This is the first part of my weekly Register Watch™ feature for the March 28th issue of Whitewater’s weekly paper. A second, bonus part will appear later.
As you might expect, the Register, now in its 152nd year, highlights campaign coverage of our upcoming April 1st elections. Three election stories dominate the page: a referendum in the Town of Whitewater on whether to permit alcohol sales, the election of a municipal judge for the City of Whitewater, and the race for the Walworth County Board’s District 4.
I am not a resident of the Town of Whitewater, so the issue does not face my community. What’s missing from the story is what you’ll find only if you visit the website of prominent Milwaukee radio host Charlie Sykes, of 620 AM WTMJ. At Sykes’s blog, you see that a resident of the town sought Federal court intervention to permit him to speak against referendum issue. (See, “A Victory for Free Speech“, Charlie Sykes, March 21, WTMJ AM 620 website.)
You might have also seen these details linked on FREE WHITEWATER, but not the Register.
On the Walworth County Board race between incumbent Jerry Grant and challenger Jim Stewart, one sees that editor Carrie Dampier describes both as public servants. I have no doubt that both candidates love our community; the description, though, is telling. The term public servant reveals a bias toward continued office-holding. One could as easily use the terms politician, long-time politician, or entrenched incumbent. I don’t favor term limits, but a bias toward politicians as public servants, rather office holders or, well, politicians, is evident.
I have not decided on a candidate in this race, but one obvious detail is missing in Dampier’s coverage of the two candidates. One is the publisher of a website that declares it is a “NEWS and SPORTS site.” (In many ways, it offers better coverage than the Register, as I have remarked previously. It’s not, I think, a news site in the conventional sense. FREE WHITEWATER’s not a news site either — it is a website of independent commentary.)
It is surely worth mentioning that one candidate has a daily website selecting stories for publication. Nothing in the story, including the candidate’s biography at the end, notes the fact.
There is no change in the mix of advertisements that appear in the first section of the Whitewater Register: of the nearly four dozen ads in the first section of the paper, only about one quarter are for Whitewater businesses. This local number includes both campaign advertisements for the upcoming election, and advertisements from the Register itself. (The Register is part of the Southern Lakes Newspapers chain, 700 N. Pine Street, Burlington, WI 53105.)