In Memoriam: Zane Sparling

The Portland Metropolitan Area, and, really, the whole State of Oregon, lost a stellar journalist and exemplary human being in Zane Sparling on June 21. He was 33-years-old.

Diagnosed with epithelioid hemangioendothelioma two years ago, Sparling did what he absolutely loved most until the very end of his much-too-short life on Earth. His last byline for his latest outlet, The Oregonian/Oregon Live, was on June 15.  

Sparling worked for numerous outlets before landing at the historic Oregon newspaper. According to the outlet’s obituary:

“Zane Sylvan Sparling was born in Portland in January 1993 and grew up in Lake Oswego with a passion for journalism that began very early. Traveling with his parents, he would look for the local newspaper in each town he visited. Sparling loved digging in and digging deep, recalled his father, writer Scott Sparling, and from a young age Zane saw a future for himself among the people writing the news.”

To me, Sparling was a colleague, then-working for the Portland Mercury, in the world of journalism that I looked up to and a friend I would interact with nearly every night we bumped into each other at a Portland protest during 2020-21 — which are, quite literally, countless. But I also knew him, as I have also heard from so many others over the last 24 hours, as often funny and with a contagiously positive attitude. I mean, we’re talking about someone who famously wore a full suit into Oswego Lake for a story!

DSM reached out to others that knew or were inspired by Sparling and this is what they had to say:

From independent Portland-based journalist and Village Portland editor-in-chief, Cory Elia:

“Zane was one of the first journalists I met when I started reporting and we were instant friends. He was a very kind, quiet, and calm soul. He always kept his cool in the face of danger like when we were covering the protests of 2020 and he had police in his face. Zane was a real one and I am deeply sad to hear of his passing. My heart goes out to his family and loved ones. RIP Zane, you shall never be forgotten my friend.”

From Raindrop Works editor-in-chief, Heather-Lenne Van Wilde:

“I don’t know that Zane ever actually met me, but he was directly responsible for a lot of the work that I’ve done over the last six years. 

Seeing that night when the cops attacked him for not running away from them fast enough as a journalist in 2020 sparked something in me. 

I’ve come from a family of self-trained writers, where we had respect for journalism and for getting the truth out and seeing him stand up to the people that were trying to hurt him to get that story out helped get me to go out and document as well. 

At the time my thought was trying to get another camera out there to make it harder to hide the story, but in the end it ended up becoming so much more than that. 

I still have trouble doing a fraction of what Zane was able to do in his short time here, but the tenacity and ethics that he expressed is something that is desperately needed today and will be sorting out what is happening now.”

From Left Coast Right Watch editor-in-chief, Abner Häuge:

“During the protests in 2020, seeing Zane was a bit like seeing Bigfoot to me. I rarely got to talk to him but he was always in the corner of my eye no matter how chaotic it got — and always right where he needed to be as a reporter. Zane met the spectacular, awful violence of that moment in history like few other others could. Oregon has lost one of its best journalists.”

For those that would like to donate, Sparling’s family has said that donations in his name can be made to both the EHE Foundation and the Oregon High School Journalism Institute.