Most newspapers and blogs, including FREE WHITEWATER, will copyright their content. The City of Whitewater, also, asserts a copyright in its contents. (Actually, the city’s website disclaimer makes clear that not all rights are reserved. In any event, fair use principles would apply.)
Unlike other websites, and the local newspaper, you can be assured that I write all of my own copy. If it’s not my writing, it’s either obvious (like cartoons) or attributed properly (like letters I’ve received). My words go from pen and paper to keyboard and screen; I never publish unattributed copy from someone else as though it were merely a neutral statement. Words that amount to press releases should be attributed as such. Sometimes that’s obvious, sometimes it’s not. When the Register — and I’ll have much more about this next week — writes a story, it’s a parody of true journalism. I read what they write, and I’m left with the impression that half the supposed ‘news stories’ read more like single-side advertisements or virtual press releases.
The idea that because city officials, police, or prosecutors say something it’s public and objective — and need not be attributed because it’s supposedly fact is ignorant, naive, childish, and stupid (yes, all four!). True journalism and news reporting requires, at least, some minimal interest in investigation. If what a newspaper writes sounds as though it were dictated from one side of the issue, then the minimal demands of real reporting have not been met.
I write all of my copy, and no one else tells me what to say, or directs my writing to conform to a clique’s opinions, or suggests that I conform to commercial advertisers’ views. Perhaps, without any advertising campaign, that’s why FREE WHITEWATER had another great month in August, even better than July. Traffic growth to FREE WHITEWATER has been solely through word of mouth. Dedicated readers know, as I wrote in description of this site, that “JOHN ADAMS represents no party, faction, or clique within our city. ADAMS represents, instead, a fair politics, and a free, open culture.”
Thanks for a great August.