FREE WHITEWATER

Newspapers

Newspapers Decline Even Faster

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Print newspapers are going away.  Not all at the same pace, but in time they’ll all meet the same end.

One might have expected the Journal Sentinel to cease print publication by 2020 or so, but Gannett’s decision to buy the J-S (and the rest of the print papers in the Journal Media Group) is a sign of how bad conditions are for print:

Gannett Co. Inc. said Wednesday it plans to buy Journal Media Group — the parent company of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel — for about $280 million in cash.The deal, which is expected to close in the first quarter of 2016 if it receives regulatory and shareholder approval, adds Wisconsin’s biggest newspaper to Gannett, which already owns newspapers in Green Bay, the Fox Valley and other important markets in the state….

The agreement is part of an era of further consolidation in the U.S. newspaper industry, as newly pure-play newspaper companies take steps to meet the competitive threat of scaled digital news and advertising businesses, the companies said in a statement.When the deal is completed, Gannett, the parent company of USA Today, The Arizona Republic and The Indianapolis Star, will be in 116 U.S. markets and have a digital audience of more than 100 million unique visitors each month.

See, Gannett to buy Journal Media Group, parent of Journal Sentinel, for $280 million @ JSOnline.

A few remarks:

1. Gannett earlier split its print publications from its broadcast ones, just as Journal Communications did (with the broadcast properties going to Scripps, and additional print ones coming from Scripps to the Journal Media Group). What’s left is for Gannett print to buy as many newspapers as possible to keep going.

That’s not a sign of strength, it’s desperation for as many organ donors as Gannett can find.

2. Gannett won’t care about left-right conflicts in Milwaukee or elsewhere; their publications are safe, middle-of-the-road sedatives for undemanding readers. The battle between conservatives and liberals for the Journal Sentinel‘s heart and soul will end; Gannett papers have neither.

In a short time, no one will care about what the Gannett-owned Journal Sentinel thinks or feels about anything.

3. Gannett doesn’t have a local perspective: it’s a national enterprise with little regard to local issues.

4. If the Journal Media Group couldn’t stand on its own, local chains will fare no better.

5. Local print everywhere in Wisconsin – including near Whitewater – is already mediocre, and often laughably so.

When policymakers and politicians tailor their arguments to receptive reporters at the Gazette, Daily Union, or Register, they’re tailoring their work to an adolescent’s level of understanding and composition. Supportive stories in these publications are mostly unread, but worse, those stories lull politicians into a dull complacency.

6. Each day, I hand-curate posts from Wisconsin’s leading bloggers at Daily Wisconsin, and the work of those bloggers is the equal in quality and reasoning with the best reporters at the Journal Sentinel or State Journal. I learn a lot from reading these other bloggers; their work has been enriching.

The work of those same bloggers is markedly superior in composition and reasoning to anything written at the Gazette, Daily Union, or Register. It’s not even close, really.

So when local politicians, bureaucrats, and town squires play to the level of those local papers, they’re playing to a substandard level, below the quality of reasoning and composition found elsewhere in our state or country.

They could try harder, surely, but it’s easier for them (and perhaps more satisfying to their pride) to do poor work and get a fawning local headline than to do good work and meet a proper standard.

These men are not less intelligent; instead they’re less practiced, and less practiced in a competitive environment. They’ve simply atrophied through complacency, indolence, and self-regard.

That makes all the difference.

The purchase of the Journal Sentinel is one more sign that print is doomed, that those who have relied on print (especially small-town print) have relied in vain, and that the future holds promise only for those who have tried – who have at least tried – to reach a more competitive standard.

Daily Bread

Daily Bread for 10.8.15

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Good morning, Whitewater.

Thursday in town will be warm, with a high of seventy-six, and an even chance of afternoon thunderstorms.  Sunrise is 7:00 and sunset 6:23, for 11h 22m 56s of daytime.  The moon is a waning crescent with 17.3% of its visible disk illuminated.

 

Millions of years ago, the great reptiles of this planet vanished from existence.  There were, however, other animals living at that time – including small mammals – that survived even as the dinosaurs waned into extinction.  Among them was Kimbetopsalis simmonsae:

While an asteroid impact, earthquakes and volcanoes wiped out much of life on earth, one survivor apparently emerged, a furry, buck-toothed creature science has dubbed Kimbetopsalis simmonsae.

Identified from fossils, the new species was a member of a group of mammals known as multituberculates, named for the many cusps, or tubercles, found on their teeth.

The rodent-like animals lived alongside the dinosaurs, but unlike the doomed reptilian giants, they managed to live for another 30 million years after the asteroid that pushed the dinosaurs off the evolutionary stage.

What was bad for the dinosaurs proved a boon to Kimbetopsalis, researchers explain.

After the asteroid impact pushed many species to extinction, “all this ecological space became available and the mammals went a bit nuts,” says University of Edinburgh paleontologist Sarah Shelley, co-author of a published study on the discovery.

Via Fossil Find Is Ancient Beaver-Like Mammal That Outlived The Dinosaurs @ Tech Times.

Go mammal, or go home, it seems.

On this day in 1871, fire devastates Chicago and Wisconsin:

The Great Chicago Fire was a conflagration that burned from Sunday, October 8, to early Tuesday, October 10, 1871. The fire killed up to 300 people, destroyed roughly 3.3 square miles (9 km2) of Chicago, Illinois, and left more than 100,000 residents homeless.[1] Though the fire was one of the largestU.S. disasters of the 19th century, and destroyed much of the city’s central business district, Chicago was rebuilt and continued to grow as one of the most populous and economically important American cities. The same night the fire broke out, an even deadlier fire annihilated Peshtigo, Wisconsin, and other villages and towns north of Green Bay, Wisconsin.

The Peshtigo fire took more lives than any other in American history:

1871 – Peshtigo Fire

On this date Peshtigo, Wisconsin was devastated by a fire which took 1,200 lives. The fire caused over $2 million in damages and destroyed 1.25 million acres of forest. This was the greatest human loss due to fire in the history of the United States. The Peshtigo Fire was overshadowed by the Great Chicago fire which occurred on the same day, killing 250 people and lasting three days. While the Chicago fire is said to have started by a cow kicking over a lantern, it is uncertain how the Peshtigo fire began. [Source:Wisconsin Magazine of History].

A Google a Day asks a geography question:

What area with nearly 2 million life forms was created to protect the wildlife of the country with the largest economy in Africa?

Art

‘3 Questions with the Guy Who Hates Renoir’

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I posted yesterday about a protest against the works of Renoir.  The protest was the inspiration of Max Geller, who has an Instagram account – renoir_sucks_at_painting – dedicated to his dislike of Renoir.

There’s more from Geller, in an interview with NPR, entitled, 3 Questions with the Guy Who Hates Renoir.

Geller doesn’t dislike art, and he admires many Impressionists.  It’s Renoir‘s work he dislikes:

Why do you hate Renoir?

“I hate Renoir because he is the most overrated artist east, west, north and south of the river Seine. I think in real life trees are beautiful and the human eyeball conveys emotional force. If you took his word for it, trees would be a collection of disgusting, green squiggly lines and eyeballs would be jet black as if they were colored by sharpies. In real life trees are beautiful; Renoir just sucks at painting.”

Do you also hate the other French Impressionists: Edgar Degas, Claude Monet, Edouard Manet, Gustave Caillebotte?

“No, and I resent the question. It’s not a misunderstanding of the ethos of Impressionism. I get that it’s not representative, but if you look at it you get that it is a beautiful impression of the information that the artist is translating. [Renoir’s] is a very bleak, nightmarish one filled with cadavers, pallid skin and chauvinism.”

There’s a sad & laughable expectation in many places, include sometimes in Whitewater, that one is not to criticize art (or more properly Art or ART, as though a particular work or artist were a Platonic form).  This sort of view brings with it a dimwitted snobbishness, as though true admirers of art would know that some works and artists are not to be criticized.

It’s a kind of secular Gnosticism, this idea that a few hold special, hidden knowledge that the many – falsely presumed as ignorant – neither have nor would understand.  Every town has a few people like this, and we’re no exception.

Renoir, or anyone else, is an artist to be considered, pondered, criticized, and debated, for goodness’ sake; what an embarrassment for some to approach even the consideration of the subject as though an offense against all creation.  Just as the Gnostics were wrong to think knowledge of the divine was within the grasp of only a few, so those who think artistic insight is the possession of only a few are mistaken.

Geller may not win over many, but he’s entitled to his view, one that, by the way, seems spot on to me.

In any event, Geller’s is a more lively and ruddy approach than that of the dull, pale defenders of conventional opinion on the other side of this question.

 

 

 

Daily Bread

Daily Bread for 10.7.15

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Good morning, Whitewater.

Midweek in town, like yesterday, will be mild, with a high of seventy-one and partly cloudy skies. Sunrise is 6:59 and sunset 6:25, for 11h 25m 47s of daytime. The moon is a waning crescent with 24.9% of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1780, Patriots defeat the British in a South Carolina battle:

Patriot militia under Colonel William Campbell defeat Loyalist militia under Major Patrick Ferguson at the Battle of King’s Mountain in North Carolina near the border with Blacksburg, South Carolina, on this day in 1780.

Major Ferguson’s force, made up mostly of frontier Loyalists from South Carolina, was the western wing of General Charles Cornwallis’ North Carolina invasion force tasked with protecting Loyalist outposts from attacks by Patriots led by Isaac Shelby, Elijah Clark and Charles McDowell. Ferguson had declared that the Patriots could choose to lay down their arms or see him “lay waste to their country with fire and sword.” Believing they could prevent Ferguson from making good on his threat, 1,000 Patriot militiamen gathered in the Carolina backcountry, including Davy Crockett’s father, John. Learning of the Patriot force from a deserter, Ferguson positioned his Loyalists in defense of a rocky, treeless ridge named King’s Mountain.

The Patriots charged the hillside multiple times, demonstrating lethal marksmanship against the surrounded Loyalists. Unwilling to surrender to a “band of banditti,” Ferguson led a suicidal charge down the mountain and was cut down in a hail of bullets. After his death, some of his men tried to surrender, but they were slaughtered in cold blood by the Patriot frontiersmen, who wanted revenge for British Lieutenant Colonel Banastre Tarleton’s cruelty to surrendering prisoners at Waxhaws on the Carolina border on May 29, 1780. The Loyalists suffered 157 killed, 163 wounded and 698 captured, while Campbell’s force suffered just 28 killed and 60 wounded. The Patriot success was the first against the British in the South, and convinced General Cornwallis to stop his march through the territory.

Of the 2,000 men that fought for both sides at the Battle of King’s Mountain, 1,900 were born on American soil. Only Ferguson and 100 of his personally trained Redcoats were Britons.

On this day in 1774, Wisconsin becomes part of Quebec:

On this date Britain passed the Quebec Act, making Wisconsin part of the province of Quebec. Enacted by George III, the act restored the French form of civil law to the region. The Thirteen Colonies considered the Quebec Act as one of the “Intolerable Acts,” as it nullified Western claims of the coast colonies by extending the boundaries of the province of Quebec to the Ohio River on the south and to the Mississippi River on the west. [Source: Avalon Project at the Yale Law School]

A Google a Day asks about a donor:

Who donated the money that established the American institution that would come to be known as “the nation’s attic”?

Art, Freedom of Speech

The Anti-Renoir Movement

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So one reads in the Boston Globe (hat tip to Althouse for the link) that there’s an anti-Renoir movement:

The rally, which mostly bewildered passersby, was organized by Max Geller, creator of the Instagram account Renoir Sucks at Painting, who wants the MFA to take its Renoirs off the walls and replace them with something better. Holding homemade signs reading “God Hates Renoir” and “Treacle Harms Society,” the protesters ate cheese pizza purchased by Geller, and chanted: “Put some fingers on those hands! Give us work by Paul Gauguin!” and “Other art is worth your while! Renoir paints a steaming pile!”

See, Renoir haters picket outside Museum of Fine Arts @ Boston Globe.

I’m of a family with admiration for French culture and history, yet even so, never once growing up do I remember anyone mentioning Renoir favorably, or much at all….unmentioned, truly, I’d say.

For those who doubt that America has a fine future before her – and they are wrong in their doubts – let this small protest be evidence of young Americans’ good sense, developed aesthetic, and free spirit.

Our best days are ahead of us.

CDA, City, Corporate Welfare, Economics, Economy, Gluttony, Government Spending, Local Government, Politics

Fog Lifts

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Whitewater started the day with fog, but there has never been a place, anywhere or ever, in which the fog did not lift.

There’s reason for confidence that even befogged places see, in the course of events, clear skies.

I’d guess, though, that most policymakers in town (such as they are) don’t believe that policy follows underlying social forces or structural limits the way, for example, weather develops in accordance with natural forces (that people can explain and predict).

Just the opposite is probably true, actually: to listen to economic development officials at the Community Development Authority or in the city administration is to hear something closer to stream-of-consciousness fiction than social science, let alone meteorology.

In this sort of befogged environment, it makes sense that self-styled public relations men, incurious and servile reporters, avaricious big-business interests, mendacious officials, academics who distort data, administrators who discard individuals and individuals’ injuries for the sake of their own undeserved reputations, etc., would play an outsized role.

These few of overweening ambition and underwhelming results have one thing, at least, in common: they think that accomplishment – and even truth – is found simply in the declaring, in the insisting, of it.

The people of this beautiful city are far more capable, far more clear-sighted, than the town’s political leaders and economic policymakers.

Good policy, like meteorology, is more than hoping the day will be sunny; it requires understanding what makes a day cloudy or bright.

Daily Bread

Daily Bread for 10.6.15

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Good morning, Whitewater.

Tuesday in town will be mild, with a high of seventy and afternoon sunshine.  Sunrise is 6:58 and sunset 6:27, for 11h 28m 38s of daytime.  The moon is a waning crescent with 32.4% of its visible disk illuminated.

Common Council meets tonight at 6:30 PM.

On this day in 1866, America sees the first robbery of a moving train:

…the Reno gang carries out the first robbery of a moving train in the U.S., making off with over $10,000 from an Ohio & Mississippi train in Jackson County, Indiana. Prior to this innovation in crime, holdups had taken place only on trains sitting at stations or freight yards.

This new method of sticking up moving trains in remote locations low on law enforcement soon became popular in the American West, where the recently constructed transcontinental and regional railroads made attractive targets. With the western economy booming, trains often carried large stashes of cash and precious minerals. The sparsely populated landscape provided bandits with numerous isolated areas perfect for stopping trains, as well as plenty of places to hide from the law. Some gangs, like Butch Cassidy’s Wild Bunch, found robbing trains so easy and lucrative that, for a time, they made it their criminal specialty. Railroad owners eventually got wise and fought back, protecting their trains’ valuables with large safes, armed guards and even specially fortified boxcars. Consequently, by the late 1800s, robbing trains had turned into an increasingly tough and dangerous job.

On this day in 1917, Fighting Bob defends free speech:

On this date Senator Robert La Follette gave what may have been the most famous speech of his Senate career when he responded to charges of treason with a three hour defense of free speech in wartime. La Follette had voted against a declaration of war as well as several initiatives seen as essential to the war effort by those that supported U.S. involvement in the first World War. His resistance was met with a petition to the Committee on Privileges and Elections that called for La Follette’s expulsion from the Senate. The charges were investigated, but La Follette was cleared of any wrong doing by the committee on January 16, 1919. [Source: United States Senate]

A Google a Day asks a question of literature:

What was the drug that Hermes gave Odysseus to help resist the magic of the witch-goddess?

Waste Digesters, WGTB, WHEN GREEN TURNS BROWN

The Pilot Program

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WGTB logo PNG 112x89 Post 39 in a series. When Green Turns Brown is an examination of a small town’s digester-energy project, in which Whitewater, Wisconsin would import other cities’ waste, claiming that the result would be both profitable and green.

(Every question in this series has a unique number, assigned chronologically based on when it was asked. All the questions from When Green Turns Brown can be found in the Question Bin. Today’s questions begin with No. 245.)

In the video above, Whitewater’s Wastewater Superintendent Reel describes his experimentation at the wastewater plant using industrial waste for a digester-energy project:

Umm, we are not, not processing any agricultural waste.

Question: “It’s industrial waste that we’re doing now?”

And actually we piloted industrial waste simply because the bang for the buck as far as volume to strength so to speak was much greater with industrial waste. So we piloted that. Umm, we learned a lot in a short amount of time. We made more gas than we, we couldn’t control the gas that we were making, for a period of time when we were piloting. Umm, but the issues we had we didn’t have a mode to properly get that product into out tanks we had a tanker a nine-thousand gallon tanker with flex hose going into our digesters [smiles] so we had a leak, you know, we had some issues out there but we we did run that we ran a multitude of different products into our digesters to learn in a short period of time what might work. And, ah, I think staff was very involved in that process and, umm, it was positive, we learned a lot in short period. But, because we had, we couldn’t take advantage of the gas we were creating it became more of a, ah, cost on our labor, then we had nowhere to go with the great gas we were producing. So, we learned what we could in a short amount of time but it was a strain on hours to do that in some fashion because we were doling it in a temporary fashion, ah, maintaining, you know watchin’ those hoses. We didn’t have the infrastructure in place to properly monitor that to make sure that we didn’t have issues.

Question: You can’t really cost effectively make changes that will make that viable, then?

Umm, I do think, and that’s, Nathan [Cassity, of the Donohue firm] alluded to that, umm, that we can, and that’s the baby-steps that he alluded to. And if we, my plug has always been that if we don’t try we’ll never know. Umm, but we do have a tremendous [emphasizes] amount of capacity sitting idle. at the plant. Umm, I think I stated last time, again, we have one digester empty, the other digester is only at one-fifth capacity. So, I mean, we have a lot of room, ah, to bring product in, umm, there is interest out there, umm, we know, I’ve talked to the Council about the risks with that, but I think that as we, ah, venture into that territory I think that there’s a lot of possible, positive outcomes there.

245.  How long did the pilot program last?

246.  What industrial wastes did Reel use?

247.  What quantities did he use?

248.  From what sources did he obtain those wastes?

249.  How many leaks did the program experience, and of what type, and in what volume?

250.  Did Reel report leaks to anyone else in city government?  If so, to whom?

251.  Did Reel or anyone else in government report leaks to county, state, or federal agencies?

252.  How did Reel come upon the idea of attaching flex hose to a 9,000-gallon tank truck for his experiment?

253.  Where did the gas Reel produced go?

254.  Why would Reel undertake a pilot program when, by his own admission, the city “didn’t have the infrastructure in place to properly monitor that to make sure that we didn’t have issues”?

255.  When Reel talks about describing risks to the city at public meetings, can he point to a single instance where he considered risks other than adequate supply of imported wastes?  (That is, can Reel show that he has publicly discussed the environmental and health aspects of waste importation?)

256.  Could the so-called ‘baby-steps’ program be rapidly escalated to large-scale importation program? If not, why not (specifically)?

257.  Isn’t it obvious that Reel wants a large-scale importation program?

258.  Where does Reel think money from an importation program principally derives?  Does he think it’s gas production, or tipping fees for items imported by truck and dumped into Whitewater’s digester?

259.  Did Reel receive approval from anyone else in city government to conduct these experiments, or did he act on his own?  If he received approval, from whom did he receive approval?

260.  Do Reel, Clapper, or others in city government think that large quantities of liquids and solids imported into Whitewater from other places, after processing, wouldn’t still require removal and dissemination (in their converted forms)?  That is, they’ve worked to seek quantity in (by their own statements) but have they considered equally the quantities to be returned to the environment?

WHEN GREEN TURNS BROWN: Mondays @ 10 AM, here on FREE WHITEWATER.

Daily Bread

Daily Bread for 10.5.15

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Good morning, Whitewater.

Monday in town will be cloudy with a high of sixty-three. Sunrise is 6:57 and sunset 6:28, for 11h 31m 30s of daytime. The moon is a waning crescent with 43.8% of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1953, the Yankees win it all for the fifth consecutive time:

The 1953 World Series matched the 4-time defending champions New York Yankees against the Brooklyn Dodgers in a rematch of the 1952 Series, and the 4th such matchup between the two teams in the past seven seasons. The Yankees won in 6 games for their 5th consecutive title—a mark which has not been equalled—and their 16th overall. Billy Martin recorded his 12th hit of the Series scoring Hank Bauer in Game 6.

Broadcaster Vin Scully took over Red Barber‘s spot for the series due to a salary dispute. At the age of 25, Scully became the youngest man to broadcast a World Series game (a record that stands to this day).

On this day in 1846, Wisconsin begins deliberations for her future in the Union:

1846 – First State Constitutional Convention Meets

On this date Wisconsin’s first state Constitutional Convention met in Madison. The Convention sat until December 16,1846. The Convention was attended by 103 Democrats and 18 Whigs. The proposed constitution failed when voters refused to accept several controversial issues: an anti-banking article, a homestead exemption (which gave $1000 exemption to any debtor), providing women with property rights, and black suffrage. The following convention, the Second Constitutional Convention of Wisconsin in 1847-48, produced and passed a constitution that Wisconsin still very much follows today. [Source:The Convention of 1846 edited Milo M. Quaife]

A Google-a-Day asks a sports question:

The renowned football, basketball and baseball player and coach who stated, “It is how you show up at the showdown that counts,” was born in what southern state?