A bureaucrat’s remarks about “….much media attention this past week to a recent sanitary sewer back up that affected First Lt. Joseph P. Cull’s property on Park Street in the city….” are days late and twenty-thousand dollars short. The media attention came from reporting outside the city, while the local press stayed silent.
Over at WTMJ Radio, in the last few days, there was commentary on the damage to the house of Lt. Cull of Whitewater, and the City of Whitewater’s unwillingness to compensate that resident for twenty thousand dollars in damage. The story was previously the subject of a Madison television report at WISC-TV, and I posted on it. (See, Accountability Begins….Somewhere Other than in Whitewater, Wisconsin.)
It’s not a story that was covered locally, as far as I can tell, other than on this website. Madison and Milwaukee media have covered it, though.
That’s unsurprising — the local dynamic is for officials to flack happy stories, and Whitewater media likely think (still) that the only way to succeed in Whitewater is to comply with that tone (no problems, problems that are no local official’s fault, problems that are an outside official’s fault, or problems that are so rare that no one could have imagined that, gosh darn it, they’d ever happen here.)
(In this case: blame-shifting to — wait for it, Whitewater — the insurance carrier! Credit as the Very Model of a Modern Municipal Manager, but when there’s a problem….blame the insurer. That’s the ticket!)
That’s why, increasingly, residents are discovering that it’s best to turn to Madison or Milwaukee for an ear: that is, to find a reporter who will cover stories about local officials’ actions.
At one time, out-of-town stories might not have mattered as much, when stories about Whitewater covered in Madison and Milwaukee might not get back to Whitewater’s readers, listeners, or viewers so easily.
Those days are over — Madison and Milwaukee newspapers, radio stations, and television news reports are easily accessible online.
(I’d still like to see someone publish an online newspaper just for Whitewater, with real reporting, solid standards of journalism, and a true, inquisitive public watch on local politicians and bureaucrats, and municipal developments. We don’t have that; bloggers offer commentary.)
Although Madison and Milwaukee are far, and there’s only so much time out-of-town reporters can spend talking about Whitewater, I’d guess that Whitewater’s becoming a more interesting story for those reporters.
Why? Because some actions here are so wrong, stupid, or mediocre, and yet the local defense of them is so strident or unyielding, that it’s an interesting story for American communities with higher standards. Whitewater’s problem isn’t just mediocre leadership (other places have that), but mediocre leadership that often responds to those problems in galling, ignorant, or laughable ways. All the over-the-top boosterism runs up against the judgment and common sense of communities beyond Whitewater.
The City Manager’s remarks on the matter — in writing, not on camera — are finally available, days later, in his Weekly Report. (Predictably, an incumbent politician’s website flacks re-posts every word from the Weekly Report on the issue as though they were the very words of unalterable truth. Seldom does one seem so conformist and star-struck that obvious conflicts are ignored in the rush to print words as though they were from the very mouth of Wisdom itself.)
One of these stories does more damage than a thousand inconsequential marketing efforts can overcome. We’ve had quite a few of these stories, over these last years, and yet our officials make the same mistakes over and over again. They choose wrongly, and explain poorly.
I’m not sure if these gentlemen are foolish enough to believe their own rhetoric, or think we’re dumb enough to believe it.
It doesn’t matter. They’ll not change their ways, but America has changed around them. America: free, fair, prosperous, dynamic, committed to individualism, skeptical of government, with vast opportunities yet before her.
There’s no going back.