I’m a freelance journalist, living in Eugene, Oregon. I was in the midst of posting news on X about an Oregon newspaper’s endorsement of Kamala Harris on Wednesday when Elon Musk’s X (formerly Twitter) suddenly locked my account.
“This one should be obvious. Eugene Weekly endorses the Kamala Harris and Tim Walz ticket for democracy and our sanity,” wrote the Editorial Board of the Oregon newspaper.
While several large American newspapers fail to endorse a candidate, the Eugene Weekly is the little engine that could. A small, weekly, free newspaper, Eugene Weekly has been in print for 42 years. Eugene is the second largest city in Oregon. Student enrollment at the University of Oregon is more than 23,000.
USA Today, the largest national newspaper in the country, announced this week that it wouldn’t be publishing an endorsement for president. Following announcements by large newspapers the LA Times and the Washington Post declining to publish endorsements for President of the U.S., the Eugene Weekly’s endorsement is notable.
Gannett-owned USA Today also said its 200 regional newspapers would not publish endorsements either. Gannett owns the Register-Guard in Eugene; the newspaper scrapped its Opinion Section in 2022.
Camilla Mortensen, editor-in-chief of Eugene Weekly, messaged me: “When The Register-Guard killed its opinion page they wrote, just as fellow Oregon Gannett owned paper the Statesman Journal did, ‘Opinion content also is often cited as the reason for canceling a subscription, with readers saying they feel we are choosing sides on an issue or we lack objective discipline, something we take great care and pride in doing as journalists.'”
New York University journalism faculty member Jay Rosen messaged me when I asked him about Gannett’s possible motivations for muzzling USA Today and its 200 newspapers: “Cowardice and the greater financialization of everything within that company, and that kind of company.”
Mortensen messaged: “When I teach public issues reporting at the University of Oregon, my students are often astonished at the information that is out there that the average person can access. The difference, I tell them, between reporters and other people, is it is literally our jobs to dive into this information and understand it.”
Publisher of the Eugene Weekly Jody Rolnick messaged me: “Eugene Weekly is one of just three newspapers in Oregon (the other two are in Portland) that interviews candidates and those campaigning for and against ballot measures to inform their published endorsements.”
Earlier on Wednesday, former USA Today Deputy Editorial Page Editor David Mastio posted on X: “I am sad to report that @USATODAY is joining the Los Angeles Times and the Washington Post in not endorsing in the presidential race this year. Neither will USA TODAY’s 200 local publications.” He added: I was part of the @USATODAYopinion team that decided to break decades of tradition since the paper’s founding to disendorse Donald Trump in 2016. The only other political candidate we had ever disendorsed was David Duke.
In 2016, the USA Today Editorial Board wrote: Trump is ‘unfit for the presidency.’ The Board made its case, concluding: “Whatever you do, however, resist the siren song of a dangerous demagogue. By all means vote, just not for Donald Trump.”
Backlash following the Washington Post’s decision not to publish an endorsement has been deafening. More than 200,000 subscriptions were reportedly canceled after the newspaper’s owner Jeff Bezos spiked an endorsement that the Editorial Board had penned and was about to publish in support of Kamala Harris.
Margaret Sullivan wrote for the Guardian: “There’s no other way to see this other than as an appalling display of cowardice and a dereliction of their public duty.”
But not all newspapers are cowardly. My journalism mentor, the late Steve Buttry at LSU, told me in his last words to me: “Keep the pressure on.” That is the job of journalists, he taught me.
Another newspaper in the Pacific Northwest, the family-owned Seattle Times said “Hell, Yes!” in endorsing Harris, “throwing shade at owners of WashPost (and LAT and USA Today) for recent decisions not to weigh in editorially,” as NPR’s David Folkenflik posted on X.
Could X locking me out of Twitter be a tech glitch? Sure. But here’s some context.
I have been vocal about Elon Musk’s using ‘free speech’ as a ruse. Elon Musk’s X (Twitter) locked my account on Sept. 28 for posting a link to a publicly available, redacted version of the JD Vance dossier on Scribd.
Media columnist Justin Baragona, wrote about X suspending journalist Ken Klippenstein in his Ragebait newsletter for Mehdi Hasan’s Zeteo. Baragona posted on X: “I spoke to freelance reporter Nancy Levine Stearns, whose account has been locked since Saturday for sharing a link to a redacted version of the JD Vance dossier. She appealed the violation, only for Twitter to deny it 5 minutes later.”
As I wrote for The Queen Zone, “By banning Klippenstein, locking my account, and removing my post with link to the redacted Vance dossier, Musk shows he isn’t a free speech superhero at all. But rather, he’s engaged in something far more diabolical: using his ‘free speech’ argument as a shield, giving cover to a very dangerous Donald Trump.”
I’ve also written about advertisers and lack of brand safety on X. In April, NBC News cited my reporting in its story: “Hyundai pauses X ads over pro-Nazi content on the platform: The move came after a Hyundai ad appeared next to antisemitic posts from a user who has posted pro-Hitler content.”
As I wrote for the Hill Reporter, nonprofit the Center for Countering Digital Hate has been working to fight hate on X. Musk recently declared “war” on the nonprofit. I wrote: “Imran Ahmed, CEO of the CCDH told the Hill Reporter, ‘the site is rife with hate and disinformation.’ He said X has a ‘fundamental misunderstanding’ of advertisers’ needs. ‘It’s not just about ad adjacencies. They [advertisers] don’t want to be in this environment,’ he said.”
Musk’s extreme stumping for Trump has been well covered. The billionaire owner of X spoke at Trump’s hate rally at Madison Square Garden on Sunday. The Philadelphia District Attorney has sued Musk over his $1 million-a-day giveaway to registered voters. X is now effectively a Trump campaign far-right extremist propaganda platform
After I posted news of the Eugene Weekly’s endorsement of Kamala Harris, X locked my account without explanation nor option to regain access to my account. I passed their arkose challenge three times, clicking to move a little person to the right chair in a cartoon theater, proving I’m human.
Now I only see this screen: “Something went wrong.” Oh, something went wrong at X, alright. Elon Musk bought Twitter and uses it as a megaphone to spread hate and disinformation, and undermine American democracy.
So it bears repeating what the Eugene Weekly Editorial Board wrote: “This one should be obvious. Eugene Weekly endorses the Kamala Harris and Tim Walz ticket for democracy and our sanity.”
Mortensen told me: “We have pissed people off with our endorsements, we have pissed people off with our coverage. It’s the nature of journalism. That’s not a reason to stop doing something we believe in and that’s adding to public discourse and government transparency.”
No one from X or Gannett has responded to inquiries.
Nancy Levine Stearns is author of the four-book series starting with The Tao of Pug (Penguin Books / Skyhorse Publishing). As a freelance journalist, her bylines include Sports Illustrated, the Hill Reporter, Rantt Media and Grateful Web. Her reporting has been cited by The New York Times, NBC News, Forbes, and others. For more than twenty years, she was an executive recruiter, starting at American Express Company in New York. Her one-woman show Leaving Scarsdale workshopped at the HBO Workspace in Los Angeles a long time ago.
