To end 2025, we assigned each reporter in the WW newsroom to pick two stories by a colleague that stood out in 2025. We then had the recipient of the compliment pass it on—but not before penning an update to the tales. Here’s the first of these stories.
“Best Western Front”
June 25
Why Sophie Peel loved it: If every reporter has a magical power, Anthony’s lies in exercising the patience to find the unlikely intersection where public policy meets an odd (and sometimes problematic) character. That’s what he found when he reported on Brad Ketch, the entrepreneur-turned-nonprofit CEO who received homeless tax dollars from Multnomah County to operate a motel shelter in the beleaguered Rockwood neighborhood of East Portland.
Dysfunction at Ketch’s operation led Anthony to another entity that’s much larger and has much deeper coffers, one that gave Ketch a $6.8 million loan for his motel shelter: the Oregon Community Foundation, which the state handed $125 million in COVID relief funds to disburse to 32 nonprofits building shelters out of motels as part of the state’s Project Turnkey…