Dead Mountain Echo

The Dead Mountain Echo was a weekly newspaper published Tuesdays in Oakridge in the U.S. state of Oregon from 1973 to 2020. The Echo was a general member of the Oregon Newspaper Publishers Association and its coverage was mentioned or picked up by various neighboring news organizations. Its circulation was reported as 465.

History

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.
Larry Roberts joined the Echo in 1973, and became its owner. As of November, 2017 the owner is Viki Burns Publishing, LLC; Burns started with the Echo on or before 2015. 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.

Achievements

When it launched in the 1970s, the Echo drove a 70-year competitor out of business. In 1975, the Echo won the "general excellence" award for small weeklies from the ONPA. Award-winning journalist Alan Robertson got his start in the newspaper business at the Echo in 1978. In 1980, the paper took second place in the "Special Issue" category in the ONPA awards. Tom Henderson, a humor/opinion columnist in northern Idaho, made several references to the Echo in his column in the 2000s.