Friday in Whitewater will be sunny with a high of 80. Sunrise is 6:47 AM and sunset is 6:44 PM, for 11 hours, 57 minutes of daytime. The moon is a waxing crescent with 19.8 percent of its visible disk illuminated.
On this day in 1777, British troops occupy Philadelphia. (The British evacuated Philadelphia in 1778, after 266 days of occupation.)
U.S. President Donald Trump on Thursday unveiled sweeping new import tariffs, including 100% duties on branded drugs and 25% levies on heavy-duty trucks, triggering fresh trade uncertainty after a period of comparative calm.
The latest salvo, which Trump said was to protect the U.S. manufacturing industry and national security, follows wide-ranging duties on trading partners of up to 50% and other targeted levies on imported products such as steel.
It’s the latest upheaval for global businesses already struggling with snarled supply chains, soaring costs and consumer uncertainty caused by Trump’s trade war. The barrage has cast a pall over global growth, while the Federal Reserve has said it is also contributing to higher U.S. consumer prices.
Tuesday, September 30th at 1:00 PM, there will be a showing ofEverything’s Going to Be Great @ Seniors in the Park, in the Starin Community Building:
Family/Comedy/Drama R (language)
1 hour 35 minutes (2025)
There’s no business like show business, for Buddy (Bryan Cranston) and Macy Smart (Allison Janney) and their unpredictable life in regional theatre, while trying to raise their two radically different teenage sons. A touching, quirky charmer of a film.
Thursday in Whitewater will be sunny with a high of 72. Sunrise is 6:45 and sunset is 6:46, for 12 hours, 1 minute of daytime. The moon is a waxing crescent with 12.7 percent of its visible disk illuminated.
On this day in 1956, TAT-1, the first submarine transatlantic telephone cable system, is inaugurated.
Routes under study in early 1956. By American Telephone and Telegraph Company. No restrictions, Link
I’ll offer a few thoughts on meetings with complex topics by simple illustrations. It’s important to capture the course of a topical argument within a meeting so that one can refer to it, as easily as possible, and add more arguments later. (For former high school or college debaters, this is simply ‘flow.’ Some of the professions, including my own, rely on versions of flow in their work. There are software and recording combinations that can perform some of this work, but a legal pad and pen are more than adequate.)
There’s a plain way to show how topics become complicated across several meetings. Consider, first, a one-column table, that represents the points made on the same topic, in a single meeting, from the initial point made descending down the column with lower rows representing points made subsequently in that same discussion:
This table is merely a simple representation of how one remembers a thorough newspaper story’s account of the sequential discussion from a meeting. If the story is comprehensive, then that story lists the major arguments and replies on a topic, in the chronological order that those arguments were made.
But what happens if the discussion on that same topic extends over several months? A table for a three-month-long discussion would look like this:
The argument flows downward chronologically within a single month, but must then be matched across time with points made in subsequent months. A point made in April (let’s say point A1) might be answered only in June (let’s say point J9). It’s not merely that there are more cells in the table (points made), but that one must link some points to others to grasp the strength and weakness of given claims. Merely looking at the cells, as it were, doesn’t reveal enough about the discussion. (Obvious point: refuting A1 by J9 lets a lot of misinformation to go unanswered for a long time.)
That’s what keeping track (and thorough reporting) offers — someone watching or reading carefully on each of these monthly discussions could recall that point J9 in June is a refutation of point A1 made in April. Someone reading might also note that some claims have been abandoned, others made more extreme, and yet others made more anodyne. Otherwise, too much of the discussion is unknown or forgotten.
And that’s what flow (or good reporting as a narrative facsimile of flow) gets a community: a catalog and by that catalog a way to evaluate the full range of arguments made on a policy topic over time.
Important discussions in a competitive American town deserve a clear catalog. There’s always more to do, and happily so.
Wednesday in Whitewater will be partly sunny with a high of 70. Sunrise is 6:44 and sunset is 6:48, for 12 hours, 4 minutes of daytime. The moon is a waxing crescent with 7.1 percent of its visible disk illuminated.
On this day in 1906, Pres. Theodore Roosevelt proclaims Devils Tower in Wyoming as the nation’s first National Monument.
At the September 16 session of the Whitewater Common Council, there was a presentation on economic development in the city. (SeeVideo at 15:13 and accompanying presentation.) In that presentation, Whitewater’s new Economic Development Director told the council members that the municipal administration would bring forward single-family, owner-occupied development proposals this fall.
There are many people in this city, not least this libertarian blogger, who would look forward to hearing about a new, comprehensive proposal.
The development discussion on the 16th was not, and discussions of development these last three years have not been, random non sequiturs. Many years in this city, and many local actions, brought us here. No one invented the need for a development discussion. The topic is not, so to speak, an invasive species placed in Whitewater. That which paved the way for a needed discussion didn’t begin in 2022. It began closer to 2002, truly. (More precisely: after the 2007-2009 recession at the latest.)
When one looks around, one sees (if one sees clearly) a town of fifteen thousand. Many of these residents arrived here in the last decade. Each of these thousands has dozens of encounters, experiences, and interactions each day. They are in motion, dynamically and productively.
This community is not — and should not be — approached as though it were a prehistoric creature in amber.
Tuesday in Whitewater will be windy with a high of 74. Sunrise is 6:43 and sunset is 6:49, for 12 hours, 6 minutes of daytime. The moon is a waxing crescent with 2.9 percent of its visible disk illuminated.
If nothing ever happened in a community, then there would be no need to record the passing of events. If only a few events took place, then only a little effort would be required to chronicle those events. In a community experiencing new dynamism, there’s a greater need to record developments accurately.
A news desert, with limited information, allows misinformation to spread.
Whitewater has become a place of increasing dynamism, and notably and undeniably of greater thoroughness in policy from the municipal government. This should be universally acknowledged (although it won’t be universally acknowledged): the city’s general municipal policy and community development policy are more thorough than those even of a few years ago, let alone a decade ago. (Failure to say as much may have many causes, including the stubborn pride of a few.)
Whether one supports or opposes, intellectual honesty should compel this acknowledgment.
A talented municipal government (comprised of capable officials) deserves from the many talented private residents of the community1 work as thorough as that municipal government’s2. That’s the loss (and the sadness) of a news desert: government work deserves consistent, thorough, accessible reporting on topics, as chronicle and as the basis for commentary. Whitewater has some of those qualities in its news reporting, but not all of them from one publication. Having all of those qualities from a single publication makes it easier to build a knowledgeable readership. (As yesterday and forever: FREE WHITEWATER is a site of commentary; it’s not a site of reporting the news, but of commenting on the news.)
Perhaps someday a Whitewater publication with all of these qualities will come along. Today is not that day.
In the meantime, as the community entertains policy discussions consistent with best practices elsewhere, there are a few steps possible to present proposals plainly and accurately.
First, there have been evident gains in communicating city initiatives on social media. That’s all to the good, reminding again and again about upcoming meetings. Press on.
Second, a written proposal in a memo or PowerPoint should offer reminders of where to look online for more information.
Third, although the city has begun to collect its website more nicely into categories (e.g., Economic Development, City Services and Government, etc.), presentations and memorandums should include a reminder to visit those links. A visual reminder on a slide, or even in a memorandum (e.g., “click here, then here, then here”) may seem too much, but it’s not. It’s a news desert, after all. It’s valuable to supply regularly what no one else does. Keep going.
Fourth, presentations should recap what’s been done on an initiative before, in a single sentence (at least) for each prior step in that initiative. (There was a solid, longer presentation like this on economic development at the 9.16.25 meeting of the Whitewater Common Council.) The government should continue these efforts even in shorter presentations, with a quick, 30-second reminder of past work. (One can say a lot, simply, in 30 seconds.)
Fifth, and critically, this city needs someone to play an ombudsman’s role when misinformation crops up at a municipal meeting, even if in public comment. Residents have a right to speak, they should and must be able to exercise that right should interrupted. Sometimes during those public comments, however, they offer statements that are simple, factual errors. Those errors should be (and undoubtedly are) known to everyone in the government (both elected and in the administration) and knowledgeable residents listening to the council session.
It is a mistake for the government to let others’ simple mistakes go uncorrected. Deference and politesse are not reasons to allow factual misstatements to go uncorrected.
I’ll offer two examples (and in both cases I’m sure the mistakes were made in good faith).
At the 6.17.25 council meeting, a resident spoke about a development project (remarks at 20:46):
But it’s kind of upsetting to me that we’ve sat through your very good presenters [through the winter and spring of 2025] that you gave, like five or six of them, whatever you had, and that’s great.
I got a lot of information. That’s what I came here for is to learn information. But when I see here on this here, this 128 units is gonna break ground already in June or July of this year. Is that what I’m assuming? That’s what I’m assuming is June and July of this year. So this was already a done deal way back when. So when did that all come out? Because I don’t remember ever seeing that until it came out in the public eye and that’s when I got that back in the beginning of this year. So this is already a done deal.
In fact, the development that the resident is describing was the subject of multiple public meetings, and commission and council approval in 2024 (at the Community Development Authority, Planning Commission, and Whitewater Common Council). These were publicly-noticed meetings. The presentations in 2025 were informational for future policy. They were not (obviously) a necessary preliminary to the 2024 lawful actions of three local public bodies.
Here’s a resident who’s specifically asking (“when did all that come out?”) and yet no one offers a simple answer at any point in the council session. A simple answer would have given her the information she sought, and dispelled the notion that the 2024 actions for the development were somehow surreptitiously advanced.
A second example comes from the remarks of a former Community Development Authority member following a development presentation (remarks at 40:43):
I think the other piece that I had on this is that something I heard tonight that I have not heard before. I know that the city council went on record approving homes on the Hoffman property with a fairly significant TIF increment plus 60 apartments, and taking $400,000, putting that into the program from the 75, the 25% housing money. I’ve never seen anything officially that that project has been canceled. I did hear tonight that there was no other apartments after this Pre-3 [a residential project]. And so it’d be very nice if you guys would take action, either rescind that major project, or at least to let the community know.
In fact, on two separate occasions (dated June 10th, part of the June 17th council packet and again as part of the Community Development Authority packet of July 17th) the Interim Economic Development Director did note plainly that “Neumann was considering a project on the Hoffman property; however, that deal did not go through.”
Perhaps the notice should have been more plain, but then perhaps a resident who had been on the old Whitewater CDA might have read the meeting packets more thoroughly. In any event, someone in the room on 9.16.25 might have pointed out the prior public written announcements about the end of this project.
Correcting errors during the meeting prevents them from echoing in chambers, recordings, and the wider community. Respectful, reasonable correction makes everyone more knowledgeable. If someone will not accept respectful, reasonable correction, then at least one knows with whom one is dealing.
There’s no reason to shy from making the effort. Something like a minimal ombudsman’s role, from someone.
In the inevitable interstices of a thorough but complex policy, the information gaps in a news desert make misunderstanding and misinformation more likely.
Residents and their government must manage as well as they can within the gaps of this news desert.
____
Whitewater is chock-a-block with sharp, talented residents. Not few — many. ↩︎
I’m writing here about the city government only. The local school district requires a separate discussion. ↩︎
Fall begins in Whitewater with partly cloudy skies and a high of 76. Sunrise is 6:42 and sunset is 6:51, for 12 hours, 9 minutes of daytime. The moon is a waxing crescent with 0.6 percent of its visible disk illuminated.
A news desert, simply defined, is a place without a professional newspaper, as a natural desert is an arid place without much precipitation. (In this metaphor, the presence of a newspaper provides nurturing information the way rainfall nurtures vegetation.)
There are degrees of news deserts: no professional newspapers, professional newspapers behind paywalls that discourage many potential readers, professional newspapers behind paywalls that discourage some potential readers, professional newspapers without paywalls, citizen journalism1 efforts on the web or social media dedicated to news, and social media platforms that discuss news only incidentally and occasionally.
(Obvious point: FREE WHITEWATER is a site of commentary; it’s not a site of reporting the news, but of commenting on the news. This libertarian blogger comes from a newspaper-reading family2, and although there are ever-fewer serious newspapers left in this country, the distinction between news and opinion still makes sense to me.)
The lack of professional journalism is made worse by the lack of accessible professional journalism: few residents in communities like Whitewater pay to get past a paywall. Anyone who tells you otherwise, especially advertising sales teams, is wrong. (In the case of an ad sales team, they’re lying.) What’s behind the paywall stays unread behind the paywall. People may read a paywalled story’s headline on Facebook, and react to that headline alone, but few will subscribe to read the full story.
There’s another problem of a news desert. The communities in which deserts emerge are often also fragmented and factionalized, as Whitewater is. (I’ll leave aside whether the emergence of factions leads to the decline of newspapers or the decline of newspapers leads to factionalization. The causes and effects are not so simple as that.) It’s enough to know that Whitewater has several factions, in the city and small towns comprising the rest of the area’s school district, and they have decidedly different outlooks among them. The Whitewater area’s residents commonly gather and support in unison some events (holidays, sporting events), but are divided on many political and cultural issues. These are deep divisions, and they’ve grown in the 2010s and 2020s.
This fragmentation naturally leads residents to look in different directions, consistent with their outlooks, and there’s no single news source that everyone here reads. Some will read one source, some another, some nothing at all. That’s Whitewater today; that’s the direction in which Whitewater has been traveling for the last quarter century, and certainly since the Great Recession. (Irony: by the time the city developed its own citizen news site in 2006, the Great Recession that began the next year was destined to take the area down a path of socio-economic fragmentation3 that would make a predominant news source, especially one without the gravitas of professionalism, less likely. )
This leaves a community’s grasp of policy and policymaking only weak and partial. Politics may involve a single event (a candidate’s claim, an election result), but policy and policymaking require more detail than those political events. A successful news site must cover many meetings, many details from those meetings, and in doing so give its readers an informed background on a local topic. Social media algorithms, notably, don’t make the history of policy proposals a priority. (Helping readers follow a months-long policy debate on Facebook isn’t Meta’s primary, secondary, or even tertiary goal.)
A successful news site attracts readers who follow along, well-crafted story after story, and so become knowledgeable on a topic. It attracts those readers because it offers that kind of coverage. False claims and misinformation are common in a community without a true newspaper of common record. (The formal designation paper of record means little apart from the publication of legal notices. It’s a community understanding of basic facts on policy and policymaking that makes a news site a community record.)
A community with partial information is at a disadvantage in policymaking, as policymaking requires thorough, accessible, and well-read information about a topic.
Tomorrow: Some solutions for a news desert.
____
It’s certain — absolutely certain — that a professional journalist who reads FREE WHITEWATER will now contact me and say: “there is no citizen journalism, only professional journalism, and you should know that by now.” I will then reply: “Well, I know that in places without doctors or trained first responders, sometimes communities are left to rely on a few residents with a first aid kit.” My reply will not go over well… ↩︎
That I’m referring to news sites on the web as newspapers is the tell that I grew up in a print era, when there were printed books, magazines, journals, and newspapers all over the house. So ingrained are these memories that although this site is on the web, I still sometimes refer to professional journalism sites as newspapers. In my practice, almost everything I read and write is digital, and yet my usage sometimes remains rooted in an earlier time. ↩︎
This reveals the fate of Whitewater’s aged special interest men: the town’s culture — culture, not government — has changed so much that they have nowhere near the clout the last generation had. Simply put, a younger generation cares about many things, but understandably doesn’t base its views on yesteryear’s perspective. ↩︎
Sunday in Whitewater will be partly cloudy with a high of 75. Sunrise is 6:41 and sunset is 6:53, for 12 hours, 12 minutes of daytime. The moon is new with 0.1 percent of its visible disk illuminated.
On this day in 1780, Benedict Arnold gives the British the plans to West Point.
Fall, the best season of the year1, begins tomorrow. And if Fall, then a Fall Color Report:
If Fall, then Oktoberfest, and if Oktoberfest in Cincinnati, then a Wiener Dog Race:
_____
Of course it’s the best season of the year. Those other seasons are second best or lower. ↩︎
Saturday in Whitewater will be cloudy with a high of 77. Sunrise is 6:40 and sunset is 6:55, for 12 hours, 15 minutes of daytime. The moon is a waning crescent with 1.5 percent of its visible disk illuminated.
Wisconsin Department of Health Services state epidemiologist Dr. Ryan Westergaard described an executive order from Gov. Tony Evers that requires health insurance to cover access to COVID-19 vaccines.
The smooth surface of the shallow water covering this huge salt flat in Bolivia acts like a giant mirror. Tourists travel to the Salar de Uyuni to see the effect and walk out into the lake. Now scientists have used satellite data and on-the-ground measurements to determine exactly how flat the surface of the water is – but how it stays so smooth is still a mystery.
Friday in Whitewater will be partly cloudy with a high of 81. Sunrise is 6:39 and sunset is 6:57, for 12 hours, 18 minutes of daytime. The moon is a waning crescent with 5 percent of its visible disk illuminated.
Consider a small town (you might have Whitewater in mind) that was once a predominantly status-based culture (with social ties mattering more than talent, perimeter-fencing and gate-keeping by a few local figures, resistance to change, grandiose — indeed, ludicrous — claims of talent from these few, and mutual back-patting among them).
A few like that would have been those that a libertarian blogger might have satirized (ridiculed, truly) as town squires, town notables, etc. Needless to say, no person not in the grip of intoxication or mental malady would believe that such few were unsurpassingly talented except in unsurpassed self-praise. Their ideology was boosterism, and their idols were those they saw in their mirrors each morning.
That culture is on the wane in many places now, with Whitewater, happily, being among those places. What’s left of it looks old, odd, and obtuse.
A status-based culture, with a small special-interest faction, would prefer politics over policymaking. Of politics, it is enough to win control of a council, board, or commission. No one needs talent to fund a catspaw’s campaign or put up yard signs.No catspaw needs talent to vote the way he was told to vote once he is in office. (It’s enough to know: vote yea or nay on the issues that matter to a special-interest faction. Afterward, one can pretend to be reasonable, and perhaps even to speak reasonably, on topics generally. In this way, a clever catspaw becomes, to add another metaphor in the mix, a Judas goat.)
Policymaking, where one has to craft thoughtful plans in writing (memoranda of economics, development, or law), is not to the liking of a special-interest group. They want a result, a favorable decision, a conclusion that advances their self-interest. Details need to be few for that ilk, mere appliqués to create the impression of reasonable.
And so, and so — when along comes true policymaking, genuine nuts-and-bolts considerations, the special interests of a status-based culture have fits. They grew up in a culture that did not require them to craft something; they grew up in a culture allowing them to demand something.
And look, and look, about Whitewater — for the first two decades of this century, Whitewater’s special-interest men produced not a single serious policy document of their own. The city had good consultants (Ehlers and Strand) and poor ones (Trane), but these special-interest men, themselves, crafted nothing beyond their own insistence. They didn’t need to write as long as they could talk, and they only needed to talk long enough to command others while praising themselves.
When, in communities like Whitewater today, meritocracy comes along, it’s a shock to the remaining few aged and average men of yesteryear. They’d rather get rid of what they don’t like rather than negotiate. They’d prefer a politics of control over policymaking through discussion.
What shocks them is simply the Shock of the Normal: a normal place of policymaking, of meritocracy, of the openness to talent that has made communities across America the envy of the world.
“Just we two” Postcard from my collection. Copyright 1907, mailed 1909. This is by C.E. Bullard, my favorite of the Victorian/Edwardian cat photographers. He seemed to genuinely love cats and didn't restrain them or cram them into tiny costumes.
Tuesday, September 23rd at 1:00 PM, there will be a showing of The Friend @ Seniors in the Park, in the Starin Community Building:
Comedy/Drama Rated R (language)
1 hour, 59 minutes (2025)
When a solitary writer adopts and bonds with a Great Dane that belonged to a late friend, she begins to come to terms with her past and her own creative life. Starring Naomi Watts, Bill Murray and Apollo (Great Dane).
Thursday in Whitewater will be sunny with a high of 83. Sunrise is 6:38 and sunset is 6:58, for 12 hours, 20 minutes of daytime. The moon is a waning crescent with 10.2 percent of its visible disk illuminated.
Whitewater’s Community Development Authority meets at 5:30 PM.
On this day in 324, Constantine decisively defeats Licinius in the Battle of Chrysopolis, establishing Constantine’s sole control over the Roman Empire.
On the Rock River near Lake Koshkonong, Lorine Niedecker built a life in language. From the solitude of Blackhawk Island, she wrote poems animating the marshes and swales near Fort Atkinson. Nicholas Gulig traces the reach of Niedecker’s voice as a Midwestern working-class writer within the modernist currents of 20th-century poetry.
