Willamette Week - Notable Stories

Notable Stories

Notable stories first reported by WW include:

• In 2009, Reporting that then-City Commissioner Sam Adams had a sexual relationship with legislative intern Beau Breedlove. Rumors of a relationship with the underage intern had circulated during Adams' campaign for Mayor, but Adams denied any sexual relationship. After Willamette Week contacted Adams for comment on an upcoming story, Adams admitted publicly that there was a sexual relationship, but not until after Breedlove had turned 18, and that Adams had lied about the relationship to avoid feeding the negative perception of gay men.

• In 2008, the paper revealed that Gordon Smith, the junior United States Senator and one of the wealthiest men in Congress, employed undocumented workers at his frozen food processing operation in Eastern Oregon. Smith, a Republican, had been a fierce opponent of illegal immigration and had voted against an amnesty bill. Two months later, Smith lost a reelection bid, credited in part to this story.

• Making public Neil Goldschmidt's long-concealed sexual misconduct with a fourteen-year-old girl. Goldschmidt, a former Oregon Governor, was mayor of Portland at the time of the abuse. After the Willamette Week contacted him for comments on their impending story, Goldschmidt confessed to the relationship in an interview published in the Oregonian before the Week story was set to print, in order to preempt its publication. However, the alternative weekly first broke the story on its website. Nigel Jaquiss won the 2005 Pulitzer Prize for investigative reporting for his work on the story.