Several recent posts here are FREE WHITEWATER are, collectively, a cautionary series on the difficulty of effecting substantive change in Whitewater, Wisconsin. One might want change; realism demands a clear-eyed assessment of its likelihood. Other towns might have better (or even worse) odds; Whitewater is not, by definition, another town. A listing of challenges, with…
Culture
City, Culture, Demographics, Local Government
Quick Observations on Whitewater’s Demographics
by JOHN ADAMS • • 1 Comment
It’s common in films and books that small towns, even small college towns, are described as homogeneous. There may be a few eccentric characters here or there, but the town so described (and imagined) is seldom a diverse one. Whitewater is more diverse than those places, and diverse in a way that leaves no group…
Babbittry, Boosterism, CDA, City, Culture, Economy, Innovation Center/Tech Park, Local Government, Police, Press Release, School District
Built Against Substantive Change
by JOHN ADAMS •
Over time, no matter how small the city, national conditions and trends make their way to the edge of town. Some towns will address these conditions, but others will be resistant to substantive change. For those towns in the latter category, business as usual and rhetorical feints suffice in response to powerful forces to which…
City, Culture, Employment, Local Government, School District, University
Mentoring
by JOHN ADAMS •
When a small community like Whitewater comes to rely on hundreds of non-resident commuters to provide services (for city, schools, or university), those commuters will have a different work relationship than resident workers. (About these workers see The Commuter Class.) Many will be less attached to the community (as they’ve freely chosen to live elsewhere…
Blogging, Culture, Local Government, Newspapers, Politics, Press
After a News Desert
by JOHN ADAMS •
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,…
Babbittry, Boosterism, Culture, Newspapers, Public Relations
Public Relations v. Journalism
by JOHN ADAMS •
Anyone familiar with a proper newspaper should be able to tell the difference between public relations and journalism: the former advances a corporate or government perspective, the latter reports and assesses that perspective. There are public relations outfits (often called media relations) in big and small communities, with this obvious difference: small communities have few…
Babbittry, Bad Ideas, Boosterism, City, Culture, Local Government, Politics, School District, University
The Lingering Problem of Local Exceptionalism
by JOHN ADAMS •
A common error in small rural communities is the persistent, false claim that local officials are examples of a local exceptionalism that makes them implicitly immune from the flaws and mistakes that beset the rest of humanity. Under this thinking, while there may be problems in the wider world, there are no local examples of…
Coronavirus, Culture, Police, Public Health, Race
Frontline: Race, Police, and the Pandemic
by JOHN ADAMS •
As streets across America erupt into clashes over racism during the coronavirus pandemic, Jelani Cobb of The New Yorker examines a connection between George Floyd’s death and the disproportionate impact of COVID-19 deaths among African Americans: “the thing that ties them together is empirical evidence of a phenomenon that had been dismissed otherwise.” Cobb describes how the relationship…
Culture, Diversity, Equality, Integration, Race
Karen Attiah on Diversity and Integration
by JOHN ADAMS •
This morning, Karen Attiah of the Washington Post observed the difference between diversity and integration. Through remarks on Twitter (@KarenAttiah), in a thread quoted below, Attiah notes the greater importance of integration over mere acknowledgments of diversity — (1) I didn’t get a chance to say it on @TheTakeaway with @tanzinavega but I was struck when…
America, Bigotry, Culture, Law, Race
Trevor Noah on Racial Injustice
by JOHN ADAMS •
I received a recommendation of these insightful, compelling remarks from Trevor Noah, and am happy to post the full video (originally recorded on 5.29.20).
Advertising, Babbittry, Bad Ideas, Boosterism, Culture, Economics, Economy, History, Poverty
Boosterism, ’30s Style
by JOHN ADAMS •
Although the Roosevelt Administration was (whatever its other mistakes) candid about the economic conditions it faced, there was in the ’30s, as there has been over the 2010s in Wisconsin, a delusional impulse to happy talk – regardless of economic conditions – among some politicians and some business groups. Margaret Bourke-White‘s Kentucky Flood depicts the…
Babbittry, Boosterism, City, Culture, Local Government, Politics
Local Voting & Voting Locally in Whitewater
by JOHN ADAMS •
The spring election, conducted during a pandemic, is now behind Wisconsin. There’s little question that statewide, it was a good night for Jill Karofsky and Lisa Neubauer. (I supported both candidates.) Whitewater – the city proper – also supported these candidates. A majority of the city’s voters did, in fact, prefer these voters even while…
Culture, Politics, Sloth, Television
Preparedness
by JOHN ADAMS •
Chris Matthews of MSNBC resigned (was pushed out, truly) on Monday night. Much has been made – rightly – of how his comments about his female guests made him unsuitable for his role. In the Washington Post, Margaret Sullivan raises a second objection, worth considering, to Matthews’s work: he was too-often unprepared. Sullivan writes that…
City, Culture, Education, Open Government, School District
A Change of Venue for a Public Forum
by JOHN ADAMS •
One reads that the Whitewater Schools have changed the location of a public forum for the selection of a new district administrator to the library in the high school. The forum is now scheduled for 2.18.20 @ 6:30 PM (“Residents will have a chance to offer input on the school district’s next leader at 6:30…