Ben Botkin - Profile and Journalist Details
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Ben Botkin
Verified
Reporter, Oregon Capital Chronicle
Oregon City
Beats
Biography
Ben Botkin is an accomplished watchdog and beat reporter. Botkin is currently the politics & policy correspondent for Lookout Eugene-Springfield. He previously covered state politics for the Oregon Capital Chronicle, the Statesman Journal in Salem, Ore., The Denver Post and the Las Vegas Review-Journal. He also wrote about criminal justice and state prison issues for Oklahoma Watch, a non-profit investigative journalism outlet. Botkin has covered national stories such as the Nevada caucuses, the 2016 presidential conventions, campaigns and armed standoffs in Nevada and Oregon with ranchers and self-styled militia men. His journalism has sparked investigations and changes among the government agencies he's covered. His work exposing bid-rigging has led to reforms in an Idaho college's bidding process for construction jobs. His investigation of an animal shelter director led to the director's indictment on animal cruelty charges and the indictment of the police chief. He also has covered the Idaho Legislature, the education beat and local government. He is a graduate of Southern Illinois University, Carbondale.
State government and agencies, health care the insurance industry, mental health the Legislature and any other stories that require digging., corrections
I don't cover anything without a connection to government and people.
Content
By Ben Botkin Verified| Lookout Eugene-Springfield@ QuickTake: A rural Lane County water district has lost more than $3.5 million in federal grants for much-needed upgrades of its aging system of limited water storage and fragile water lines. People who live in the rural Lane County community of Mapleton sometimes struggle to access their water supply, forced to wait during outages until service returns to an aging system.
By Ben Botkin Verified, Vanessa Salvia, Mike McInally, Lookout Eugene-Spingfield| Lookout Eugene-Springfield@ QuickTake: Gov. Tina Kotek says she's committed to patient safety at the state's psychiatric hospital, but declines to say why action wasn't needed before the death of a Lane County man who was a patient at the facility. Gov. Tina Kotek said she’s committed to patient safety and high standards of care at Oregon State Hospital, a psychiatric facility with at least four troubling patient deaths since she took office in 2023.
By Ben Botkin Verified, Nigel Jaquiss Verified, Sarah Butler Verified, Duane Noriyuki| Lookout Eugene-Springfield@ QuickTake: The former superintendent of Blachly School District padded his $154,000 board-approved annual salary with an unauthorized raise, records show. A former rural Lane County school superintendent agreed to pay a $4,000 penalty to settle an ethics case after state investigators found he steered a school contract to his wife without advertising it and raised his salary without the board’s approval, state records show.
Company Info
Oregon Capital Chronicle
Santa Cruz, California, United States
+27 82 878 9141