Oregon religious right plans paper p.

By: Editorial Staff

LEADERS OF THE religious right in Oregon, angry with what they perceive to be the liberal bias of the state's news media, are planning to publish a newspaper of their own.
The Oregon News-Leader is to be published weekly beginning this summer. Organizers hope to publish daily starting in the second year.
"There's a major percentage of people in this state that feel disenfranchised by the media establishment," said Lon Mabon, director of the Oregon Citizens Alliance. "They're fed up with all the lies and distortions."
The new newspaper will report local, regional, national and international news fairly and accurately, Mabon said. In addition, it will have "without a doubt the most conservative editorial pages in the state of Oregon," he said.
Private investors are bankrolling the project through Freedom Investment Network Inc. The company is headed by Joe Lutz, a former Baptist minister who helped found the OCA and ran unsuccessfully against Sen. Bob Packwood in 1986 and 1992.
Mabon declined to identify the newspaper's backers and to say how much is being spent to start the project. No money will come from the OCA or its political action committee, he said, adding that he plans to invest some of his personal funds.
Mabon recently wrote a letter soliciting $90 annual charter subscriptions to the paper.
"Here in Oregon, most media is not only unfair but stridently anti-Christian and anti-family," he said.
The paper has hired a publisher and editor, but Mabon declined to identify them. He said the paper already has about 2,000 charter subscribers.
The main office will be in Portland or Salem, Mabon said. The new paper has a verbal agreement with Eagle Newspapers Inc. to publish at the company's printing plant in Salem.
The majority owner of Eagle is former U.S. Rep. Denny Smith, a conservative Republican who said company officials had been asked to provide cost estimates but had not entered into any agreement to publish the paper.
Smith estimated that backers will have to come up with $1.5 million to begin publishing "and that will barely get it going."