For the past year, Danielle Jester has attempted to cover Lake County, Oregon, from 2.5 hours away. She was the sole reporter for the Lake County Examiner, a weekly newspaper for the county of around 8000 people in south-central Oregon. She moved to Northern California for family reasons, and attempted to do her job remotely.

It took an OPB story to convince her to go back.

In May, OPB reporters published an investigative report about the town of Lakeview drowning in debt. Jester wrote in an editorial, “The reporting was desperately needed, and the story is impressively comprehensive and measured. Still, it ate at me that the Examiner had not been the one to cover those issues.”

So this month, she made the decision to move back to Lakeview.

She spoke to OPB “All Things Considered” host Geoff Norcross about her decision.

Geoff Norcross: First, can you describe the Lake County Examiner? What kind of paper is it and what does it cover?

Danielle Jester: The Lake County Examiner is a weekly paper that used to publish on Thursdays, now publishes on Wednesday. It was established in 1880 and we are headquartered in the town of Lakeview, but we are very much interested in covering all of Lake County. It’s a little over 8000 square miles, and we have just under one person per square mile.

Norcross: Why is it important to have a paper like that in Lake County?

Jester: Well, for many reasons. I used to say when I was living here before that Lakeview is like three hours from anywhere you want to be. Three hours from Medford, three hours from Ashland, three hours from my hometown of Yreka. Because we are so remote, it really is critical for us to have a newspaper that is our own.

Norcross: You attempted to do some of the work from hours away in Northern California. What was that like for you?

Jester: I was grateful to have the opportunity to do that. But when I visited here a month ago before making the decision to move back, it really showed me just how important it is to live in the community that you’re covering. You can talk to people on a regular basis, you can hear from people in town about what’s going on when you are hours away. But there’s just no substitute for being here and seeing the town yourself, seeing what businesses have closed their doors unexpectedly, seeing what new businesses have opened. When you attend local meetings, when you attend Rotary, or you just talk to people on the street, you go into coffee shops or whatever, you learn so much that you’re not going to learn if you’re three hours away and communicating mainly by phone and email.

Norcross: You’re at the office of the Examiner now, as we speak. Can you describe it for me?

Jester: It’s actually a pretty sizable office. It used to be that when you walked into the Examiner, you were immediately greeted by our large collection of archives. But now, when you walk in, it’s very empty. I’m sitting in the corner office in the back. We have a little kitchenette. We have a couple of bathrooms. We have a back room that we used to use for creating videos. So for the size of the paper and the size of the community, it’s actually a pretty nice little space.

Norcross: But it’s just you there.

Jester: At the moment, yes. But I had a Lakeview High School graduate walk into the office and proceed to inform me that she loves to write and is really interested in pursuing a career in journalism. And this is literally what I had been asking the universe for, because this is how I got my start in journalism. I just walked into my local newspaper office and said, “Hey, I love to write. Will you hire me?”

Norcross: So here’s where we are. You just got back to town. You’re getting your bearings. I’m sure you’re dealing with a lot of very immediate things right now. But I’m wondering if you have a vision for the Lake County Examiner and what it might be.

Jester: What I’m really looking to do is just bring the Examiner back to what it was for decades upon decades. This paper was always 100% local Lake County news. We understand that people have a million places that they can get their news, and they have so many places to get national news, state news. And while we can offer maybe a different perspective on some of those topics, the number one thing that I am looking to do right now is getting 100% local news in the paper.

News Source : https://www.opb.org/article/2026/06/22/lake-county-examiner-lone-reporter-moves-back/