The Paper Chase

"The Oregonian still has a huge stable of talented, great reporters, and they do a lot of really good work," Jaquiss says. "But Portland is a one-party town, a go-along, get-along town where people don't question the orthodoxy. They're very comfortable having a real absence of critical debate of most issues."

In her e-mail, Rowe rejected that statement as a "fact-free blind slam," adding that none of the newspaper's "awkward situations" had influenced its coverage. She pointed to examples of the kind of investigative pieces The Oregonian has published: stories about local citizens' long waits for Social Security disability, about a police chief ignoring tips that one of his officers was involved in dealing and taking steroids and about "how school districts across the state were making secret deals with teachers accused of sex abuse so they could move to a new school and teach again."

The Oregonian's reporters aren't the only ones with ties to the mayor's office. In December 2008, Adams hired Mercury news editor Amy Ruiz to fill a job as his adviser on sustainability and strategic planning, a field in which she seemingly has no experience, unless you count her coverage of city hall. Jaquiss believes that as far as the mayor knew, Ruiz had more information about what really happened between Adams and Breedlove than any other journalist in Portland, which is why Jaquiss highlighted the hire in the piece he wrote for Willamette Week, with a strong insinuation that Ruiz was rewarded with a job she didn't deserve for burying her story. Adams has said that he hired Ruiz because she was "smart" and that it had nothing to do with her past coverage of Breedlove. Ruiz told both Jaquiss's paper and the Portland Mercury that she didn't short-shrift her coverage in the hopes of getting a job with the city, but that she never got enough on Breedlove to publish a story. Neither Adams nor Ruiz responded to repeated requests for comment. (In an interview with Out magazine published Feb. 2, Adams acknowledged that his relationship with Breedlove was "inappropriate," and said that he chose to remain in office because it's "what's best for the city.")

Kelly McBride, a media ethics teacher and consultant for the Florida-based Poynter Institute, a nonprofit organization that examines journalistic standards, posits that the issue may have more to do with the culture at The Oregonian. The paper has built its reputation on thoughtful, narrative coverage, which is a rare and valuable kind of journalism, she says, but it doesn't lend itself well to digging up sex scandals.

"I know from talking to people at The Oregonian that they take very seriously their capacity to break these kinds of stories, and there's a lot of hand-wringing when somebody beats them," McBride says. "But it makes perfect sense to me that they would get scooped, because their culture is so tilted toward the narrative form of storytelling."

In the meantime, the Oregonian has clawed its way back into the story, publishing on its Jan. 25 front page an exclusive interview with Breedlove and photos of the 21-year-old with his newly adopted dog, Lolita. That night, Mayor Adams released a statement that he intended to return to work as the city's mayor, pledging to regain the city's trust, and he went back to work at city hall the next day.

And Jaquiss returned to his tiny cubicle at Willamette Week's Portland headquarters, working the phones amid manila folders and reference books piled high enough to obscure pictures of his family, searching for the answers to lingering questions: What exactly happened between Breedlove and Adams before he was of legal age? How will he be able to govern Portland under the cloud of an investigation from the Oregon attorney general, announced within days of the revelations, and the hit to his credibility?

Despite his Pulitzer pedigree, Jaquiss is more enthusiastic about journalism than arrogant about his accomplishments. What has surprised him the most about becoming a reporter, he says, is how difficult he has found it to determine whether someone is lying to him. After last week, Portland's politicians may think twice about trying to put one over on him.

Editor's Note: This story was updated Tuesday evening, Feb. 3.

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