Sprawled Out: The Search for Community in the American Suburb

RIP William F. Buckley, Jr: The good old days of clean-cut public debate

I tend to get nostalgic for the days when people could engage the issues without getting childish and personal.

Reality bites. Here's a clip from the era before William F. Buckley, who passed away this week, developed that way-back-in-the-chair posture that became his trademark; he's sparring with Gore Vidal. In the space of just over a minute, Vidal calls Buckley a crypto-Nazi and Buckley calls Vidal a queer. Buckley then threatens to "sock you in your g__damn face, and you'll stay plastered."

Ah, the purity of intellectual jousting ...

Interestingly in light of our current situation, Buckley says "I'm for ostracizing people who egg on other people to shoot at American marines and American soldiers...". In Iraq today, the Bush administration "eggs on" - - i.e. hands bricks of money to resistance fighters who were blowing up Americans with IEDs just weeks before - - so they can join the "Iraqi Security Volunteers" (aka Sahwa, or "the Awakening"). This is part of the "surge.'

The PR guys at the official United States army website shines this turd as if writing the text-crawl for a the beginning of a new Star Wars film.

Cue music:

Determined to rise up against al Qaeda terrorists, concerned local citizens, working together with coalition forces, have started neighborhood watch programs in northern Iraq. The citizens are calling the movement "Sahwa," an Arabic term that means "awakening."

Inspiring, But, as most any real army soldier on the ground in Iraq would tell you, not really true. Listen to a correspondent in Baghdad:

Among the recent arrests in Baghdad, the U.S. military counted six members of the Sahwa (Awakening) forces. This is a force of resistance fighters now ostensibly working with the U.S. military. The U.S. pays each member 300 dollars monthly. More than 80 percent of about 70,000 Sahwa members are Sunni.

The arrest of some Sahwa members is indication of U.S. military doubts about the loyalties of some of these Sahwa fighters. Shia political parties and militias already accuse them of being resistance fighters in disguise. Many believe that large numbers of Sahwa forces are resistance fighters simply riding the "surge".

"How come Sunni parts of Baghdad became so quiet all of a sudden," says Jawad Salman, a former resident of Amiriya who fled his house in 2006 after Iraqi resistance members accused him of being a government spy. "It is a game well played by terrorists to divert the fight against Shia groups. I lived there and I know that all residents fully support what the U.S. calls the terrorists."

And when the money stops? Back to Star Wars - remember the scene in the last prequel when the clone army got their signal from the raisin-faced emperor and turned their guns on all the Jedi?

Anyway, in the meantime enjoy some old fashioned civility, Buckley-style.

(Also: From Slate - "Why Did William F. Buckley Talk Like That?")

(Video found at the New Yorker Blog).

"Enclaves" vs. good places to live

ABOVE: a home in Boca Pointe, Florida. BELOW: Townhomes in nearby Charleston Place

What is immediately apparent is the scarcity of informal socializing within many of the enclaves. On a mild evening I drove through one section after another of Boca Pointe, where some 2,000 houses and apartments have been sold, and saw hardly anyone out walking or in conversation with neighbors. The landscape's beauty felt embalmed. From Boca Pointe, I drove to Charleston Place, a nearby neo-traditional development that Duany and Plater-Zyberk, extrapolating from the development patterns of old sections of Charleston, South Carolina, had laid out with orderly rows of townhouses closely facing narrow, straight streets. In this suburban development people were out walking in twos, threes, and fours, many of them chatting with their neighbors. Some were strolling along narrow linear walkways of brick, which run behind the walled back yards and have rose trellises above them.

The well-defined, pedestrian-oriented outdoor space helps Charleston Place generate informal community activity, not simply a community image. A major defect of the shared outdoor space in planned-unit developments is that it is rarely defined tightly enough to invite people. The buildings, even when beautiful, are not arranged to create places that feel semi-enclosed and therefore special.

Philip Langdon, from the article "A Good Place to Live," The Atlantic, March 1988

"As newspapers recruit 'citizen journalists' to fill their pages, flacks and hacks find an opening."

(Illustration: Mother Jones)

MOTHER JONES magazine publishes a piece this month closely related to this blog's recent entries on shoddy oversight of community blogs sponsored by Journal Communications' "NOW" websites.

An excerpt:

By forcing their beleaguered staffs to depend on outsiders for content, then running the content without much editorial oversight, newspapers may be taken in by crackpots and sly marketers who make Jayson Blair look like a grade-school plagiarist. Lobbyists and spin doctors have already taken notice of the new model. Take the South Dakota Politics and Daschle V. Thune blogs, which influenced the Gannett-owned Sioux Falls Argus Leader's coverage of the state's 2004 United States Senate race; eventually, the bloggers were found to be on the payroll of just-elected Republican Senator John Thune. "Got a story you can't convince a mainstream reporter to run?" wrote Chris Suellentrop in Slate. "Leak it anonymously to a blog on your payroll. Then get a local reporter to write a story on the controversial, gossipy, local political blog. Soon everyone in town will be talking about the story you leaked to the blog.... And no one will know that the blog post was a paid placement until after the election."

Crackpots, sly marketers; in Franklin, add stealth state-paid Republican operatives to the list of opportunistic PR flaks who take advantage of local newspapers ' enfeebled editorial oversight. Sense some local opposition to a Wal-Mart expansion in the area? Our local bought-and-paid-for right wing dogmatist feels no ethical twinge whatsoever as he poo-poos the community's concerns while not revealing that he works for a state senator who happily pockets contributions from Wal-Mart, and is surely (and unabashedly) fishing for more.

Problem: There's nothing stopping Journal Communications/CNI from reprinting the Wal-Mart blog in the pages of the local weekly "NOW" paper that comes free with subscriptions to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel - - without any bio information to provide context! This sort of journalistic malpractice makes it impossible to believe anything printed in the local "NOW" papers.

What did the local NOW newspaper choose this week to print as its "Best of Blogs" feature? A piece by Republican state senator Mary Lazich warning that it may not be smart to register your cel phone on Wisconsin's no-call list.

Scintillating. Just call it free campaign literature and be done with it.

Stop the Press Releases!

As newspapers recruit "citizen journalists" to fill their pages, flacks and hacks find an opening.

By Adam Weinstein, from the January/February 2008 issue of MOTHER JONES

It's easy to see why a local newspaper editor could fall in love with Stacey N. Getz: She's a summa cum laude Florida State graduate, a twentysomething public-relations executive with the gift of gab and the face of a sorority president. When the Tallahassee Democrat combed the community in early 2007 for residents whose blogs and articles could fill out the paper's local coverage, Getz, a new-media whiz, was one of the first to jump aboard.

Getz's Let's Talk Tallahassee blog is a paean to civic boosterism, inviting readers to submit ideas to help business leaders and developers improve the city. "I've found plenty of great reasons to live here. But I'm still not completely satisfied," Getz wrote, "so I'm asking you for help." Her blog was so successful that the Gannett-owned Democrat (a newspaper I once worked for) "reverse published" many of its posts—along with Getz's photo, in color, whenever possible—as articles in its metro section.

One of Getz's topics was the city's ambitious plan to convert its downtown area into an arts district, which hit resistance when the Democrat reported that city officials were entertaining a proposal to erect a Wal-Mart there. "I don't know what it is about that place, but the mere mention of the name turns some otherwise reasonable people into illogical lunatics," she wrote in a blog post that the Democrat reprinted. "At least take a moment to consider the city's line of thought."

It wasn't the first time Getz had urged readers to calmly consider the pluses of urban development. But this time she was asking them to give a fair shake to a former client. According to the website of CoreMessage, the PR firm she works for, the young executive led an "award-winning legislative, grassroots and media campaign" for the big-box corporation in 2005, spearheading an effort to repeal Florida's fuel-price controls so that Wal-Mart could undercut local gas-station prices. Neither she nor the Democrat disclosed this. Getz still sees no conflict of interest. "We're kind of off and on with them," she told me of her firm's relationship with the chain. When she blogged about the downtown plan, "at that point, we weren't working with Wal-Mart, and I wasn't being paid to talk about them or put them in a positive light."

As newspapers' circulation numbers and ad revenues free-fall, their executives have decided that publications must go "hyper-local" and online, and they've enlisted the help of amateurs such as Getz to do it. But as her Wal-Mart plug shows, the newspaper industry's embrace of "citizen journalism" has a downside. Reader-submitted content rarely gets vetted by editors. In the same month as Getz's Wal-Mart post, the Democrat published a story by a retirement home's development director about the complex's great new golf course—without disclosing her job—and a woman wrote an article about a boy who'd organized a cancer charity event without noting that she's his mom. This may sound like small-time stuff, but it exemplifies the self-defeating side effects of newspapers' new strategy for survival.

Call it the second phase of the usa Today-ification of the press; after all, the media empire that gave us the McPaper is now setting newspapers' online agenda. "Gannett is about local, local content," declared Chairman Craig Dubow shortly after taking control of usa Today's parent company in 2006. The company's 85 dailies have since doubled the amount of local news in their pages. Content has become "platform agnostic"—making print and online versions interchangeable. The chain's newsrooms were rechristened "information centers" and reporters became "mojos"—mobile journalists who shoot their own photos and videos (badly, it turns out) and post them to the web without editing. Long-form and investigative stories were replaced by short, searchable bursts of information.

The corollary of the shorter-faster-more plan was crowdsourcing: enlisting unpaid citizen journalists like Getz to fill the local-content hole. The Tallahassee Democrat's website now features reader-written blogs on topics ranging from Florida State football rumors to "trashology"—ruminations on poor, white, rural living authored by one "Miss Trashahassee." The print edition now includes a smorgasbord of reader-submitted content such as "HomeRoom," a page of school news generated by parents and school administrators. Rather than freeing up time for reporters to cover important stories, the new model often means simply laying off salaried pros and putting the squeeze on whoever survives the cuts. As Ryan Sholin, a new-media blogger, writes, "It's hard for lifelong newsroom types to see layoffs one day and reader participation initiatives the next and not feel a bit slighted."

The wave of journalistic outsourcing has some new-media advocates hailing the death of the "fortress newsroom" mentality and touting the beginning of an era where newspapers not only listen to their readers but invite them into the inner sanctum. "In fortress newsroom, readers are something of a necessary inconvenience. We need their business, but not their ideas," writes Steve Smith, editor of Spokane's Spokesman-Review. Smith and other citizen-journalism boosters are fond of repeating the mantra of Dan Gillmor, author of We the Media: Grassroots Journalism by the People, for the People and the director of the Center for Citizen Media: "Our readers know more than we do."

But if the elitist fortress-newsroom mentality held John Q. Public at arm's length, it also kept PR flacks and unqualified hacks out of the newsroom. By forcing their beleaguered staffs to depend on outsiders for content, then running the content without much editorial oversight, newspapers may be taken in by crackpots and sly marketers who make Jayson Blair look like a grade-school plagiarist. Lobbyists and spin doctors have already taken notice of the new model. Take the South Dakota Politics and Daschle V. Thune blogs, which influenced the Gannett-owned Sioux Falls Argus Leader's coverage of the state's 2004 United States Senate race; eventually, the bloggers were found to be on the payroll of just-elected Republican Senator John Thune. "Got a story you can't convince a mainstream reporter to run?" wrote Chris Suellentrop in Slate. "Leak it anonymously to a blog on your payroll. Then get a local reporter to write a story on the controversial, gossipy, local political blog. Soon everyone in town will be talking about the story you leaked to the blog.... And no one will know that the blog post was a paid placement until after the election."

But why bother with costly Astroturf blogs when it's never been easier to get the instant aura of legitimacy that comes from getting your story printed in a newspaper—or on its website? Of course, that aura of legitimacy is diminished as newspapers replace reported news with unmediated—and sometimes unreliable—information. Craig Newmark, Craigslist founder and a news junkie, has expressed his concern about the "increasing disinformation" in citizen journalism. "The problem is that with blogging, the model is publish first, maybe fact-check later," he told pbs's Frontline in 2006. "In newspapers, the model is you fact-check first and then publish. But those models are merging."

New York University journalism professor Jay Rosen says that newspapers should be more diligent in fact-checking their blogs. But Rosen (a proponent of journalistic crowdsourcing with whom I tangled over Mother Jones' July/August 2007 package, "Politics 2.0") and other advocates of Journalism 2.0 say newspaper professionals must embrace new media's open participation and freewheeling discourse. Doc Searls, a programmer and new-media writer based at the University of California-Santa Barbara, agrees. "The key challenge is to reframe the newspaper business as one that happens in a wide-open, networked world," he says, "not as a print business that happens to do some stuff on the web." Rosen says the critics of Gannett-style crowdsourcing are out of touch. As he told me, "The curmudgeon class has its answer: Bitch about it!"

Cut me a slice of curmudgeon pie, please. If you could convince me that crowdsourcing and mojos and information centers weren't about cost cutting or lazy journalism, I'd be all for them. The blogosphere and the 24/7 news cycle are realities, and editors and reporters have a lot of ink-stained baggage to dump if they want to thrive in the new-media world. But that doesn't mean that bean-counting publishers must recruit mercenary bloggers or convert their cub reporters into untrained, overworked, self-editing news tickers.

The only thing newspapers still have going for them is their reputation for telling the truth, going deep, and reporting good stories. Bring on enough Stacey Getzes and you'll destroy the brand name newspapers have built up over the last century even faster than the Internet can do it on its own. This brave new world requires more work by newspaper publishers and editors, not less. There's a place for reader blogs and community participation in the 21st-century newspaper, but let's not kid ourselves that they are a substitute for what people look for in their morning paper. As Stacey Getz readily admits about her blog, "This is not true journalism."

Adam Weinstein is a journalism student, Navy veteran, and two-day Jeopardy champion. He's written for the Village Voice and is working on a line of children's books with his fiancee.

Cul-de-sacs: The new slums?

Interesting article from Atlantic Magazine examines the ongoing decline of once-affluent suburban enclaves. Do we blame the subprime mortgage crisis? Writer Christopher B. Leinberger says no - - people are looking for a better way to live and leaving single-purpose, auto-centric, sprawled suburbs behind in search of walkable communities and urban living.

Developers are just now starting to take note. Too late?

Some excerpts:

Strange days are upon the residents of many a suburban cul-de-sac. Once-tidy yards have become overgrown, as the houses they front have gone vacant. Signs of physical and social disorder are spreading.

At Windy Ridge, a recently built starter-home development seven miles northwest of Charlotte, North Carolina, 81 of the community’s 132 small, vinyl-sided houses were in foreclosure as of late last year. Vandals have kicked in doors and stripped the copper wire from vacant houses; drug users and homeless people have furtively moved in. In December, after a stray bullet blasted through her son’s bedroom and into her own, Laurie Talbot, who’d moved to Windy Ridge from New York in 2005, told The Charlotte Observer, “I thought I’d bought a home in Pleasantville. I never imagined in my wildest dreams that stuff like this would happen.”

In the Franklin Reserve neighborhood of Elk Grove, California, south of Sacramento, the houses are nicer than those at Windy Ridge—many once sold for well over $500,000—but the phenomenon is the same. At the height of the boom, 10,000 new homes were built there in just four years. Now many are empty; renters of dubious character occupy others. Graffiti, broken windows, and other markers of decay have multiplied. Susan McDonald, president of the local residents’ association and an executive at a local bank, told the Associated Press, “There’s been gang activity. Things have really been changing, the last few years.”

.... In most metropolitan areas, only 5 to 10 percent of the housing stock is located in walkable urban places (including places like downtown White Plains and Belmar). Yet recent consumer research by Jonathan Levine of the University of Michigan and Lawrence Frank of the University of British Columbia suggests that roughly one in three homeowners would prefer to live in these types of places. In one study, for instance, Levine and his colleagues asked more than 1,600 mostly suburban residents of the Atlanta and Boston metro areas to hypothetically trade off typical suburban amenities (such as large living spaces) against typical urban ones (like living within walking distance of retail districts). All in all, they found that only about a third of the people surveyed solidly preferred traditional suburban lifestyles, featuring large houses and lots of driving. Another third, roughly, had mixed feelings. The final third wanted to live in mixed-use, walkable urban areas—but most had no way to do so at an affordable price. Over time, as urban and faux-urban building continues, that will change.

Demographic changes in the United States also are working against conventional suburban growth, and are likely to further weaken preferences for car-based suburban living. When the Baby Boomers were young, families with children made up more than half of all households; by 2000, they were only a third of households; and by 2025, they will be closer to a quarter. Young people are starting families later than earlier generations did, and having fewer children. The Boomers themselves are becoming empty-nesters, and many have voiced a preference for urban living. By 2025, the U.S. will contain about as many single-person households as families with children.

... If gasoline and heating costs continue to rise, conventional suburban living may not be much of a bargain in the future. And as more Americans, particularly affluent Americans, move into urban communities, families may find that some of the suburbs’ other big advantages—better schools and safer communities—have eroded. Schooling and safety are likely to improve in urban areas, as those areas continue to gentrify; they may worsen in many suburbs if the tax base—often highly dependent on house values and new development—deteriorates. Many of the fringe counties in the Washington, D.C., metropolitan area, for instance, are projecting big budget deficits in 2008. Only Washington itself is expecting a large surplus. Fifteen years ago, this budget situation was reversed.

It's a terrific article that you can read in its entirety here.

(via The Slow Home.)

Franklin EXPOSED: GoogleMaps Street View feature peeks into your garage

 

As if GoogleMaps and GoogleEarth weren't mind-bending enough already (see your house from space! Locate the pyramids in Egypt and see just how close the Sphinx is to them!), Google has been adding a 360-degree, you-are-there Street View feature to GoogleMaps on a city by city basis.

Street View basically adds the option to put yourself right on the street as if you're standing in the location you've Googled. I used this on a recent trip to Hollywood when I Googlemapped the hotel my client had recommended and was able to "walk" the neighborhood in advance to get the lay of the land. (See above - two blocks from the Scientology Celebrity Center!)

It adds an extra dimension to getting your bearings, to be sure.

But, as handy as it is to get the lay of the land by looking at street-level physical landmarks in urban/commercial environments like LA, Manhattan, Portland, etc., things get a little odd when the funny-looking Google car comes to the suburbs, which must have happened this past summer in Franklin. Now you're basically looking at mile after mile of people's houses and often-open garages (look - he's got a new Toro riding lawn mower).

Weird. Go GoogleMap your house. The Street View picture for my house shows the right cul-de-sac, but the wrong house; with a little scrolling you can sit right in your own virtual driveway. I imagine if you crawled through block after block of Franklin you'll  find some odd scenes caught by the randomness of the Google car's appearance. My short forays thus far reveal virtual ghost town in Franklin - though I did find this roller blader waiting to cross Drexel:

LINK: Strange scenes captured on Street View.

GoogleMaps project manager speaks about Street Views feature on Freakonomics blog.

Frankly, the clip below seems only slightly exaggerated:

Nobody's in a hurry to welcome another Target Store

"It has to be more than that."

James Rowen's post at The Political Environment prompted me to note that it's not just certain parties in Franklin who are uninspired by the thought of another target being built in their vicinity. It's also officials who hold the purse strings to freeway interchange money.

Hold out for the IKEA, I say! I'm tired of driving to Illinois for my office furniture; and we've got all the Target we need.

From the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel:

County gives cool reception to Pabst Farms' latest plans

By SCOTT WILLIAMS
[email protected]

Posted: Feb. 20, 2008

Waukesha - New plans for a shopping center at Pabst Farms are getting a cool reception from Waukesha County officials who must decide whether to help build a freeway interchange at the development site.

Some county officials say the developer has talked about trying to land such commonplace retailers as Target and Kohl's to anchor the proposed shopping center in Oconomowoc.

Those anchor stores would not likely create the sort of upscale attraction requiring the expenditure of taxpayer money on the infrastructure, officials said.

"The expectation was that they were going to be a regional draw," said Norman Cummings, the county's director of administration. "It wouldn't be a regional draw if we have them all over the place."

Officials at Developers Diversified Realty, the Cleveland-based developer, have indicated that they would start courting anchor tenants after the 165-acre project won local approval.

Oconomowoc aldermen gave the concept preliminary approval Tuesday night. Waukesha County supervisors, however, said they are taking a wait-and-see approach.

Supervisor Bonnie Morris of Dousman said she was unimpressed when the developer privately touted past projects anchored with stores such as Target and Kohl's.

"It has to be more than that," Morris said.

Pabst Farms spokesman Thad Nation said Wednesday that the development team has had preliminary talks with some potential anchors, although he would not identify them.

"We fully expect that we'll attract quality anchor tenants," Nation said.

Pabst Farms is a 1,500-acre residential and commercial development in western Waukesha County that would include the outdoor shopping center, which is known as Pabst Farms Town Centre.

If all goes as planned, development officials will break ground on the shopping center and seek funding to start the freeway interchange later this year, Nation said.

The Waukesha County Board last fall agreed to include the I-94 interchange in capital spending plans for the county. The plans called for Pabst Farms and the county to contribute $1.75 million each, while Oconomowoc would pay $400,000 and the state would pay the rest.

Proposed at I-94 and Highway P, the freeway improvement is expected to cost $25 million.

Desiring a regional draw

Shortly before the County Board endorsed the cost-sharing arrangement, however, General Growth Properties of Chicago dropped out as the shopping center developer.

So the county made its financial contribution contingent on a new developer stepping forward with plans for a regional attraction.

Another vote of the County Board would be needed to allocate funds for the $1.75 million country contribution.

Developers Diversified Realty has since proposed a large outdoor lifestyle mall, with three larger anchor tenants, a movie theater, several smaller specialty shops and other features.

Supervisor James Behrend of Delafield said he was undecided about the project.

Behrend said the new shopping center might warrant taxpayer support, and he fears that not building a freeway interchange would push traffic congestion onto nearby county roads.

But he agreed that the caliber of anchor tenants in the mall would prove decisive.

"If I hear it's a Target or a Kohl's, that doesn't sound different from anything we have," he said.

Upscale tenants

Supervisor Ted Rolfs of Chenequa said he hopes the shopping center will attract upscale anchor stores on the level of Saks Fifth Avenue or IKEA home furnishings.

At this point, Rolfs said, he is inclined to oppose the freeway funding.

"Until they can show us what kind of people they'll get, I don't think I can support it," he said. "From what they've shown us so far, I don't see it."

On the Web:   www.pabstfarms.com.

Oak Creek-Franklin: Water battle now in court

In nearly every meeting that I attend wherein Oak Creek is discussed (most often in relationship to Oak Creek-Franklin cooperative efforts on behalf of 27th Street), someone will mutter under their breath about the "water issue." An uneasy peace - - it's always there, just under the surface.

And now the dispute enters the courts.

From the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel:

Franklin files suit to get $303,000 from Oak Creek

By MARIE ROHDE
[email protected]

Posted: Feb. 14, 2008

Franklin has gone to court against its neighbor, Oak Creek, in the latest salvo in an ongoing war over water.

According to a lawsuit filed this week:

Franklin began buying water from Oak Creek for one subdivision under a 30-year contract beginning in 1973. A similar agreement was reached in 1979 for another subdivision.

In 1994, Franklin agreed to buy all of its water from Oak Creek. As a part of that agreement, the earlier contracts were amended to expire in October 2003, when Franklin would have built its own water utility. The state Public Service Commission in 1994 ordered Oak Creek to relinquish Franklin customers within 10 years.

When Franklin notified Oak Creek that it expected the transfer to occur by October 2003, Oak Creek balked, demanding $300,000 compensation for infrastructure improvements made in Franklin. Franklin said it had paid for the infrastructure, and the PSC agreed.

Oak Creek asked the PSC for a water rate increase that would have affected only Franklin customers, to the tune of more than $300,000. The PSC refused. Oak Creek appealed and lost.

The customers were not transferred until more than a year after the date ordered by the PSC because of court appeals. That cost Franklin $303,438, an amount the city is asking the court to order Oak Creek to pay. Franklin also is asking for legal fees. The case has been assigned to Milwaukee County Circuit Judge Michael Dwyer.

"Hey Cheesecake Breath!": FranklinNOW's blogs make Milwaukee Magazine

You know, I had a long post all written about this Milwaukee Magazine article, but I decided just to post it without much comment. Writer Erik Gunn has it nailed pretty good.

From Milwaukee Magazine (March issue):

Hey Cheesecake Breath!
Nasty, bickering blogs have lowered the quality of Journal Communications’ suburban weeklies
By Erik Gunn

It was supposed to be innovative, reader-centered journalism. Instead, the suburban weeklies owned by Journal Communications have spawned some messy food fights between dueling blogs.

It was back in 2006 that the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel's parent company tightened control over its chain of Community Newspapers Inc. weeklies. The company cut the number of papers nearly in half and wiped out distinctive newspaper identities like the Oak Creek Pictorial and New Berlin Citizen - replacing them with cookie-cutter tabloids called NOW that are inserted free in your Journal Sentinel.

The tabloids are supplemented by MyCommunityNOWcom - Web sites for each respective suburb. The sites mostly feature reader-generated stories and press releases, as well as blogs by local residents.

The dominance of press releases over independently reported news stories is troubling, but even worse are some of the blogs.

Perhaps no one exemplifies the sort of juvenile name calling that goes on better than Kevin Fischer, a longtime Republican operative who works as a legislative aide to state Sen. Mary Lazich (R-New Berlin). Fischer is a Franklin blogger who has accused the city's school board and administration of being "unethical" and has engaged in a running battle with blogger Greg Kowalski, a college student who is on the Franklin Environmental Commission. Fischer called Kowalski "cheesecake breath" in a comment on Kowalski's blog in January, and barred Kowalski from commenting on Fischer's blog.

The NewBerlinNOW.com site features a similar war pitting blogger and ex-school board member Linda Richter against blogger Matt Thomas, current vice president of the board and a leader of its conservative majority. Talk about getting personal: Richter publicized the bankruptcy records of Thomas on her blog to undermine his claim as a champion of fiscal sobriety.

Mark Maley, the CNI executive who oversees the NOWWeb sites, doesn't see a serious problem. "Even with the skirmishes, nobody's been sued," he says. "It's basically been a handful of people tossing mud. There's been some online behavior that I'm not thrilled about, but the vast, vast majority is pretty positive stuff." Even some of the people involved in the verbal duels have also engaged in enterprising work, like airing details of community development projects or conducting open-records requests for officials' e-mails.

Yet as a coherent source of information - or even reasoned analysis - the blogs largely fail. One anonymous commenter pronounced them "a trashy, useless, and inflammatory method of modern communication." A former blogger who quit in disgust wrote, "We don't need a dogfight...we want debate." And New Berlin Mayor Jack Chiovatero says his administration has opted not to post press releases online because of the blogs. "They're negative and filled with wrong information," he says. "If we post our information on there, people won't know if it's true or not."

But bad journalism might be what the readers want. "I'm not crazy about it," Maley says. "But the FranklinNOW site has rapidly become our No. 2 Web site rather than 6 or 7."

CNI NOW Newspapers UPDATE: Utterly unrepentant about concealing context

Well, I'll say this for the gang at CNI's "Oak Creek-Franklin-Greendale-Hales Corners NOW" newspaper - - they appear to have a sense of humor. The very next week after they consciously mislabeled an aide for a Republican State Senator and conservative radio fill-in as simply a "Franklin resident" and "Community Voices blogger on FranklinNOW.com," they run another one of his blog entries, this time a rant that ends with the line, "Shhh! Don't tell anybody!" Very amusing.

And, to add ineptitude to injury, they change Mr. Fischer's bio line this week - - but don't add the required information! 

That's not to mention the fact that this tired screed is labeled "Best of the Blogs." Nothing better than this simple tripe was posted on FranklinNOW.com the past seven days?

I guess we shouldn't hold our breath for a series of stories in the CNI NOW papers about, for instance, transparency in local government while they routinely conceal the true identity of their contributors.

An embarrassment. But don't let ethics stop you, legislative aides and other bought-and-paid-for partisans - - sign up at CNI NOW today so you can begin misrepresenting yourself with the full blessing of editors Mark Maley and Roger Bartel.

And, once again, let's give credit to Kevin Fischer for seeing and exploiting a lapse in journalistic ethics.

"Shhh! Don't tell anybody!" Indeed.

RELATED STORY: Journal Communications Sees Profit Plunge 59.5% (because advertisers shy away from media formats that make themselves irrelevant.)

"NOW" newspapers: Duped or complicit in abandoning context?

Now do you see what's wrong with this picture? Read on ...

Backstory

It's a sad mark of our complacence that we in the Milwaukee area have long since accepted without a whimper that Wisconsin's largest metropolitan area is served by just one daily newspaper. Last year Journal Communications made their monopoly complete by utterly obliterating the local character of CNI's "community newspapers." As reported last year in the Business Journal, now deceased are papers like the Wauwatosa News-Times, the West Allis Star, the Franklin-Hales Corners Hub, the Brookfield News and the Whitefish Bay Herald. These papers were re-branded under the new "NOW" moniker; The 80 year-old Franklin Hub, for instance, died and became part of a paper called (evidently) "Franklin, Greendale, Hales Corners, Oak Creek NOW."

These weekly "NOW" papers are now included in Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel subscriptions, meaning that folks in Franklin who'd never subscribed to the Hub now get their region's "NOW" paper every Thursday with their MJS.

An intriguing component of the otherwise disappointing "NOW" transition was the creation of web sites coordinated to each paper, along with a "community bloggers" function. Simply put, CNI-Journal Sentinel Inc.  provides blogging space to any local person who would like to comment on local and national events. So, in theory, you get the viewpoint of the average Franklinite on this, that and the other thing via FranklinNOW.com. The NOW online editor is Mark Maley.

For quite some time, these blogs had no "comment" function; i.e. there was no way to interact with the bloggers if you agreed or disagreed with them. "Franklin resident" Kevin Fischer - - who I honestly hadn't heard of up to that point - - embraced the platform firmly and wholeheartedly, an unabashed locked-on-FOX conservative just to the right of Sean Hannity.

Before things got really, really ugly over there, I participated in Franklinnow discussions now and then. I eventually learned a few things about Mr. Fischer (besides the fact we share a fondness for Elvis). As I noted in a post this past July:

Mr. Fischer is an employee of Republican Wisconsin state senator Mary Lazich (as his FranklinNOW.com bio emphatically avoids mentioning) and a right wing radio fill-in host. He's on a short leash; he will not be long for either gig if he suddenly goes off-message.

Fischer's blog bio said only that he worked "for the state." (Shades of the Bruce Springsteen song: "My name is Joe Roberts/I work for the state/I'm a sergeant out of Perrineville/Barracks number 8...")

Well, Mr. Fischer is no State Trooper ala the protagonist of Springsteen's song. Make no mistake: He gets paid to advance the cause of his boss and the GOP; he serves at their pleasure and discretion and is beholden to them. And, in turn, his boss is beholden to a long line of corporate, individual and PAC contributers to the party and her specific campaigns. In other words, you won't see Kevin Fischer speak critically about Wal-Mart (or other big boxes such as Target at Shoppes at Wyndham Village) while Wal-Mart Stores/WAL-PAC is a contributer to the Lazich campaign (though you will see Lazich and Fischer heap praise on Wal-Mart).

This is, of course, not behavior confined to the GOP. Plenty of Democratic leaders have similar entanglements and we should expect full disclosure from them as well.

Journalism 101 - Context is everything

I'd emailed Franklinnow editor Mark Maley in February of '07 questioning what I felt was Fischer's very careful concealment of his true professional affiliation on his blog. Maley answered that he saw no problem.

I replied:

Hi Mark,

Thanks for taking time to respond.

I have no issue with Mr. Fischer's right to blog, but to say in his bio that he "works for the state" is simply facetious. It smacks of hiding something. You should make it clear, up front, that this guy collects a paycheck in service to the Republican agenda OR have him stay off any political opinions. Why should CNI give the Republican Party free ad space under the guise of "your neighbor's opinion"?

I hope your sites will address the lack of interactivity in the near future as well.

Thanks again,

John Michlig

That roused no response, and I didn't hear from Maley until June 12th when he asked if I'd consider becoming a blogger on the FranklinNOW.com site. I took that opportunity to reiterate my concerns with Fischer's concealment of his professional affiliations. Frankly, I held out very little hope that the change would be made even though Mr. Maley conceded that I'd raised a good point (irrespective of whether or not I'd agree to blog for CNI, I should add).

Then, on August 13th I noted the following item added to Mr. Fischer's blog bio:

"Kevin, who is a legislative aide to state Sen. Mary Lazich (R-New Berlin) ..."

It's only a dozen-or-so words, but they are words Kevin Fischer seemed loath to admit. (He even wrote in one blog entry "Another local blogger on a different web site likes to go after me and my profession" - -without actually mentioning his profession. Well played!)

I was satisfied. Moreover, in the comments section to my post "Better late than never: Franklinnow.com makes blogger's professional affiliation clear", I went so far as to extend an olive branch to Mr. Fischer. Despite the fact that he and I disagree on certain issues, I saw no reason that we couldn't be friendly combatants in a positive clash of ideas. (A bad idea, I later found out, but that's a different story.)

So all was well with the world. Anyone who read Mr. Fischer's blog could see at the top of the page what he does for a living, and they could contextualize his "opinions" based on that important knowledge. More importantly, his more and more frequent incidents of online short temper and name-calling became something Mary Lazich had to take note of now that she was appropriately linked to him. (It should be noted that Mr. Fischer is currently exhibiting exemplary blog behavior since another local blogger named Cindy Kilkenny began a campaign to learn whether proper bounderies exist between Mr. Fischer's day job and his online adventures. Obviously someone had a serious conversation with Mr. Fischer, because his online demeanor since Ms. Kilkenny began her campaign is remarkably different now. In a good way.)

Hiding Again: What's wrong with this picture?

Let me make it clear that what I'm about to say falls squarely at the feet of either Franklinnow.com editor Mark Maley or Community Newspapers Editor-in-Chief Roger Bartel; they are the gatekeepers ultimately responsible for providing accurate context for their readers. For his part, Mr. Fischer is simply taking advantage of a lax gatekeeper.

Why do we open the February 7th Franklin edition of the "Now" newspaper  - -  delivered to ALL Milwaukee Journal Sentinel subscribers in the Franklin-Greendale-Hales Corners-Oak Creek  region, regardless of whether they've been online or not - - and see one of Mr. Fischer's blog entries reprinted there accompanied by a bio-line that reads nothing more than, "Franklin resident Kevin Fischer is a Community Voices blogger on FranklinNOW.com"?

No information about his day job work for a Republican state senator. Nothing about his right wing radio fill-in host gig. Kevin Fischer is presented as just another Franklin resident with an opinion.

Which is, of course, hogwash. Let Mr. Fischer go "off-message" just once and you'll see his current livelihood shrivel up rather quickly. That fact provides vital context for anything Mr. Fischer writes, and it is the responsibility of the paper's editor to provide that context in their pages and on their website.

I sent two emails to Mark Maley asking at whose discretion Kevin Fischer had originally concealed the truth of his day job on his CNI blog. He didn't answer either email, so I called him. Mr. Maley's curt response: "I don't even want to answer that question. I did get your email, but I don't even want to answer that question."

Yes, it would probably be better if he didn't answer, as neither possible response flatters him. He was either duped by Mr. Fischer, or he enabled the deceit of his readers by consciously hiding information they needed for context. Now that egregious omission has leaked to the print version.

So, legislative aides to any senator or other representative, get on the stick! CNI-Journal Sentinel is providing propaganda soapboxes - get your "Community Blog" space while they're still available for dissemination of your daily and weekly talking points, unencumbered by silly hindrances like an accurate bio line to provide context for your agenda.

And to Kevin Fischer: Kudos to you for seeing the hole and running through it.