It’s a crime (and a repulsive wrong) for someone to relieve himself repeatedly – over years – on the grounds of a public park. (The park where this happened was Natureland, a small, lovely spot in this area where visitors deserved none of this.) Someone who does so should be – and recently was – assessed a criminal fine and restitution costs. A story about this sad and aberrant conduct appeared in the Janesville Gazette, was picked up by at least two news services (TNS and AP), and became a national and international story.
It’s easy to see why this story spread – the conduct is simultaneously prurient and infuriating.
I would guess that the Gazette (reporter, Pierce; editor Schwartz) is delighted with a story that received far-reaching attention and re-publication.
They’ve no reason, however, to be delighted. The story didn’t draw attention because it was well written or insightful – it drew attention because the subject matter was so strange.
As local newspapers decline, becoming part of newspaper chains that look like nothing more advertising-delivery networks, they’re left relying on one-point-of-view feature stories and scatological crime stories.
There should be feature stories and there should be crime stories; the failure of local journalism is that there isn’t much more. One doesn’t write this as a reporter or journalist – one writes this as someone who grew up in a literate, newspaper-loving family.
These young reporters at the Gazette (and they are young) do not reach the standards of work from even a generation ago. Perhaps some of them cannot reach these standards, but it’s more likely they’re not being taught properly. It’s almost certain that they, themselves, cannot see any deficiencies in their instruction.
Proper mentoring, after all, requires more than offering confidence-building platitudes while the aging mentor marks his time until retirement.
There’s little evidence on the page that local reporters at the Gazette receive and apply proper instruction.
Previously: The Janesville Gazette‘s Sketchy Reporting on Major Topics, A Local Press Responsible for Its Own Decline, and A Local Newspaper Squeaks.