Newspaper Still The Same After Minor Changes

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Recently, the Janesville Gazette has gone through a series of small changes mainly within their paper delivery schedule and how news content is disseminated between the print hard copy and their Web Site. The biggest change for paper subscribers was that home delivery has been shifted from the late afternoon to the early morning hours. They also seem to have a better handle on brief articles and submissions from the various community organizations. However, their loosely constructed local content along with their Republicanized socio-economic engineering very much remains the same.

In one article just two days before a Janesville city council decision on water rates, the Gazette posted a typical water bill description comparing the projected price hike with the current costs verbatim from official city sources. Although it is common practice for city officials and utility agencies to use only water and fire service charges, the actual Janesville water utility bill arrives in the mailbox with additional storm water and waste water charges. By neglecting to clarify this information, the city and newspaper gave the impression the "average" Janesville water utility bill was much lower than it really is. The reason to provide only part of the story appears to be an effort to sell the water rate increase without attracting much opposition. A few days later in another article, the Gazette affirmed this wrong impression again.

In Wednesday's paper, the Gazette demonstrated its ability to play a huge part keeping readers off-balance on civic affairs with this confusing article and titles about the private investment hockey group (WHP) now suggesting the city should consider rebuilding, instead of repairing the city ice arena. Note: The online version lacks the sub-titles. Although this is a minor mix-up, most people see little difference between rebuilding and repairing, but considering it is the private investment group (and not the city) suggesting and seeking a new arena in a public/private partnership, the newspaper repaints the pursuit with the secondary title on Page 13A, "ARENA/Private money would be sought," instead of a more honest message, "Hockey Investors Suggest New Arena/Public Money Would Be Sought."

Anyone with any common sense would see the run-around and lose this private investment group in a hurry. The hockey group's tactics are reminiscent of the millionaire investment group that tried to finagle the farmland at 14/51 away from the county. On the other hand, I can't blame the hockey investors for their bravura, they may as well ride the compliant city taxpayers for everything they can get.

Still selling the business group to the taxpayers, the Gazette repeated mentioning the hockey team would bring up to $20,000 a year in revenue for the city, while neglecting to remind city taxpayers of their obligation to cover operating losses of $65,000 a year at the ice arena facility while it is under contract with the for-profit hockey group.

The Gazette changed their news distribution, but they continue to loosely construct facts and re-arrange reality in order to achieve their politically engineered goals. It's still business as usual.

On the Gazette's finger-flipping photo:
I received an email asking why I did not jump on the band-wagon slamming the Gazette for publishing the photo of a murder suspect flipping the bird. After all, the emailer wrote, I (a flaming left-wing hypocrite) unfairly loudmouth the newspaper regularly. Here's my response emailer:
I believe newspapers should not hide or distort human realities pertinent to a story, so I think the Gazette did right by printing it. Just not on the front page. The only concern I would have on this matter is for small children. If the kids have to see it, let the burden of control rest on the parents so they are the ones to stop their kids from seeking it inside the paper. The front-page photo exposure made viewing it almost unavoidable for nearly everyone.