaborating on their first week of publication. She said the agreement between the journalism department and the newspaper is “cooperative work experience” that provides the students the opportunity to gain work skills and resume fodder.

Benton noted that UCC’s students often contribute to many newspapers in the county and on the coast.

Much of the work provided by the staff of The Mainstream, which lists Angus Kittelman, Marilyn Kittelman’s son, as managing editor in its May 13 issue, was graphic design work, Benton said.

Benton also said this is the last regular week of the current school term at UCC — and the last week of publication for The Mainstream, which will resume in the fall.
Benton doesn’t know if, or to what extent, students will work on The Roseburg Beacon in the future.

• You can reach reporter Adam Pearson at 957-4213 or by e-mail at apearson@nrtoday.com.