| Type | Weekly newspaper |
|---|---|
| Founder(s) | Dennis Keffer |
| Founded | 1973 |
| Language | English |
| Ceased publication | September 2020 |
| City | Oakridge, Oregon |
| Circulation | 465 |
| OCLC number | 23860553 |
The Dead Mountain Echo was a weekly newspaper published Tuesdays in Oakridge in the U.S. state of Oregon from 1973 [1] [2] [3] to 2020. [4] The Echo was a general member of the Oregon Newspaper Publishers Association [5] and its coverage was mentioned or picked up by various neighboring news organizations. [6] [7] [8] [9] Its circulation was reported as 465. [2]
Dennis Keffer started the Dead Mountain Echo in 1973. Keffer had little journalism experience at the time and created the paper with an initial investment of $300 and a IBM standard type-writer. But within two years he was able to grow circulation to 1,500 and gross $50,000 annually. This was in spite of competition from the Oakridge Telegram, which was more than two decades older. [10]
Larry Roberts joined the Echo in 1973, and became its owner. As of November, 2017 the owner is Viki Burns Publishing, LLC; [5] Burns started with the Echo on or before 2015. [11] She relinquished ownership back to Larry and Debra Roberts in October 2020. Efforts to sell the newspaper were unsuccessful and it subsequently closed.
After the paper ceased, Doug Bates launched a successor digital news outlet called the Highway 58 Herald. [12] [4]
When it launched in the 1970s, the Echo drove a 70-year competitor out of business. [13] In 1975, the Echo won the "general excellence" award for small weeklies from the ONPA. [14] [15] Award-winning journalist Alan Robertson got his start in the newspaper business at the Echo in 1978. [13] In 1980, the paper took second place in the "Special Issue" category in the ONPA awards. [16] Tom Henderson, a humor/opinion columnist in northern Idaho, made several references to the Echo in his column in the 2000s. [17] [18] [19]