Legislative resolution honors Mike Donahue

Longtime KOIN news anchor Mike Donahue, who died of cancer last year, is set to be honored by the Oregon Legislature during its current short session.

Three former television news colleagues, including current state Sen. Lew Frederick, spoke on behalf of Senate Concurrent Resolution 210 during a Senate Rules Committee meeting on Thursday, Feb. 15. The resolution is sponsored by Sen. Bill Hansell, R-Athena, who was a year ahead of Donahue when they were at the University of Oregon together in the 1960s.

“I think it is altogether fitting that the Oregon Legislature recognize his outstanding service,” Hansell said.

Donahue was born in 1946 in Albany, where he was high school student body president. He joined Portland TV station KOIN in 1968 upon his graduation with a journalism degree from the University of Oregon, but enlisted in the Army soon afterward. Donahue rejoined KOIN in 1972 and soon became the youngest news anchor in the Portland broadcast market. He retired in 2012.

Donahue died of cancer on Aug. 25, 2023, at age 77. Two daughters, Joy and Noelle, survive him.

Working alongside Donahue for years was Rick Metsger, who covered sports. Metsger was a Democratic state senator from Welches between 1999 and 2011. After he lost a primary bid for state treasurer in 2010, Metsger accepted a federal appointment, but returned to Oregon, where he is now with the Pac/West lobbying firm.

“For nearly half a century, Oregonians relied on Mike Donahue to deliver their news,” Metsger told the committee. “He was the consummate professional. He was the standard we all tried to measure ourselves by, even though we never quite achieved that ourselves.”

As he spoke, the screen in the hearing room displayed a photo of the KOIN newsroom in the late 1970s with Donahue seated in the center and Metsger in a white leisure suit on the left. Newsrooms then often were backdrops for the live evening news broadcasts.

There were no computer terminals or laptops, no internet or smartphones. Metsger said reporters used typewriters to produce stories on 6-ply forms — one original and five carbon copies.

“It would all go to Mike to assemble, and he would sit at the news desk for hours with his proverbial red pen — re-editing, restructuring sentences, questioning reporters about the facts and verifying if they were true,” Metsger said.

“We were all competitive, and Mike wanted KOIN news to be recognized. But Mike was insistent that he’d rather be right than be first. If he had a big story and it involved information that was not confirmed, Mike would not put it on the newscast until it was confirmed. That is what separated him a lot from others. To many Oregonians, Mike was the news. They had faith and trusted he would deliver the news fairly, accurately and completely.”

The standard format for local TV news shifted to crashes, crime and fires as lead stories, but Metsger said, “He put his heart in stories of substance that made a difference to Oregonians.”

Metsger said Donahue also was skeptical when government officials heaped praise upon each other on the unveiling of a new policy or program. He said Donahue would ask how it would benefit people, how much it would cost and where the money would come from, how success would be measured or failure anticipated — and when reporters would learn those details.

Donahue was known as the “Walter Cronkite of Oregon,” a reference to the legendary CBS anchor between 1963 and 1981. But Metsger said that unlike himself and two others who testified, when Donahue was asked about seeking public office, the response was: “I would rather report the news than be the person in the news. That pretty much says it all.”

The first Oregon governor that Donahue interviewed was Tom McCall, himself a former TV reporter and commentator. McCall was a reporter with KGW before being elected secretary of state in 1964 — and the first of two terms as governor in 1966 — and a commentator with KATU from 1975 until 1982. McCall died in 1983. McCall did take a leave to mount a comeback bid in the 1978 Republican primary, which he lost to Vic Atiyeh.

Frederick was a reporter for Portland TV station KGW until 1993, when he went to Portland Public Schools. He was appointed in 2009 to an open seat in the Oregon House and served through 2016, when he was elected to the Oregon Senate.

At KGW, Frederick said he had few opportunities to interact with Donahue. But he encountered him years later at reunions of former staffers from all the stations.

“Mike Donahue stands out as one of the most outstanding folks we’ve had in the news media to tell us what is going on,” Frederick said. “His approach was not necessarily to show the confrontations, but the various possibilities.”

Mark Hass was in a similar position to Frederick’s. Hass was a reporter for Portland TV station KATU from 1984 to 1999. He won a seat in the Oregon House from a Beaverton area district in 2000 and served until 2007. He did not sit in the 2007 session, but he was appointed to a vacancy in the Oregon Senate later that year and served through 2020, when he lost a primary bid for Oregon secretary of state.

In testimony read aloud by Metsger, Hass said: “Nobody at the other TV stations saw him as a competitor. We saw him more as a torch bearer for delivering the news in a straightforward and accurate way. We all admired and respected him for sticking to such high journalistic standards.

“No matter how chaotic an Oregonian’s day might have been, when Mike Donahue was on the screen, the world seemed in order.”