KOIN has hired KIDK Idaho Falls anchor/reporter Araksya Karapetyan to be their latest reporter, part of a flurry of hires as KOIN puts together a new 4pm newscast. From her KIDK bio, Araksya has worked in Los Angeles as a writer for KFI news radio and as a news assistant for KABC-TV. Born in Armenia, she moved to the United States when communism ended in 1990, and her dream job is to be an international correspondent for CNN. Here's a video of Araksya from KIDK:

Welcome to Portland, Araksya!

(Publicity photo courtesy KIDK.)

UPDATE (7/17, 12:57pm): We've removed information that pertained to a different Araksya Karapetyan, thanks to new information from a commenter. Thank you, commenters!

We're still working on the site, but while we're at it, enjoy someone else's redesign. KVAL Eugene changed up their 11pm newscast this month, and anchor Denae D'Arcy posted a before and after to her website.

Until recently, KVAL's 11pm was a traditional, two-anchor show: the desk, the over-the-shoulder graphics, the "1980s purple set":

But this month, the newscast moved to a single-anchor standing format with faster pacing, shorter stories, user-generated content and viewer feedback. A video is after the jump:

More after the break, including Cronkite's announcements of the deaths of President Kennedy and Martin Luther King, his explanation of why he thinks his signature line, "and that's the way it is," wasn't appropriate for a newscast, plus lighter moments: his appearance on "What's My Line?" and Johnny Carson's impression of Cronkite signing off from the Evening News for the final time.

Premiering next week, new web comedy series "Wage Slaves" takes a hilarious, bittersweet look at life in a Portland coffee shop where "the pay is meager, the humiliation plentiful, and the customers are always wrong." The show also makes a case for how the web could be a new frontier in Portland's entertainment scene.

Trailer: "Wage Slaves"

"The genesis of the show was a desire to figure out how you're supposed to get by when your dreams just won't come true," says creator Chris A. Bolton. "Every bar, restaurant, and coffee shop in Portland has a musician who never signed that record deal, a writer who never published that bestselling novel, a model who never got her break. I wanted to look at how to live the life you never wanted."

"Wage Slaves" is the first web series for the cast and crew, and was "definitely a seat-of-the-pants endeavor," says Bolton. The first season was filmed in the summer of 2008, mostly in Bolton's Southeast Portland apartment, "converted into a house converted into a coffee shop." With Bolton on handicam, a sound mixer, a boom operator or two and equipment loaned by Cooper's Coffee, they sweated through hot work lights, shut windows and temperatures into and past the nineties. The show was edited on a MacBook with Final Cut Express, with the first season's six episodes running about 15 minutes each.

In the series, main character Mitch, played by Morgan Lee, is fresh out of school with a masters degree in creative writing, ready to take the literary world by storm. But for now, he's a barista at the fictional Rose City Coffeehouse. His aloof assistant manager Stacy (Lara Kobrin) has a life that's a "pile-up of bad decisions," and coworker Alicia (Melissa Kaiser) is a struggling actress determined to be happy, even if she's not. Dirk, played by Leif Norby, delights in the pain and torment of others as a disgruntled musician.

Much of the material for the series was collected from real-life experiences of workers at Portland's coffee shops and bars. While Bolton won't reveal which parts are true, "they're probably all the ones you think are made up."

"I love taking vivid characters played by strong actors, bashing them into each other, and watching sparks emerge," Bolton says. "What excites me most is that I'm finally doing something I love. I spent many years submitting screenplays to producers, agents, and contests, hoping for that big break that would allow me to do the things I've always wanted. Finally, I got tired of waiting."

Bolton's currently writing the second season, and hopes to get additional financing to start filming in the fall with better equipment and more crew. Season two may be online as early as the end of the year.

"It feels great just to make something I truly love, that really matters to me, and put it online for people to see."

"Wage Slaves" premieres Tuesday, July 21 at WageSlaveSeries.com. Learn more about the cast and crew on their website.

Later today: a few more details on the new show keeping KOIN management so secretive, plus an editor in Portland who's now writing comic books. We're working on a story about layoffs and outsourcing in Portland television, and we'll bring you that story when we have more.

And we have a new feature in the right-hand column: live stock quotes for the owners of Oregon media outlets. If you're not sure why some companies are there, CBS is for CBS Radio; Dolan Media owns The Daily Journal of Commerce; Lee owns the Albany Democrat Herald and the Gazette-Times in Corvallis, among others; while News Corp., as we reported yesterday, owns the Mail Tribune in Medford, the Ashland Daily Tidings, and, most enjoyably, Medford's the Nickel.

Rod Hill has posted a new video to his website:

A transcript:

I'm meteorologist Rod Hill, and for the last 10 years, many of you have seen me forecasting the weather on your television sets. Now, I'm taking my forecasting skills to rodhillforecast.com.

This will be Northwest weather sent to your desktop, also your cell phones and your BlackBerrys. And what's different — I know you're thinking about this: "What's different, Rod?" For years, what you've been looking at is almost all raw computer output from an office 3000 miles away. This will be my analysis, done several times a day, my seven-day forecast, graphic presentations for Northwest weather, plus, you will have access directly to your forecaster.

That's me, working for you.

In a comment on OMC last month, Rod said the site will be a subscription service with a two-week free trial, and that he expects it to be online by August 1. You can add yourself to Rod's email list at rodhillforecast.com.

UPDATE (7/11, 3:08pm): Rod tells us subscriptions will be $4 monthly or $40 annually.

UPDATE (7/13, 12:55pm): Rod adds that each day will feature a video forecast from him, and that additional videos will be hosted on the site.

(This story was originally published July 6, 2009 at 6:42pm.)

You may have seen a morning weather position at KOHD Bend pop up and disappear in our job listings over the last few days, but no one has been hired. Current meteorologist Jonathan Bellemore is staying put after failing to get out of his contract with the station, according to sources at KOHD.

UPDATE (7/8, 8:01am): OMC has learned that Jonathan Bellemore reached a mutual agreement with KOHD releasing him from his contract. However, that agreement did not become active and has since been rendered moot.

• Profits at Tribune Co., parent of Portland's "NW32" KRCW, have fallen 23 percent in the company's first five months of bankruptcy protection.
• The new 1859 Magazine hits newsstands "early next week."
• SOPTV.org officially unveiled its redesign last night. See our before and after.
• The Statesman Journal ran its first full-color op-ed today, with a column and cartoon on Sarah Palin, plus a guest editorial.
• KGW Senior Producer and consummate geek Aaron Weiss turns "2^5" today.
• And of course, practically everyone is blowing out their schedules for the Michael Jackson memorial today.

Beyond our region:

• Television news salaries are down 4.4 percent, while radio salaries fell 1.8 percent, according to RTNDA. It's even worse if you factor in inflation.
• Macy's stores have cut print advertising by 50 percent since 2005, according to an industry blog. It was feared when Macy's bought and converted Meier & Frank and other May Company stores that local ad buys would dry up in favor of national campaigns.
• McClatchy is given a nearly 50 percent chance of default.
• The Washington Post's Dan Froomkin is now The Huffington Post's Dan Froomkin.
• ABC shows are starting to appear on Hulu, beginning with Grey's Anatomy and Desperate Housewives.
• And finally, Casey Casem has hung up his headphones.

Readers, we could use some help. Check out our sharing button below and tell us in the comments if you see a real menu, or just a bunch of plain text with no background.

We lied, Press Clippings took much longer than an hour to produce. We blame our terrible, awful, slow computer.

• KMHD host Al Evans tells OMC it will be "a couple of weeks at least" before the station moves into its new studio at OPB.
• Portland Sucks calls out Matt Davis for his BlogTown post, "Rape Allegations: Another Side Effect of Big Soccer?" The Mercury's Kiala Kazebee comes to Matt's defense in the comments. Also up for Portland Sucks' wrath is KGW's Breedlove exclusive. As always, there's strong language.
• OMC reader skihoodoo sends in a photo of KGW's other Skycam in Newport at the Embarcadero resort, a followup to a story in our last Press Clippings. Skihoodoo has been doing a lot to contribute to OMC, thank you!
• A variation on an idea from @newsjunkie60 via @PortORTraffic: When an event like Wimbledon disrupts the TV schedule, why not put regular programming on a digital subchannel?
• Local blog I'm in your water offers a Portland media roundup, including former Willamette Week columnist Byron Beck calling Cort of KUFO's Cort and Fatboy "Lars Larson."
• We almost missed this: The Alliance for Community Media is holding its annual conference in Portland, discussing ways to "protect community media at the national and local levels." The event runs July 15 through 18 at the Oregon Convention Center and Doubletree Hotel.

Beyond our region:

• The climbdown is complete: Washington Post editor Katherine Weymouth has apologized over the paper's pay-for-access scandal.
• NYU's Jay Rosen notes that CNN's Reliable Sources relegated that controversy to a commentary in the final moments of the show. Howard Kurtz' status as a media critic while under the employ of two major media organizations has long been a source of its own media criticism.
• And heavy criticism doesn't always lead to apologies: Columnist Connie Schultz is more resolute than ever that her idea to ban linking and summaries of news stories is a good idea. Should Press Clippings be worried?
• If you somehow missed it over the weekend, Sarah Palin has threatened to sue bloggers and traditional media over their handling of her sudden resignation.
• Newsroom veterans may be more likely to get promotions to general manager lately.
• There's a $3 billion gap between declining TV station revenue and online ad income.
• Layoffs of copy editors mean more complaints about typos at The Washington Post.
• The Saturday Evening Post is returning to its roots, differentiating itself on the newsstand by offering more creative writing and fiction.
• The Library of Congress now offers a searchable database of news stories from 1880 to 1922.
• Web video is evolving beyond the two-minute clip.
• Instead of non-profits, The News & Observer has an idea to operate newspapers as low-profits. Insert joke here.
• Most poll respondents said they wouldn't miss their daily newspaper if it went away. I believe there was a poll to the contrary that we posted recently. Once we add tags to our old stories, that sort of thing should be easier to find.

And another big thank you to our new contributor over the weekend! Donations are all that are making this site possible. As you may have seen in our last post, we're working on ways to increase traffic so we can get some ad revenue coming in. But even then, it's unlikely to be enough to keep us afloat. The slow holiday weekend did some serious damage to our average daily visitor count. If you'd like to help us out with any amount, there's a big shiny button on the left.

This is an open thread, what's on your mind?