Good morning. Sunday in Whitewater will be cloudy with a high of 38. Sunrise is 7:16 AM and sunset 4:20 PM for 9h 04m 53s of daytime. The moon is a waning gibbous with 89.8% of its visible disk illuminated. On this day in 1901, the Morris Pratt Institute is incorporated: On this date spiritual leader Morris…
Blogging
Blogging, City, Daily Bread
Daily Bread for 12.9.22: Twenty Twenty-Three
by JOHN ADAMS • • Comments
Good morning. Friday in Whitewater will see some wet snow with a high of 34. Sunrise is 7:14 AM and sunset 4:20 PM for 9h 06m 24s of daytime. The moon is a waning gibbous with 98.3% of its visible disk illuminated. On this day in 1775, British troops and Loyalists, misinformed about Patriot militia strength,…
Babbittry, Bad Ideas, Blogging, Boosterism, City, Confidence Schemes, Coronavirus, Culture, Local Government, Mendacity, Politics, School District, Special Interests, Whitewater's Local Politics 2021
Whitewater’s Local Politics 2021: Marketing
by JOHN ADAMS • • Comments
This is the ninth in a series on Whitewater’s local politics of 2021. Through all the difficult events of the last two decades (a Great Recession, an opioid epidemic, economic stagnation, creeping nativism, a pandemic, a pandemic recession), Old Whitewater has responded with the same question: how can we market the town to others? If…
Blogging, City, Coronavirus, Local Government, Politics, Whitewater's Local Politics 2021
Whitewater’s Local Politics 2021 — COVID-19: Skepticism and Rhetoric
by JOHN ADAMS • • 4 Comments
Babbittry, Blogging, Boosterism, Culture, Disinformation, Freedom of Speech, Mendacity, Public Relations, Rhetoric
The Power of Refutation
by JOHN ADAMS • • 1 Comment
Laura Hazard Owen writes When’s the best time to correct fake news? After someone’s already read it, apparently: Debunking > prebunking. If you want someone to not believe that false or misleading headline they just read, when’s the best time to correct it? We hear a lot about inoculating people against fake news or “prebunking”…
Blogging, City, Local Government, Music, Politics
Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Helpful Advice for Whitewater, Wisconsin
by JOHN ADAMS • • Comments
Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Hamilton is rightly celebrated as a masterpiece. It also offers useful political advice, even for small town officials. From that musical’s Washington on Your Side, consider this sage observation on the limits of intra-institutional reform: If there’s a fire you’re trying to douse, You can’t put it out from inside the house. There’s…
Blogging, Culture, Local Government, Newspapers, Politics, Press
After a News Desert
by JOHN ADAMS • • 2 Comments
A news desert is a community without coverage from a daily newspaper. If coverage means timely newspaper reporting on a city’s principal public meetings and events, then Whitewater has been a news desert since the nearby Daily Jefferson County Union stopped reporting on Whitewater’s common council & school board meetings. If coverage means timely, insightful,…
Blogging, Writing
Aggregation, Curation, and Commentary
by JOHN ADAMS • • Comments
Here’s a quick post based on an email and reply from last night about the differences between aggregation, curation, and commentary (from my viewpoint). An aggregation site receives stories or news releases to post, and publishes them based on an intentionally loose set of criteria to maximize the number of posts. Ideally – and it’s…
Blogging, Law, Newspapers, Public Records, University, UW System
Five Months
by JOHN ADAMS • • 2 Comments
In a local newspaper’s story about a former chancellor’s leave of absence, one learns that information about her leave came five months after a public records request: Tuesday marked five months since The Gazette filed an open records request with UW-W for information on Kopper’s leave during the fall semester, when she previously had plans…
America, Blogging, History
But We Never Went Away…
by JOHN ADAMS • • Comments
Writing at NiemanLab, Joanne McNeil offers a prediction for 2020 in A return to blogs (finally? sort of?): One reason we might see a resurgence of blogs is the novelty. Tell someone you’re starting a new newsletter and they might complain about how many newsletters (or podcasts) they already subscribe to. But tell them you’re…
America, Blogging, History, Newspapers, Press, Press Release, Public Relations
Sullivan on Public Officials as Reporters
by JOHN ADAMS • • Comments
Editors of small-town newspapers sometimes lack the judgment (and self-respect) to remain independent of government. During these lapses of decision-making, one finds that elected or appointed officials become, themselves, reporters on their own stories. (For a case like this in Whitewater involving a school board member, see Public Officials Should Not Be Reporters.) Margaret Sullivan, of the…
Blogging, Culture, Local Government, Newspapers, Politics, State Government
Into the Void
by JOHN ADAMS • • Comments
Across Wisconsin, newspapers have not distinguished themselves since the Great Recession. Most have descended into a cautious, center-right boosterism. They acted on their publishers’ own politics, and on the politics their elderly (but dwindling) readership. Doing so has only exacerbated their problems. The time to break from this was before – or even during –…
Blogging, Newspapers, Press
One Paywall to Rule Them All?
by JOHN ADAMS • • Comments
Two days ago, I wrote about another local newspaper becoming part of the APG chain. See Another Newspaper in the Shredder. It’s possible that these acquisitions will lead to an area-wide paywall, and perhaps even a strong paywall (hard to get around even with advances in incognito browsing). The theory, one supposes, is that the…
Blogging, Law, Liberty, Litigation, Newspapers, Press, Public Records 2, Wisconsin
Public Records Requests as Pre-Litigation Actions
by JOHN ADAMS • • Comments
Wisconsinites submitting public records requests under the law (Wis. Stat. §§ 19.31 et seq.) may do so for any number of reasons (and need not declare a motivation of any sort). Not everyone will have the same aims in mind. For someone who’s a publisher (newspaper, magazine, blogger), however, a sensible way to look at…