Who is Cascadia Times? A short history and mission

See Cascadia Times Launch Team

History

Two former environment reporters for The Oregonian have been the main force behind Cascadia Times since it launched its first issue in March 1995. Kathie Durbin and Paul Koberstein helped initiate and develop The Oregonian’s award-winning coverage of the Northwest and its natural resources in the 1980s. They brought to Cascadia Times a reputation for tough, thoughtful investigative journalism and a desire to educate the public about the continuing changes affecting the region’s economy, communities and environment.

In 1996, TheUtne Reader named Cascadia Times as among the most outstanding new publications in the country. In its first year, Cascadia Times was one of the first publications to report on new scientific findings linking chemicals in the environment to reproductive problems in humans. Other indepth stories that first year reported on the Queen Charlotte Islands (Haida Gwaii), the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, and invasive species.

In 1997 and 1998, Cascadia Times investigated poor mining practices causing severe degradation of the Northwest’s rivers. The June 1997 "Special Mining Issue" was distributed to 33,000 households throughout the region, our largest single press run to date. Our May 1998 expose of hazardous urban air pollution led directly to a decision by the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality to force oil companies to install pollution control equipment – virtually eliminating the equivalent of a major oil refinery’s emissions from the Portland air

Cascadia Times also broke important new ground in reporting on the environmental degradation and threats to wild salmon cause by the salmon aquaculture industry in Puget Sound and British Columbia.

Mission
The Pacific Northwest, the region that extends from Northern California through Oregon, Washington and British Columbia to Alaska, and inland to Idaho and Montana, is a region whose identity and character have been formed by its natural environment. The region's natural resources have been the traditional mainstays of the region's economy, and the source of its quality of life. Cascadia Times was created to foster a broad public understanding of the natural environment of the Pacific Northwest, and the forces of politics, economics, science and community life that influence policies that affect it, as the region changes and adapts to new environmental and economic conditions.

Cascadia Times aims to be a responsive and responsible publication providing the Pacific Northwest with in-depth coverage of environmental and natural resource issues. Cascadia Times uses the tools of investigative journalism to produce accurate, fair and timely articles that examine and expose public policies which foster unsustainable depletion or degradation of the region's natural resources, as well as articles that explore activities in the region which foster conservation and sustainable use of those resources.

What need does Cascadia Times fill?
Cascadia Times is the only publication based in the Pacific Northwest serving that region with in-depth coverage of environmental and natural resource issues. The Pacific Northwest is a region where issues of clean water, endangered species, forests, marine mammals, grazing, hydropower, industrial agriculture, organic farming, mining, salmon, bears, coyotes, wolves and mountain lions are backyard, everyday issues. Two of the major cities in the region, Seattle and Portland, are now the only major metropolitan areas in the country contending with an Endangered Species Listing. The region's economy, once dependent on natural resources, is changing. Population growth and development have put pressures on the region's natural resources in ways that force all who live here to confront those realities on a daily basis. Citizens of the Pacific Northwest need to be informed about these issues in a way that is not served by the daily news media. Cascadia Times was created to fill that gap.

Who is Cascadia Times?
Cascadia Times was founded in 1995 by award-winning journalists Paul Koberstein and Kathie Durbin, along with Robin Klein. Paul began his career in Wisconsin, and was a reporter for The Oregonian from 1981 through 1992. He won numerous state, regional and national journalism awards, including the top prize for investigative reporting from the Oregon Newspaper Publishers Association in 1986, 1988 and 1991. He is the co-author of The Clean Water Act: An Owner’s Manual (River Network 1999).