It’s easy to see that Register, Whitewater’s local paper for 152 years, is in a period of transition.   In all of this, there’s a different type of newsprint, less likely to leave ink on a reader’s hands.  So much has been said about lipstick on pigs, that there’s nothing left to say on the newsprint for the paper. 
 
Inside.  There’s information about the October 3rd Make a Difference Day in Whitewater.  It’s a fine effort, and registration may be completed at http://www.uww.edu/involve/forms/mad.php  .  The registration deadline is Monday, September 29th.  There will be charitable projects taking place throughout the city.    
 
Front Page.  There are four front page stories in the Register this week: A donation to the local food pantry, the retirement of local physician Dr. Anne Griffiths, a story on disaster aid provided to Walworth County residents, and a story of the increase in Walworth County’s population.
 
(One sees that Walworth County has a population of over 101,000 – just enough for a dream town, I’d guess.  Congratulations.  Just don’t let La Grange take all the credit.)
 
Two of the stories are serious, and two are local human interest stories particular to Whitewater.
 
The four stories represent legitimate coverage options for the Register: local human interest, stories on county government without a transparent political angle, or serious scrutiny of local government, corporations, and organizations. 
 
The Register has mixed local human interest stories and straightforward county government coverage with local political bias.       
 
Cover human interests stories, especially from a benign but ironic angle, and the Register would have something interesting, and a paper that might appeal to a more upscale reader.  There might be initial subscriber loss, but the paper would develop a devoted readership and a reputation for wit. 
 
Cover local government in a straightforward way, and the paper would collect another group of devoted readers who would feel that they were offered insightful analysis.  Again, some readers would walk away, but those who remained would be worth having.  The paper would develop a reputation for serious analysis.
 
The paper has a third option, one that it will – here I am sure – never take: a serious muckraking paper, confronting political incumbents and their career appointees.  The paper would have a rich field of targets: flimsy excuses, mediocre work, parochial views, and the laughable conviction that a few and their friends represent a special class whose needs and views trump those of others.
 
The Register can continue along its present course, so long as a publishing chain pays for that course.  I think it’s probably the worst course the paper could take, as journalism or prudence.  It’s easily maintained, though, as long as out-of-town advertisers think ads in the Register are valuable to them.    

Here’s my (mostly) weekly post, Register Watch™, on our local weekly newspaper, the Whitewater Register. 
 
Frontpage.  There are three front page stories. 
 
Taste of Whitewater.  The first is a recap of the September 12 and 13th events at the Cravath Lakefront.  The three accompanying color photographs ably depict the variety of events at the Taste.      
 
Two other stories are more serious. 
 
Lakeland School.  There’s a below-the-fold discussion of an amendment to a Walworth County ordinance to allow non-resident students (outside the district of the Children with Disabilities Education Board) to enroll in Lakeland School.  Walworth County’s Board of Supervisors voted unanimously to permit the enrollment of non-residents. 
 
Lakeland School serves special-needs students. 
 
The story’s author notes that the new school can accommodate up to 370 students.  The program has about 100 fewer students now.  I do not know how many students the new Lakeland School can optimally accommodate – that might be 370, or it might be a lower number. 
 
(I understand it’s possible to say that there’s no fixed optimal number, but the cost of the building and its maintenance would require some estimate of how many students those expenses were meant to cover.)
 
It’s fair to infer from the story that there are fewer students than the building can handle, but are there fewer students than the building was meant to handle now? 
 
More important, of course, is how the thousands of special needs students in Walworth County and its environs should best be educated.  The cost of the facility, and its unused capacity, hardly drive a school choice.  Lakeland School is merely one choice out of several possible settings. 
 
It would be better to let Lakeland sit with unused capacity than to fill merely to fill it, however tempting that option may be, with those unsuited to schooling there.     
 
Bilking the Elderly.  The third story involves a crime against an elderly woman, who was tricked into wiring money to someone she thought was a relative.  It was a phone scam, but there are similar scams, targeted more to other age groups, through email, too.  We are a small town far from other nations, but both phone calls and email messages are easy ways to trick someone across long distances. 
 
Inside.  I would ordinarily be reluctant to call attention to out-of-town merchants, as we are too insular in Whitewater as it is.  It’s an irony of our situation, though, that the closest that our local publication comes to a cosmopolitan outlook is in the print advertisements that it publishes for Burlington, Lake Geneva, Elkhorn, and Delavan businesses.     
 
There could be a travelogue for the Register in all this, if anyone at the paper had a sense of humor:
 
Elkhorn: Land of Mystery and Surprises.