Another Local-o-Meter’s up (see previous post), and now it’s on to the content of the Whitewater Register, our weekly newspaper of record.
Lede Story. The above-the-fold story is the paper’s the announcement (made last Thursday) that Dr. Suzanne Zentner will be the new WUSD District Administrator. There’s no interview with Zentner, and even the quote from WUSD Board President Chuck Nass seems to be from a press release. Being a weekly means that some stories will be stale by the time they appear in print.
One way to keep a weekly fresh is with original interviewing, asking questions that offer new information from politicains, bureaucrats, and school officials. The Register doesn’t do that here, but I don’t know why. There was surely time to do so…
(There’s also a local story, in color and offering local color, about a husband-and-wife performance comedy team. It’s a good thing to have stories like this, as part of a mix of topics.)
Council Appointments. Below-the-fold, there’s a story on Council’s upcoming (April 21st meeting), with emphasis on appointment of Council representatives to boards and commissions. The meeting has, as of today, a packed agenda, with a proposed nuisance ordinance, among other issues, to be considered.
There are good stories inside — on Relay for Life, a local church’s new officers, a local production of Macbeth, and on a soldier who completed a commemoration of the Bataan Death March, in honor of those who served then and there.
Aside from a depressing parade of out-of-town merchants (how many of you run out to Waterford, regularly?), the Register has a bigger problem.
What the Register lacks, and what Whitewater does, too, is any sense of play, contradiction, or irony. There’s a feeling and manner of expression here that approaches a party publication, where everything is sanitized, presented ever-so-carefully.
One needs to be earnest, and positive, oh-so-positive, ‘constructive,’ ‘appropriate,’ etc., in discussing life here. It’s supposed to be the ‘professional’ way to be.
No, it’s not. It’s a false seriousness. If anything, there’s a fussiness, a prissiness, about describing life this way, so dull and antisceptic and forgettable. A modern day Victorianism, so earnest and empty, both.
One has to look closely for clues to what a dull, commonplace description might obscure, just beneath the surface. When a reporter, or a press release, mentions a certain provision of law, or contract, does it hint to somthing more? Sometimes yes, sometimes no. In this environment, an oblique reference is the most some people think to manage.
It’s absurd to live this way, in the freest, greatest society in human history. All these freedoms to speak and write, and one’s worried about speech, mere speech?