About This Site

About The Site

Portland Communique is an ongoing experiment in amateur journalism and hobbyist reporting which began as little more than an excuse for The One True b!X to learn more about the City which had become his home by forcing himself to write about it every day.

Since launching in December 2002, Portland Communique has found its way onto the "must read" list of City Council members, City Hall staffers, Portland-area reporters, and local politics junkies.

Acclaim

Charles Heying
Assistant Professor of Urban Studies and Planning, Portland State University

Portland Communique built an important and alternative niche for information about local issues at the very moment when these issues were being ignored by entertainment focused local television news, and when print media was engaging more in source journalism than investigative journalism. For urban scholars, Portland Communique should be recognized as a groundbreaking effort to reconnect citizens to local issues.

Randy Leonard
City Commissioner, Portland City Council

I read Portland Communique often because of the straightforward commentary I can always rely on that gives me another view of any one of a number of issues that we Portlanders must consider for our future. Portland Communique makes me stop and think. I thank its devotion and commitment to Portland, and appreciate its insights greatly.

Inara Verzemnieks
Cultural Reporter, The Oregonian

But unlike most bloggers, who typically link to previously reported material and then offer their own analysis, b!X is unusual because he's going out and doing his own legwork. Armed with a black spiral notebook, a laptop and a homemade press pass ... [he] has become a familiar face at City Council hearings, county task force meetings and news conference crushes, quietly forging something that is one step beyond the Fourth Estate.

Wendy Radmacher-Willis
Executive Director, City Club of Portland

Portland Communique is a media experiment that really works! As soon as I get to my office in the morning, I check the Communique to see what b!X has posted overnight. The Communique provides Portland with a refreshing voice on community issues and provides an important forum for citizens to share ideas about public life. Portland Communique enriches our experience of public life, and I hope we will be reading and posting on it for years to come!

Willamette Week

Of all the blogs in Portland, [Portland Communique] poses the biggest threat to napping news organizations. Frankonis is a fixture at public meetings, and he updates his site obsessively (1,300 posts to date) with news and on-point analysis.

Willamette Week

[Portland Communique] overcomes the banality of the personal weblog with insightful original reporting and gives otherwise impenetrable news a human spin. Commenting on all the events we don't have time to attend and posting with the regularity of a Metamucil dealer, b!X is clearly Portland's new Blog Baron.

Christian Crumlish
Author of The Power of Many

[O]ver the site's first year, more and more reporters for the traditional media in Portland have made Communique part of their reading routine, as have an increasing number of people in local government (both elected officials and staff).

Media Coverage

Presented below are links to pdf copies of news articles and media mentions of The One True b!X and/or PORTLAND COMMUNIQUE -- either in their own right or in the context of other stories.

Principles

The principles listed here should help the reader understand our goals with The One True b!X's PORTLAND COMMUNIQUE and its ongoing experiment in amateur reporting and hobbyist journalism. Futher food for thought can be found in Jay Rosen's lists of what is radical and conservative about the intersection of weblogs and journalism.

Elements Of Journalism

  1. Journalism's first obligation is to the truth.
  2. Its first loyalty is to citizens.
  3. Its essence is a discipline of verification.
  4. Its practitioners must maintain an independence from those they cover.
  5. It must serve as an independent monitor of power.
  6. It must provide a forum for public criticism and compromise.
  7. It must strive to make the significant interesting and relevant.
  8. It must keep the news comprehensive and proportional.
  9. Its practitioners must be allowed to exercise their personal conscience.

See the full statement of purpose from which these nine elements are taken for an expanded view and explanation of each. Available on the website of the Project for Excellence in Journalism and the Committee of Concerned Journalists, they were adapted from the book, The Elements of Journalism: What Newspeople Should Know and the Public Should Expect, by Bill Kovach and Tom Rosenstiel.

Weblog Ethics

  1. Publish as fact only that which you believe to be true.
  2. If material exists online, link to it when you reference it.
  3. Publicly correct any misinformation.
  4. Write each entry as if it could not be changed; add to, but do not rewrite or delete, any entry.
  5. Disclose any conflict of interest.
  6. Note questionable and biased sources.

Taken from an excerpt from the book, The Weblog Handbook, by Rebecca Blood. See the full excerpt for more detail on each.

About The Editor

Christopher Frankonis (a.k.a. The One True b!X) is the writer, editor, and publisher of Portland Communique. He is an eight-year resident of Portland, Oregon.

Disclosure

During the 2004 local elections, this site accepted ads from political candidates. At various times during those campaigns, we accepted ads from Mayoral candidates Phil Busse, Jim Francesconi and Tom Potter. We include this disclosure here, even though the campaigns have long since ended, because these individuals may occasionally still appear in stories we cover here.

Amongst the contributors to this site via the Willamette Week Give Guide at the close of 2004 was Commissioner Sam Adams.