One year prior to the incorporation of the tiny town of Portland, Oregon, in 1851, prospective leaders of the new community determined to establish a local newspaper—an institution which was seen as a prerequisite for urban growth.

[13] In the fall of 1850, Chapman and Corbett traveled to San Francisco, at the time far and away the largest city on the west coast of the United States, in search of an editor interested in and capable of producing a weekly newspaper in Portland.

[13] There the pair met Thomas J. Dryer, a transplanted New Yorker who was an energetic writer with both printing equipment and previous experience in the production of a small circulation community newspaper in his native Ulster County, New York.

[16] He ordered a new press in December 1860 and also arranged for the news to be sent by telegraph to Redding, California, then by stagecoach to Jacksonville, Oregon, and then by pony express to Portland.

[18] One of the journalists who began his career on The Oregonian during this time period was James J. Montague who took over and wrote the column "Slings & Arrows" until he was hired away by William Randolph Hearst in 1902.

[16] Aside from the "extravagance of design", construction materials were in short supply, the nation was under heavy inflation, and Belluschi's plans were never ready, leading to massive costs.

[36] Their prize cited "their expose of vice and corruption in Portland involving some municipal officials and officers of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, Chauffeurs, Warehousemen and Helpers of America, Western Conference" and noted that "they fulfilled their assignments despite great handicaps and the risk of reprisal from lawless elements.

[38] Starting in February 1960, striking union workers published a daily newspaper, The (Portland) Reporter;[7] its circulation peaked at 78,000, but was shut down in October 1964.

[43] As part of a larger corporate plan to exit broadcasting, The Oregonian sold KOIN-TV to newspaper owner Lee Enterprises in 1977.

The Oregonian lost its primary "competitor" and Portland became a one-daily-newspaper city in 1982, when Advance/Newhouse shut down the Journal, citing declining advertising revenues.

The integrity of The Oregonian became the subject of national coverage when The Washington Post broke the story of inappropriate sexual advances which led to the resignation of Oregon senator Bob Packwood four years later.

Instead of having a large number of general assignment reporters, she organized them around teams, many of which often develop "subject expertise" that "reflect[s] the interests of readers, not traditional newsroom boundaries.

[56] Michele McLellan assumed the role three years later, and was delegated the authority to decide whether or not a newspaper error should result in the publication of a correction.

[58] The articles illustrated the impact of the 1997 Asian financial crisis by following a case of french fries from a Washington-state farm to a McDonald's in Singapore, ending in Indonesia during riots that led to the Fall of Suharto.

[59][60] Co-worker Tom Hallman Jr. was a finalist for the 1999 Pulitzer Prize in Feature Writing, for his "unique profile of a man struggling to recover from a brain injury".

In 2000, The Oregonian was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for Breaking News Reporting for its coverage of an environmental disaster created when the New Carissa, a freighter that carried nearly 400,000 gallons of heavy fuel, ran aground February 4, 1999, north of Coos Bay, Oregon.

That same year reporters Brent Walth[61] and Alex Pulaski[62] were finalists for the Pulitzer Prize in Explanatory Writing for their series on political influences in pesticide regulation.

Staff writer Tom Hallman Jr. received the 2001 Pulitzer Prize for Feature Writing[66] for his series, "The Boy Behind the Mask", on a teen with a facial deformity.

[67] In 2004 the paper faced criticism after a headline characterized a 1970s sexual relationship between then-mayor Neil Goldschmidt and a 14-year-old girl as an "affair", rather than statutory rape.

"[75][76] On April 16, 2007, it was announced that the staff of The Oregonian was awarded a Pulitzer Prize for Breaking News Reporting for their "skillful and tenacious coverage of a family missing in the Oregon mountains, telling the tragic story both in print and online.

Les Zaitz, Jeff Kosseff and Bryan Denson were finalists for the Pulitzer for National Reporting for the same series that also won the George Polk Award noted above.

The trade journal noted that since Rowe and Bhatia arrived in 1993, the paper and its journalists had won five Pulitzer Prizes and had been finalists a further nine times.

"[5] Pulitzer Board member Richard Oppel, the editor of the Austin American-Statesman, called the paper "one of the finest newspapers in the country, easily in the top 10.

"[5] On September 28, 2008, the paper distributed a DVD of Obsession: Radical Islam's War Against the West as an advertising supplement for that day's edition,[78] two weeks after The New York Times, The Charlotte Observer and The Miami Herald had done the same thing.

"[80] In August 2009, the paper's owners announced the end of a policy that protected full-time employees from layoffs for economic or technological reasons;[43] the change took effect the following February.

In July 2014, it was announced that Mark Katches had been hired as the paper's editor, and would also be the Oregonian Media Group's vice president of content.

[104] On October 24, 2016, the paper's editorial board announced that it would once again decline to endorse a candidate for President of the United States, a practice it first abandoned in 2012.

This decision was criticized by some readers, who wondered why the board would offer endorsements in state elections without also taking a position on the presidential race.

[109] In August 2023, The Oregonian announced that the printed version of the paper will be offered only on Wednesdays, Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays, effective January 1, 2024.

[111] The staff of The Oregonian also produces three "targeted publications"—glossy magazines distributed free of charge to 40,000–45,000 wealthy residents of the Portland metropolitan area, and sold on newsstands to 5,000 others.