I’m not a journalist, and I lack the talent for the job. I have an interest in newspapers, in the way many Americans do — as a common person with the ability to read, and a respect for a free press and free speech. Over the years I’ve been posting at FREE WHITEWATER, I’ve written about our local newspapers, and how they’ve covered issues, politicians, and bureaucrats in Whitewater, Wisconsin.
At Editor & Publisher, there’s a story entitled, “For Newspapers, Small Is (or Can Be) Beautiful,” from the Associated Press. The story contends that very large and very small papers may fare better in these hard times than mid-sized, regional newspapers. I don’t know. It’s clear that regional papers are troubled, but then many newspapers seem troubled.
A few quick remarks on our local papers.
The Whitewater Register. When I first starting posting, over two years ago, the Register was as close to a parody of bias and lapdog reporting as anything I have ever read. (The former editor, who once referred to this website in a poorly reasoned, incoherent editorial, represented the Register‘s journalistic nadir.) One can search my many posts from that time, about the Register, and you’ll see what I mean.
I created a Register Watch™ feature, just to review the paper’s many egregious omissions and over-the-top cheerleading. I also created a Local-o-meter™ index to measure how many truly local advertisements, as against out-of-town ones, the Register (part of the Southern Lakes newspaper chain) ran.
I found it hypocritical that local politicians trumpeted localism and the supposed exceptionalism of Whitewater, Wisconsin while writing columns in a paper that ran so many out-of-town advertisements.
I still follow the Register, but have not published a Register Watch™ post in a while, nor a Local-o-meter™. The former editor’s slavish devotion to all things insider is no longer so apparent.
The paper’s also had a precipitous circulation decline over recent years, one that I think owes much to her bad influence.
Others must smell decline; the attention Whitewater politicians and bureaucrats once showered on the Regsiter has, I suppose, gone elsewhere. A politician or bureaucrat, especially a single-minded cheerleader (who cares more for appearance than honest, open discussion of problems), will search for a newspaper to publish his view unquestioned and unchallenged. There’s nothing surprising about this; it would be surprising if politicians and bureaucrats did not try.
What’s odd is how often reporters yield to the low and one-sided view of a few politicians. This relationship between politician and reporter is exploitative; enticed through attention and blandishments, weak-willed reporters fall victim to a bad bargain — access and the feeling of being an insider, in exchange for flacking the politician’s line (that is, an abandonment of journalistic integrity and independence.)
No matter how often this happens to reporters, there’s always another pigeon, somewhere, for a politician to pluck.
The Daily Jefferson County Union. Unsurprising.
The Janesville Gazette and Walworth County Gazette. Bliss Communications publishes both the Janesville Gazette, and the Walworth County Gazette, among other media. I’ve not always agreed with every story, or every reporter, but I do not doubt that the Gazettes have been true to journalism’s mission, as a layperson is able to understand it. One can see that they will challenge a party line, or established way of thinking, in their home markets.
They are, I think, also the only venture that has tried to expand (with the Walworth County Gazette trying to retake the space that The Week once occupied.)
How all this will fare I cannot say; there’s a boldness in trying a new venture in troubled times.
They have augmented their independence with the best Web design of any local newspaper, a design that’s a match for larger papers in the state. (By comparison, the websites of the Daily Union and Whitewater Register look amateurish.)
In Whitewater, though, all these papers face a challenge – a website that offers news, without the standards of journalism.
It’s as though Whitewater had two municipal websites — the official one, and a quasi-official one of the dominant faction in town. A government publication, and one that feels like a ruling Party publication.
Both serve a purpose, but the presence of the latter makes Whitewater a tough town in which to gain circulation, if the format is either (1) simple announcements or (2) fawning praise for a small group of addled insiders.
If a newspaper’s looking for an independent perspective, then a cheerleading website is no barrier.
If a newspaper wants, instead, to tell a few hundred people in Whitewater (out of many thousands) what they want to hear, then a free website that does the same is an obstacle. A newspaper may batten on residual assumptions of independence, but once that veneer peels away, they’re no better off, and at greater cost, too.