Come next year, folks seeking a new Subaru will need to drive a town over. The new location is still under construction, it will be at 520 Airport Road, in Albany.
The new dealership will be owned by the same company as the current Subaru of Corvallis, SJ Auto Investments, which is owned by Steven Jackson, and headquartered in Texas. Jackson owns several dealers that sell a variety of brands in Texas and the Northwest.
There are reports that the new dealership will be named Jackson Subaru, but there are no current filings under that name with Oregon’s Secretary of State.
Subaru of Corvallis General Sales Manager Scott Goff said the timeline for moving into the new location isn’t clear yet. When asked if buyers will still be able have their Subaru serviced at the dealership here in Corvallis, Goff said he was “sure” they would be.
County Changes Controversial Media Policy: A funny thing happened after we first reported that Benton County would be enacting a new media policy: everyone else in local media freaked out at the County – and to the County’s credit they’ve largely backed down.
Gone is all the language about the County deciding what’s objective or not, and they’ve mostly deleted their rights to refuse access from the policy, as well.
And Now, We’ll Editorialize: When we first saw the policy, we chose to call the County’s Public Information Officer Cory Grogan to see if the County would be open to changes, which they were. Subsequently, we submitted a several page memo with recommendations, many of which seem to have been adopted.
This seemed better than freaking out.
However, the policy still defines a journalist as an employ with a credential from a media organization. They do not include an exception for subject expert freelancers that a news organization may contract for a complex story – which is a longstanding practice in the news industry, and growing trend of late.
Also notable, there are journalists that put out award winning work that will pursue a story on their own with hopes of selling it to a publisher later. We hope the county will look at this one more carefully.
Random Review at the Library Next Wednesday: Oregon State University literature and writing instructor Liddy Detar will discuss the novel Lessons in Chemistry as part of the library’s Random Review
series, Dec. 13 at noon. The program will take place in the Corvallis-Benton County Public Library’s Main Meeting Room.
Liddy Detar is a Senior Instructor and Academic Advisor in the School of Writing, Literature, and Film at Oregon State University. She has a PhD in Feminist Literary Studies with interests in Caribbean and feminist studies, and story-based strategies for social change. She also is an essayist and teaches courses on memoir. Outside of class, Detar trains horses and riders in “natural horsemanship.” She and her children have a flat coat retriever named Lazer, and enjoy rock climbing, cooking, quilting, and collecting records.
The popular novel Lessons in Chemistry is the first for author Bonnie Garmus. It’s a quirky comedy about single mother Elizabeth Zott, who becomes a hugely popular 1960s television cooking show host, a decade after losing her job as a chemist – and along the way teaches feminist concepts to her audience.
Do you have a story for The Advocate? Email editor@corvallisadvocate.com