Author Archive

Phil Busse

Phil Busse

Phil Busse has spent the past 20 years as a journalist, attorney and educator—and doing his tour of duty with alt-weeklies.

He has served as the Editor for the Source, a popular weekly newspaper in Bend, Oregon and was the founding Managing Editor for the Portland Mercury. While in law school, he wrote crime and legal stories for the Eugene Weekly and started his writing career as the first environmental beat reporter for San Francisco Weekly.

In 2006, Phil started the Media Institute for Social Change (MediaMakingChange.org), an educational non-profit. Based in Portland, Oregon, the organization hosts college students each summer to teach them how to produce public interest film and radio documentaries—and, in 2013, helped launch XRAY.FM, a talk and music radio station that won Willamette Week’s readers choice for Best Local Radio Station in 2015.

Phil is truly surprised that he ended up as a newspaperman; as a kid, he believed that he would grow up to be a spy, and has spent a lifetime acquiring the proper skills—he is certified SCUBA diver, knows how to tie a bow tie and can mix (shake) a mean martini.

Phil graduated from Middlebury College in 1992 and earned his law degree from the University of Oregon in 1997.

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With school returning, it is often a time for renewed school pride. But over the past 18 months, a story has been unfolding at the University of Oregon that casts a dark shadow over the state’s largest school—and, more directly, questions the importance placed on sports that has overwhelmed decency and morality. A year and half ago, a female student

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Climate City Brewing is not quite a year old and already has found its footing. The third contemporary brewery in Grants Pass, Climate City is actually drawing from the city’s turn-of-the-century history (as in, 1900s, not 2000s) to bring something new to the area—and the results are wonderful. Not only

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Return on the Jedi mountain bike race rounds out season In 1996, Bill Clinton was entering his second term, the first blog was launched, the global temperature was some few degrees cooler, and mountain biking was still a relatively new sport, and the equipment was crude, little better than big