Sunday, March 29, 2009

I Must Be Getting A Different Paper

Elliot Stearns wonders what happened to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel:
They’ve been doing phenomenal work, lately.

Starting the with the bisphenol A plastics series, and continuing through this weekend’s story on criminal mortgage lenders, they’ve been doing exactly what a newspaper should do.

Hell, even their editorials have been a little less crazy lately.

It’s like the closer the paper comes to going out of business, the better they get.

Either I'm getting a different paper, or Mr. Stearns is being influenced by the alcohol the paper's staff has been plying him with.

I will readily admit that the paper has done some fabulous work like those that Mr. Stearns had mentioned, or the child welfare series by Crocker Stephenson, or the series on the mentally ill in Milwaukee by Meg Kissinger.

However, there are too many occasions that leaves the reader wondering where they are coming from.

For example, their editorial board has repeatedly endorsed the idea of moving the mental health complex to the old St. Michael's Hospital, even though it would be unsafe and more expensive than any other option.

Another would be when I called for a recall of Scott Walker, they dismissed it on their editorial blog saying that disagreement is not grounds for a recall. But when CRG made a call to recall Governor Jim Doyle, based on a disagreement, they treated it as news. They also gave it the same credence when state Senator Canavas signed a Facebook page for a Doyle recall.

They hounded Supervisors Coggs and Clark for their trip to Washington DC which cost less than $4000, but ignore Walker wasting many times that amount on his campaign ride coming this summer.

They ridicule State Senator Lena Taylor for a typo, but commit many of them in one post.

They run a series of daily stories about the deadly effects of drunk driving, and have a running blog site about it, but then show pictures of young people drinking at 6 in the morning on St. Patrick's Day.

This list, which could go on for almost forever, does not even include their columnists sharing previews of their columns to select individuals, even after they said that this practice would stop.

I don't know if I agree that the paper is getting better as it continuously scales back. I think this rather shows why it is repeatedly having to cut back.

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