The liberal-leaning Brookings Institution, in a paper from Elaine Kamarck and Ashley Gabriele, offers insight into 7 trends in old and new media. Their seven observations are solid, and broadly similar to the assessments of Clay Shirky, in Last call: the end of the printed newspaper. Brookings summarizes their work: The following are seven essential truths about the news today…
Press
Culture, Newspapers, Politics, Press
Sadly, Milwaukee Will Catch Up to Whitewater
by JOHN ADAMS • • 3 Comments
In our small and beautiful city, what passes for professionally-produced news is poorly written, poorly reasoned, and fawning of authority. That’s been true for years in Whitewater, much to the delight of local officials, who’d prefer a good headline at the Gazette, Daily Union, Register (or even the Banner) to actually doing a good job.…
Press
What’s a Dollar-A-Week Subscription to a Print Newspaper?
by JOHN ADAMS • • 2 Comments
What’s a dollar-a-week subscription to a print newspaper? If you’ve received a direct mail solicitation to subscribe to a local, daily newspaper for just one dollar per week, then you’ve received a request to get the inserts that advertisers place inside the paper. For a dollar-per-week, the paper is simply a delivery mechanism for advertisers’…
Gov. Walker, Politics, Presidential race 2016, Press
Last Night’s GOP Debate
by JOHN ADAMS • • 1 Comment
I’m not a major-party voter, but like millions I have watched the GOP presidential debates (and will watch the Democrats’ debates, too). There’s a lot to learn from watching the candidates, for all the showiness, the pre-debate theatrics, etc. The key point about all these encounters is that they are intra-party affairs – it’s a debate…
City, Economy, Government Spending, Local Government, Press, WEDC
What City Officials and the Press Haven’t Told You About the HyPro Layoffs
by JOHN ADAMS • • 13 Comments
Updated, 9.9.15, 2 PM, and bumped forward from original 9.8.15 post date. I’m always eager for more discussion about WEDC – To reconcile the figures of $1,300,000 and $262,000: There are differences in the dollar amounts of tax credits depending on whether one considers the maximum authorized or the amount HyPro has so far taken. In…
City, Local Government, Politics, Press
Message Frenzy
by JOHN ADAMS • • Comments
If one runs a business, and has a sale scheduled, advertising the time and place of the sale is vital: people won’t attend events of which they’ve no knowledge. Some news stories are like this: reporting on an approaching storm requires quick publication of the weather. It’s not true, however, that every story requires quick…
City, Culture, Press, Social Media
On Trends in Whitewater’s Media
by JOHN ADAMS • • Comments
If print’s in decline (and it is), then what’s next for Whitewater (or other small towns)? I’ve contended that a new Whitewater is inevitable. We’ve passed the beginning of that process, and are now in a middle time toward a new city. There are years yet ahead, but most now living in Whitewater will one…
Business, Press
A Prediction of Print’s ‘Fast, Slow, Fast’ Decline
by JOHN ADAMS • • 2 Comments
Earlier this spring, the public editor of the New York Times, Margaret Sullivan, wrote a post on how the printed newspaper would continue to be important to the Times. In reply, Professor Clay Shirky of NYU wrote with what he called a “darker narrative’ of print’s prospects. (See, at Sullivan’s blog, A ‘Darker Narrative’ of…
City, Marketing, Press
The Meaning of Whitewater’s Not-Always-Mentioned Demographics
by JOHN ADAMS • • Comments
Our signs say that Whitewater, the city proper, has a population of around fifteen thousand. We do. What they don’t say, and what we know but don’t always mention, is that a significant portion of that population is attending the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater. So much, when looking at data from the ACS Demographic and Housing…
New Media, New Whitewater, Press, University
The Dark, Futile Dream
by JOHN ADAMS • • 1 Comment
UW-Whitewater is searching for a new chancellor, and so there’s a search committee, and a search consultant to guide that committee’s work. The consultant is Dr. Jessica Kozloff, the former president of a small, undistinguished college in Pennsylvania. (The UW System schools are, each of them, more competitive and developed than the one Dr. Kozloff…
Press
Ten Sound Tenets
by JOHN ADAMS • • Comments
The post below first appeared at Daily Adams. Although the Center from Public Integrity’s Bill Buzenberg has led a journalism non-profit, many of the principles he enumerates would apply as well in for-profit journalism, or other professions by adoption. It’s astonishing how far from these standards, for example, the local press in Whitewater truly is.…
Press
How to Ruin a Newspaper in Three Easy Steps
by JOHN ADAMS • • 2 Comments
View image | gettyimages.com The local print press is doomed, and if executives are not telling their employees as much, they’re lying by omission. (See, from Clay Skirky: Last Call: The end of the printed newspaper.) So how did those who had so much come to so little? There are many causes, but I’ll highlight…
Film, History, Press
Film: The Newspaper Crisis of 1945
by JOHN ADAMS • • Comments
Press
Journalism & Public Relations
by JOHN ADAMS • • Comments
‘Journalism is printing what someone else does not want printed. Everything else is public relations’ This observation is often attributed to Orwell, but it’s likely a misattribution. Whatever its provenance, it’s an observation with a good deal of truth to it. Locally, so much of what one reads is, in the end, just public relations,…