A visit to the Matt Kramer memorial

Published 4:56 am Thursday, April 7, 2011

Some say journalism is dead or dying, but I disagree. Honest and objective reporting will always have a crucial role in American democracy. It might not pay as much (if it really ever did outside the big cities), but consumers will seek it out if they care about facts and want to have a sound basis for voicing an informed opinion. Or this is what I tell my journalism students at Newport High School, where I teach and advise a 33-person staff that produces a monthly, 16-page color magazine with a print run of 1,000.

Not too long ago, to my educate my students, I took them on a field trip to what I like to call the most sacred place in Pacific Northwest journalism the Matt Kramer memorial located in Oswald West State Park, a few miles south of Cannon Beach on the North Oregon Coast. For any aspiring or actual journalist or writer, or just anyone who appreciates truth in a truth-challenged media era, I highly recommend a visit for sheer inspiration. It’s the best kind of writing workshop, the kind where you don’t need to write a single word but can’t wait to write.

A thrashing rain pelted us as we walked the forested path to Short Sands Beach and the Matt Kramer memorial, which amounts to a plaque tucked away on the hike to Cape Falcon. It is so utterly remote and unpretentious that it took me two hours to locate it after I learned of its existence a decade ago from a footnote in a book purchased at a garage sale. I now know the path well, since I’ve visited the memorial close to 20 times and always perform some impromptu groundskeeping around the area.

I gathered the students around the memorial and read aloud from the plaque:

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“The people of Oregon hereby express their gratitude to Matt Kramer of the Associated Press, whose clear and incisive newspaper articles were instrumental in gaining public support for passing of the 1967 Beach Bill. This landmark legislation guarantees forever the public’s right to the free and uninterrupted use of one of Oregon’s most popular recreation attractions, its ocean beaches.”

Just who was Matt Kramer? He was a veteran Associated Press reporter covering the Capitol beat and the 1967 session of the Oregon Legislature. His dispatches on the early precarious fate of the “Beach Bill” that appeared in newspapers around the state helped keep the bill alive in the public eye despite the efforts of a cabal of coastal legislators who wanted to kill it in committee. Indeed, my research indicates that one story in particular Kramer wrote in May 1967 during the death rattle of the bill, with a headline of “Beach Bill Revival Sought,” may be the main reason Oregon has open beaches without fences and security guards wearing headsets.

One journalist. Meager pay. God-awful boring hearings in a legislative subcommittee. No environmental pros from Portland feeding Kramer canned goods. No Googling anything. No received wisdom from television or talk radio. Kramer just wrote some straight news of the clarifying inverted pyramid type nearly extinct in contemporary American newspapers. The man wrote 40,000 to 50,000 words in five months and his sentences awakened a sleeping giant the people of Oregon to the shocking news that their publicly-owned beaches in the dry sand areas were imperiled by privatization.

My favorite Kramer sentence is:

“There has been a public outcry to preserve the beaches since some private owners began claiming the beach down to the high tide line and began barring the public.” 

Clear and incisive. Just like the plaque says. I doubt they’ll ever erect something like this in Oregon to a blogger.

Matt Kramer died from cancer in 1972 and the state erected the memorial in the greatest state park in Oregon, named after former governor Oswald West, who in 1913 took the lead role in inaugurating the state’s unique legacy of publicly-owned beaches by signing a law (that he wrote) that declared the wet sand areas or Oregon’s ocean beaches a public highway.

The rain poured and the wind whipped through the trees as we laid hands on the memorial and swore an oath to uphold the truth with our journalism. I made my students pledge fealty to the power of reporting the news without bias and agenda. I told the staff, “Look where great journalism can lead.” And I wasn’t talking about the plaque, which I would easily take over a Nobel Prize for Literature at the end of my Oregon writing life. I meant the free and publicly-owned beaches the memorial overlooks.

We never paid a cent to use the beach, and you don’t have to pay a cent to visit the Matt Kramer memorial. Just take U.S. Highway 101 to Oswald West State Park and follow the trail to the beach. A sign will direct you to the plaque and it’s about a three-minute uphill walk. Be sure to lay hands when you get there.