Hello Eugene Weekly Reader!

We don’t think it’s just us that gets super bummed whenever we see an empty Eugene Weekly box these days. That box with a paper in it is just part of the landscape that makes up what is weird and wonderful about Eugene.

We are working on it, Weekly Reader (kids magazine reference fully intended) and so are you! We have had so many folks send supportive notes and contribute, and not to be hokey, but you’ve made us laugh and cry.

We teared up when the lovely man stopped by the office on Friday to tell us he’s always picked up two copies of the paper. One to read and keep — he says he has 30 years of EW papers! And the other he uses to start his Norwegian stove. He really needs us back in print for both reasons, he says. We took it as a compliment — even the fire starter part.

And local businesses have been amazing! Accountants on the Go stopped by and gave us a couple hours of their time to help figure out our bills, Sweet Life Patisserie is giving us a portion of their sales today, Tacovore did the same last week, and Metro Bru is tomorrow! The Ems have reached out to see if we need an assist (that’s a baseball thing, right?).

The lovely 255 Madison is planning a fundraiser in February, and Old Nick’s Pub fundraiser starts at noon this Friday, Jan. 12 and runs late into the evening. We will get something up on the website about it and the event lineup this week!

And if you are still hungry (we are) Nelson’s in the Whit is contributing $1 from every item they sell Wednesday, Jan. 10 (tomorrow). So whether it’s one of their fabulous margaritas, or if you are sticking to tacos, it’s going to be delish (team fish tacos over here).

We think we have raised over $100,000! And The Register-Guard did a lovely story — featuring office dogs Biggie and Aksel. KEZI also did a sweet report on the community response (featuring Sweet Life of course, see what we did there? Sweet?). 

We love local news.

Duly noted: We also love being the ones covering local news and want to get back to it. We can’t even snark the RG right now because one, they are being so nice, and two, (and more importantly) we still don’t have a damn newspaper to print our snark in right now.

EW is trying to be here for the long haul, so we will keep you posted!

And since we are a newspaper … and that’s why you read us.

Tomorrow we will be running a couple letters to the editor on the biggest news in town (Yeah, you guessed it, the embezzlement of Eugene Weekly, funny/not funny, right?).

We also have a story on the latest candidate who has announced they are entering the race for Eugene mayor, a Local and Vocal viewpoint on immigration and more!

Pardon our overenthusiastic punctuation. We are using a lot of exclamation points today because we are slightly tired.

But, still fighting!

Send us your letters to the editor so we have something to edit for all the nice retired journalists who have offered to help us! Letters@EugeneWeekly.com.