By James Hehn, Pendletonian Times
Government employees, especially those at the city level, have told me repeatedly that they don’t trust Pendletonian Times and that they have some interesting insights into how media should be run … so employees of the Administrative Office of Pendleton City Hall can trade me. Do what I do and make the money you think I’m making and I’ll at least have the common courtesy of taking down phone numbers and playing nice with Pendleton Lantern. But whatever …
On February 24, 2025, a story was published regarding factual inconsistencies between the City of Pendleton website and their Facebook page. While nothing was false that we reported regarding Counselor John Thomas, the City of Pendleton website page that listed his spouse’s name as “Lori” was erroneous.
A bird from the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge, a yellow-headed blackbird, informed me that the City of Pendleton website is managed by Jennifer Colton. This person is a communications specialist who is supposed to be helping the City Council meet its goal of communicating more effectively with the public and even teaches at Blue Mountain Community College, according to East Oregonian. But she can’t be bothered to make timely changes to the City of Pendleton website. She filled in Counselor Thomas’ name and left the previous counselor’s information there.
Colton is even a regular contributor to Go! Magazine. I wonder if the articles she writes for Go! are paid? Wouldn’t taking money from a magazine while working for a city be a conflict of interest?
Pendletonian Times has never had to unpublish a story before but once that yellow-headed blackbird told me that the City of Pendleton website was less up to date than an anarchist news website, I almost ran back so I could fix it faster.