Join us in Portland for our 2025 fundraiser

Greetings from the Oregon SPJ Board!

Thanks to everyone who submitted stories for this year’s SPJ Region 10 Excellence in Journalism Award Contest. We received a wide range of impactful stories this year, and are looking forward to recognizing the good work happening in newsrooms around the state.

This year, we’ll also announce some of the Oregon winners of the contest in-person at our spring fundraiser and raffle a day before we drop the link online. Save the date: Friday, May 30.

Here’s the info:

Sunshine in 2025: Fighting secrecy, protecting journalism. Friday, May 30 from 6 p.m.-9 p.m. at Oakshire Beer Hall in Portland, 5013 N.E. 42nd Ave.

Come eat, drink and mingle with fellow journos and friends to promote open government and recognize some great journalism! Sunshine in 2025 is our yearly fundraiser to pay for a white-hat lobbyist in Salem to help defend journalists, battle secrecy and promote open government. 

It’s a drop-in event, stay the whole time or pop in whenever suits you best. This year, we have several in-state vacations up for grabs in a raffle.

You can buy tickets here.

What it supports

Since 2017, Oregon SPJ’s work in Salem has driven changes that have significantly improved Oregon Public Records Law, while killing bills that aimed to make things worse. 

SPJ volunteers and our lobbyist have been hard at work in the Oregon State Capitol, defending journalism and open government. We spearheaded a coalition letter used to sink a bill that would have extended government lawyers’ privilege, and helped kill a bill that would have placed legislative research off-limits to the public, among others. We’ve worked hard for Senate Bill 686, a much-talked-about bill that would fund journalism jobs, and are part of a coalition trying to make improvements to a bill, HB 3564, that could increase frivolous defamation claims. A bill we’ve worked hard on to cut public records fees may get a hearing soon — stay tuned.

In other SPJ news

-Meet Tiffany Marquez Escobar, the summer intern we’re supporting alongside AAJA Portland. Escobar is a senior at the University of Portland, and is the diversity, equity and inclusion editor at the university’s student newspaper, The Beacon. She’ll be working with Lee Enterprises at the Albany Democrat-Herald and the Corvallis Gazette-Times. Read AAJA’s Q&A with her here.