FREE WHITEWATER

Author Archive for JOHN ADAMS

Press

The Whitewater Register: Overview

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Whitewater has its own paper, the seventy-five-cents-a-copy Whitewater Register. Although it’s merely one part of the Southern Lakes Newspapers chain, the Register still lays claim to being Whitewater’s home paper. The Register‘s banner proudly proclaims that the paper is in its 151st year, proof that a century and a half of effort sometimes comes to nothing.

Consider the recent, May 24th edition. Although the newspaper comes in two principal section (plus numerous inserts), only the first section, pages 1 through 16, has news about Whitewater. The second section, entitled “Marketplace,” does not even purport to focus on Whitewater; the section’s subheading is “Southern Lakes Newspapers,” and most of the ads are for other communities in Walworth County.

If we return to the principal section, however, we’ll find that the lead story is hardly news unique to Whitewater; it’s a dull, generic story about cicadas, with an accompanying story on cicada recipes. The story could run in any small town paper in the Southern Lakes chain, offering nothing of unique interest to Whitewater. (Sleep easy: there’s nothing reported to suggest that the cicadas in Whitewater will be louder, or more prevalent, than in nearby towns.)

Carrie Dampier has two other front-page stories, a right column story on roadwork along our east side, and — below the fold — a story on Police Day in Whitewater. (I’ll post about Dampier’s Police Day story tomorrow, because at least it is unique; it’s a laughably bad, poorly written story.) The second part of main paper includes sports stories from Whitewater.

If you want news — school, city, town, community events, local sports — the Whitewater Banner is a much better choice. I believe that Jim Stewart’s Banner only took off last fall, but already it offers more Whitewater information — delivered more quickly — than the 151 year-old Whitewater Register. The Register‘s website is stale, and not worth a visit. I wouldn’t expect the Whitewater Banner to report any critical, detailed stories on the challenges in Whitewater, but then again, one doesn’t find that in the Register, anyway. Stewart delivers more information on the city, more quickly, than the Register, by leaps and bounds.

Merchants in our city understand how ineffectual the Register has become, as they’re unwilling to waste their money advertising in its principal pages. Of the more than sixty principal ads in the main section of the May 24th Register, a majority are for businesses located outside Whitewater. Many of our local businesses shun the Register, whose pages are crowded with advertisements for businesses in Fort Atkinson, Eagle, Palmyra, and Burlington, among other towns. Our local businesses are free to advertise in the Register; if they choose not to do so, it’s because they recognize that their advertising budgets are better spent elsewhere. If the Register were a better, more compelling paper for Whitewater, then it would attract more local advertising. The failure is not of our local businesses, but is the failure of the self-professed local paper that’s increasingly irrelevant to them.

Tomorrow: An example of how the Whitewater Register is so uncritically fawning that it fails our community.

City, Press

The Press Covering Whitewater

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We are a small town, without a good newspaper published within the city limits. There are some fine papers that provide limited coverage of Whitewater, but the city lacks a solid, responsible paper of its own. The Whitewater Register — part of a newspaper consortium — is sickeningly uncritical of real problems in the city, and as poorly written as a high school newspaper. I’ll devote another post to a discussion of the Register, but for now, let me describe the remaining papers that cover Whitewater.

The Daily Jefferson County Union. As its name suggests, it’s a daily paper. It’s not far away, and not bad. Still, the Daily Union has Fort Atkinson, Jefferson, and other cities to cover, so Whitewater will never dominate its pages. It offers a fair amount of stories about Whitewater, though, and it’s a paper with a moderately developed website.

The Janesville Gazette. The Gazette is farther away, but also bigger, than the Daily Union. One of the few newspapers willing to publish honestly about some of the problems in Whitewater, most recently the disgraceful matter of our municipal judge. It says much about how cautious — almost cowardly — press coverage of Whitewater is that the Gazette was nearly alone in publishing public information about criminal charges against Steve Spear. The Gazette also has a good website (free registration required), but as with the Daily Union, Whitewater will never be the paper’s main focus.

The Week. The Week focuses on Walworth County, and not merely Whitewater, but fortunately it’s a paper, and accompanying website, willing to report on a story without boosterism. Coverage of the Whitewater Police Department in the Star Packaging raid was even-handed, with the Week at least willing to quote opinions critical of police conduct.

The Whitewater Banner. Jim Stewart’s online ‘news and sports’ site. It’s not a site for journalism — I would be surprised to find any critical reporting — but it’s probably the best listing of happenings in town. Stewart’s not a journalist, and his site is as much community calendar as anything. It’s an online print publication, but it would be unfair and misguided to hold it to the same standard as as an established newspaper. For its role as a community calendar and bulletin board, it’s better than the websites of the Daily Union, Gazette, or Week. (Again, I will address the Register later, but I will note quickly that the Whitewater Register‘s website is stale, and amateurish.)

City

Fundamental Challenges Facing Whitewater

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One must wonder, as perhaps you do, what would inspire this website. Our beautiful city deserves better than it has received from its government, civic organizations, and long-time residents. We are over fourteen thousand in number, but a few hundred short-sighted, self-interested citizens have led others astray, and by doing so leave Whitewater crippled.

Our municipal government is narrow-minded, with a poor grasp of economics, and clings to burdensome regulations that make Whitewater unattractive to businesses. We gain housing, but lose industry: a recipe for perpetual second-class status. Our economic development is less about a free market economy than about any number of empty municipal gestures. We could hang birdhouses, or painted chairs and wooden fish, from our lampposts forever and still businesses would close and go elsewhere.

The recent completion of a roadway Bypass (could it have been any more aptly but ominously named than ‘bypass?’) around Whitewater diverts customers from our merchants. (A special note to every resident who looked forward to the competition of the Bypass to reduce traffic along Main Street: you got what you wanted, but lost traffic doesn’t put food on anyone’s table.)

Our police force is arrogant, of limited skill and intellect, but of limitless self-congratulatory rhetoric.

Our police chief, who never leaves but to return again, is an apologist for nearly all police actions, however embarrassing, and will invariably defend the force he heads rather than acknowledge and correct their deficiencies.

We are in the grip of a small, obstinate, and poorly educated local elite, that often would rather see the city sink under their control rather than for it to prosper free from their influence.

It is a local, town-bred elite that dislikes its own university campus, and resents the student population (a population than contributes mightily to keeping this city afloat).

It is a local, town-bred elite that dislikes, and fears, the many Mexican Americans in our community, and ignores, or distorts, the many positive contribution Mexican American workers make in our community.

We are burdened with a local newspaper, the Whitewater Register, that is hardly a true local paper, reports little news, and investigates almost nothing.

We have a municipal judge who is a vulgar laughingstock (and what Whitewater High School student does not have a repertoire of jokes about him?). He was re-elected because some short-sighted local residents would rather defend someone they perceive as one of their own than admit that his reputation is one of embarrassment and disgrace to our community.

Our public school administrator many be the worst leader the Whitewater district has ever had: bland, mediocre, but autocratic. Of all the many combinations that one might have (smart or dull, empowering or controlling), she has the worst combination: dull and controlling.

And yet…and yet…this will someday be a FREE WHITEWATER, more prosperous, fair, and pleasant. Even these several challenges will be overcome, to the benefit of our community.

School District

Hiring Committees in the Whitewater Unified School District.

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Under District Administrator Leslie Steinhaus, the public school hires teachers — or principals — through an interview panel. That’s common; many public bodies, and private companies, conduct interviews through a panel with several interviewers.

You may be surprised to learn, however, that an interview panel for teachers or principals might include, for example, a building custodian. I am the first to believe that all people are created equal; I reject, however, the idea that a good way to hire a teacher or principal is to ask the custodian’s opinion. That’s egalitarianism at the expense of merit. It would be false to contend that the custodian is an able judge of a teacher’s credentials or teaching method. It should be unnecessary to use a custodian to get a ‘layperson’s’ perspective on a candidate’s demeanor, as teachers and principals on the interview panel should possess the ordinary intuition to do so.