In a historic first for an Asian American journalist, the new press offices at the Oregon State Capitol were dedicated Jan. 14 in honor of Peter Wong, considered the dean of Oregon political reporters. 

The Peter Wong Press Offices are part of an overall renovation of the Capitol. They feature private workspaces, a wall on which the First Amendment has been stenciled, and a framed sketch of Wong by Jack Ohman, a Pulitzer Prize-winning editorial cartoonist.

During the dedication ceremony, Wong, who is of Chinese descent, noted that the press offices are now named after “somebody who probably would have been a second-class citizen” when the current Capitol was built in the 1930s. At that time a federal Chinese Exclusion Act was in place, greatly restricting Chinese immigration. In Oregon, the Chinese population faced violence, segregation and denial of property ownership.

Wong, 73, has spent 50 years in journalism, 40 of them covering the Oregon Legislature. That amounts to seven governors, 10 Senate presidents and 16 House speakers. Three of those governors — current Gov. Tina Kotek and former Govs. John Kitzhaber and Ted Kulongoski — attended the dedication. 

Oregon House Speaker Julie Fahey opened the ceremony by saying that naming the press offices after Wong “honors the values that he has embodied: unflinching transparency, a robust free press, and the principle that democratic power works best when it is held to account. And importantly, it embodies the idea that our shared history matters, that the institutional knowledge and memory that a decades long career brings matters.”

Oregon Senate President Rob Wagner recalled that as a Capitol intern in the 1990s, he took part in curating the daily newspaper clips — the stories that were considered the must-reads. 

“Everybody in the Oregon Capitol read the clips. … And a story with Peter Wong’s byline always made it to the top of the clips. It was always on the first page,” Wagner said. “You knew that reading his stories would be accurate and fair, would have information that you needed. I don’t know how you did it, Peter, but you were the oracle of the Capitol. You were the sage.”

Former Oregon state Sen. Ginny Burdick, a former journalist, listed the traits every reporter should have: strong communication skills, curiosity, fairness, rigorous accuracy, persistence, compassion, integrity, and commitment to truth and accountability.

“It would be really nice to post this all on the door” to the new press offices, Burdick said. “Better yet, boil them all down to two words: Peter Wong.”

Wong is one of the longest-serving reporters in the history of the Capitol press corps and was for many years the president of the press corps. 

Wong is also a 30-year member of the Asian American Journalists Association. He served as the Portland chapter’s president or co-president for 10 years and as its national board representative for several more years.

At a reception after the dedication ceremony, the chapter announced the new AAJA Portland-Peter Wong Political Reporting Internship. The paid 10-week internship is a partnership with Willamette University, which sits across the street from the Capitol, and the Oregon Capital Chronicle, a nonprofit newsroom that covers Oregon state government, politics and policy. 

The intern will be Robin Linares, an environmental science and public health major at Willamette who is on the staff of the campus newspaper, The Collegian. Linares will cover the Legislature for the Capital Chronicle, with a focus on topics and issues that disproportionately affect people of color and other marginalized groups in Oregon.

Written by Amy Wang

Edited by Winston Szeto