PORTLAND Ore. (KPTV) – As we reflect on Black History Month, a pioneering Black-owned newspaper in Portland has shut down operations after 50 years. The Skanner has reported on some of the biggest moments in the Pacific Northwest and the country.
“No one did this in Portland like Bernie and Bobbie did,” said Oregon Historical Society Executive Director Kerry Tymchuk.
The historic Skanner newspaper has come to an end. The newspaper was founded in 1975 by Bernie Foster and led by his wife, Bobbie Foster, who served as Executive Editor and covered Portland’s Black community and the area’s biggest headlines.
“Sorrow, because it is such a part of Portland and Oregon history, and the importance it has here the community,” said Tymchuk. “They’ve done it for so long, and now it’s truly someone else’s turn.”
Tymchuk showed FOX 12 a few of the 48 boxes that the Oregon Historical Society has, which document the history of the Skanner throughout its 50 years. He explained that this history will remain preserved at the Oregon Historical Society for all to remember.
“You look at these photographs, and you look at the news that the Skanner reported, and it tells the story. Some good and some bad of who we are and why we are the way we are, documenting all the Civil Rights issues and Human Rights issues of the 70’s, 80s, 90s, and until today,” said Tymchuk.
Throughout its decades of reporting, the paper played a significant role in some of the city’s biggest changes.
“Martin Luther King Boulevard, which, of course, the Fosters drove the effort to change the name of Union Boulevard to Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard,” said Tymchuk.
Beyond chronicling local changes, over 50 years, the paper also tackled some of the hardest issues plaguing the Black community, and the Fosters were pivotal in creating change.
“They brought a lot of leaders to Oregon, the National Council of Negro Women,” said Tymchuk. “Disturbingly enough, there’s a file, Nazi’s and White Supremacists, which photographs cross burnings and very disturbing things that the Skanner covered.”
“They never gave up on the issues they were fighting for, and Portland and Oregon are for the better because of Bernie and Bobbie,” said Tymchuk.
The Skanner’s final digital edition was published in January, and former writer Donovan Scribes said the loss is devastating.
“A lot of times those headlines are headlines that nobody else caught, and so knowing that the Skanner is not there to be that witness to be that part of account is dangerous, not just for the Black community in Portland or Oregon or the Pacific Northwest to not have that type of voice in there,” said Scribes.
But he said they did the work, and now he and others have the tools to pick up the torch.
“I think that the Skanner did that work of making sure that more people were challenged around the perceptions of what this community is, could be, and will be, and I am literally living proof of the fruits of that tree,” said Scribes.
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