I’ve been going through past issues of the Whitewater Register (such is my commitment to our city), and the dependence of the Register on out-of-town advertisers is striking. Of roughly forty principal ads in the Register’s first section, thirty or so are for out-of-town concerns.
If one named a paper by the location of its principal advertisers – those who spend money to keep the paper afloat – the paper should properly be called the Non-Whitewater Register, or Out-of-Town Register, &c.
Striking, too, is how local merchants shun the paper, while identical concerns based elsewhere fill its pages
One question, too, for Whitewater Common Council representative Marilyn Kienbaum:
Why do you often emphasize the importance of local ties when you write for a paper that’s just a weak link in an out-of-town chain? Can you not see that the paper for which you write fills its pages with out-of-town advertisers trying to entice consumers away from Whitewater?
All Kienbaum’s nostalgic columns emphasizing the unique character of Whitewater rest on an out-of-town platform – advertisers from elsewhere enticing Whitewater consumers to purchase elsewhere.