November
2006
Hat Tip to Milwaukee Rising and WI Democracy Campaign
There's some good journalism floating around out there and it's in blog form.
Milwaukee Rising blogger, Gretchen Schuldt (formerly of Watchdog Milwaukee) has a long but insightful column on the hatchet job that the Public Policy Forum did on the City of Milwaukee in a recent report. It turns out that they accused the city of not doing enough for economic development and rather than do a little double checking with the city on what the city was doing, they ran to the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel with their report which appears to not tell the whole story including that there are multiple entities working with tax dollars in our metro area already focused on economic development. (Note: Chicago, which PPF must believe is a morase of urban decay, doesn't have a city plan for E.D. either — could it be there are other entities in Chicago working on E.D. also?)
The Spice Boys Blog directed us to a report on the Wisconsin Democracy Campaign which points out that the same stations which are profiting from massive dollars from this falls elections devoted a paltry 36 seconds per newscast to election news. It turns out that over 10 minutes of each newscast is advertising and the sports and weather category rakes in a whopping 7 minutes of the 30 minute "news" time slot.
Here at Watchdog Milwaukee, we've contended that much of what passes for news in the mainstream media is simply regurgitation of press releases. The big teased story the other day on TMJ4 10pm newscast was whether or not a chocolate fountain is a good thing. (Note: It's not.)
Now I'm reminded why I like my DVR (similar to TIVO) so much.
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Jim McGuigan
Jim McGuigan, Watchdogging the Media
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I am ecstatic that Journal Sentinel found something other than the city elections commission to write about.
Gretchen seems most concerned that Public Policy Forum (PPF) hit DCD before the department and Barrett could get their guards up … forgetting how closely tied PPF and Journal Sentinel are. No doubt this is why folks at DCD and in the mayor\’s office feel picked on — PPF is the next thing to a direct attack from Journal Sentinel. I disagree that this is some sort of a problem, given that effectiveness/use of economic development funds has been an issue for years. JS practice is usually to promote individual positive economic development efforts, then move on to another story; the PPF has the resources to look at the entire program, and it is about time.
The press is not obligated to give DCD or the mayor an opportunity for preemptive defense. Nor is it the job of JS or PPF to go behind the scenes and finagle a better jobs and economic development idea out of the mayor.
Why didn\’t a report like this land during the Norquist Administration, one might ask? The entire CDBG program was a wreck during the Norquist years, and economic development funds in neighborhoods was part of that poisoned process. A small part, perhaps, with a lot of neighborhood usual suspects receiving funding, doing what not always clear … Sure, Norquist had just about everybody sold on his neighborhoods vision, but … …. There are quite a few people working in print media over the last decade or so who thought city economic development should be about something more than creating jobs for those who get economic development funds. Why should anyone be alarmed that the Journal and PPF finally told the story without mayoral approval?