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The Eugene Weekly on the Gottfredson “resignation” and UO Matters

Camilla Mortensen has the resignation story here, and their “SLANT” section adds a little advice for Scott Coltrane:

• Just a suggestion: Interim UO President Scott Coltrane should pencil in lunch with Bill Harbaugh at least once a month, and the next president should do the same. Harbaugh is the economics professor who puts up uomatters.com offering gossip, opinions, rumors, but most importantly, document after document that skewers the administration of the university. The Oregon press, and now the national media, go to him for the inside story. Call him a muckraker. And speaking of muckrakers, Doris Kearns Goodwin’s 2013 book The Bully Pulpit, Theodore Roosevelt, William Howard Taft and the Golden Age of Journalism, details how Teddy Roosevelt worked with the rebel press to reach his goals. It’s hardly a parallel with today’s UO, but it is instructive. [Ed: For a more comprehensive TR biography, try here: Power and Responsibility: Theodore Roosevelt]

7 Comments

  1. For Blog Accuracy 08/14/2014

    Muckrakers, like Ida Tarbell and others of the early 20th century were careful, accurate reporters who carefully researched their stories. Unlike UO Matters, they did not simply publish baseless rumors, false charges, and personal smears.

  2. agree 08/14/2014

    I agree with above, when you start using the 1st Adm and comparing yourself to Roosevelt to defend your gossip blog, you have slipped off the rails of academic perspective.

    • read first, muck later 08/14/2014

      You don’t read very carefully, do you?

      The person who first mentioned Roosevelt and named UOM a muckraker was the SLANT writer. Read first before hastening to fire your muck.

  3. Fair and Balanced 08/15/2014

    After absorbing the criticisms offered for UO Matters, it is enlightening to go to other sources of real information about the goings on at the UO. For instance, check “Around the O” for a more nuanced and careful discussion of how Espy built up a new institute, housed her postdoc in new space that had been long planned (in public forums) for other purposes, and gave the directorship of the new institute to her associate VPR. Oh wait. They didn’t ever mention any of that did they?

    Okay, let’s just stick to more easily documented things, like the gloriously well-paid sinecure that Jim Bean got as soon as he was kicked out of the provost position. What? Not discussed?

    Hmmmm….how about the fact that administrators at UO are paid well above market rates, while faculty and staff salaries hover at the very bottom of all comparators because of the “dry well”. That’s glossed over too?

    Gosh. What are we to conclude?

    • one eyed pinhead 08/17/2014

      I think around the zero is GREAT!
      Each time I read that kardashianesque bla I am reminded how good it is, not having to use that ‘critical thinking’ ALL the time….it’s tiring, you know? And why shouldn’t the UO Admins allow their hard working intelligencia some relaxing, easy reading once in a while…. just think of it as elevator music in print.

      Everything is OK. We are doing great! The UO is a wonderful, wonderful place. Go Dicks!

      • Pollyanna 08/18/2014

        One-eyed pinhead, you made me laugh so hard I think I broke a rib.

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