I started at Street Roots as an editorial producer in 2021. I’ve often described my job as meeting our readers where they are. After the newspaper comes out in print, and is handed off to our Street Roots’ vendors to be sold to readers like you, I find other ways to get our reporting into the world.
I’ve always wanted to provide our readers with fun features like data visualizations, photo carousels and other engaging elements — features our old website didn’t easily support. Now, I’ll be able to add those features and more.
Last week, Street Roots launched its newly transformed website. This project has been several years in the making. In 2024, Street Roots was preparing to move into its new building on West Burnside Street. The organization was growing and in need of more space. I saw a similar need for the evolution of our digital space. I embarked on this side quest with our then-community partnerships coordinator, Kodee Zarnke. Together, we imagined a new website alongside the organization’s shift into its new home, and amid the celebration of Street Roots’ 25th anniversary. Zarnke and I sought a web developer who understood our needs as a newsroom and nonprofit organization.
Newspack felt like a no-brainer. The company uses WordPress to build websites for small- and medium-sized newsrooms. We were excited by the idea of working with a team who was unintimidated by the number of articles that needed to be migrated onto our new site, who recognized the priorities of small newsrooms and our urgency to stay connected to our readers. We also saw that we were in good company: Underscore Native News, High Country News, Reveal News and hundreds of other important news outlets run on Newspack.
Two years later, with many hours of work and partial funding by a grant from Google News Initiative and the Institute for Nonprofit News, we’re ready to launch. Maybe you’re reading this in print, or you’re reading it online after finding it via a link on Bluesky or Facebook. Or maybe you’re subscribed to our newsletter, and open your inbox once a week to get our stories via email. Whichever way you find yourself reading Street Roots news coverage, I’m always glad to know there are readers on the other end of this screen. That the stories we cover are landing in the minds and hearts of the people reading them.
Truthfully, it sometimes feels fraught to be working in audience engagement and digital journalism, while our federal government inches toward authoritarianism. I find myself frustrated by changing social media algorithms and competition for readers’ attention on platforms whose leaders seem less and less concerned with combating disinformation. This frustration never lasts long though, because with every comment, question or e-mail received from readers — whether it’s praise, criticism or a question — I am reminded and honored by the attention of our readers. That, of all the things you could possibly peruse on the internet, you choose to read our work.
Though our website is shiny and new, I will always encourage you to buy the physical newspaper from one of our Street Roots vendors. The print version of the paper contains art, stories and puzzles that you can’t find on our website. And buying the print paper materially aids vendors in a way that reading our stories online can’t.
Street Roots’ newsroom is only one part of our organization’s larger ecosystem. While the paper is written, edited and designed each week by professional, award-winning journalists, the heart of our organization is our vendors. Street Roots vendors buy each newspaper for 25 cents, and sell to customers for $1 plus tips. All profits are theirs to keep. Many of our vendors experience homelessness and poverty. Selling the paper is a low-barrier income opportunity.
Last year, over 400 vendors completed their orientation to sell Street Roots in our community. In the digital age, it may seem silly for a newsroom to continue a print-first model, but I could not disagree with that idea more. Our news is stewarded throughout Portland via the hands of our vendors, and what could be more important in the digital age than a little human connection?
This article appears in February 25, 2026.