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Sunday, May 09, 2010

Locals Complain Janesville Farmers Market Is Cornered

Here's an extremely rare "fair and balanced" local story (about one every three years?) from the Janesville Gazette about a vendor being turned away from selling baked goods at the Janesville Farmers Market because her booth could provide competition for booths operated by the market's manager. Suddenly, an unwritten "quota" system appears.
JG Excerpt:
Sheila Killion, who owns Cakes by Sheila, has appealed a decision by the board and market manager Teri Huber to turn down Killion’s application for the second year. Killion charges a conflict of interest because Huber’s family also runs a bakery booth at the market.
The element of this story rarely seen in local Gazette articles is the questioning and doubting of establishment policy and officials without any apparent political motive or reason by the newspaper to do so, albeit farmers market officials.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Doubt there is any "motive or reasoning?" Delve deeper and it will become apparent. Suggestion: Start with those who stand to gain from growing a controversy. There IS more to this story and the community has not heard much more than one position so far. A successful farmer's market is always about community building and the JFM on N. Main every Saturday will continue to be exactly that.

Lou Kaye said...

I'm always one to keep a cynical eye on the motives of others, especially when it comes to our local media. I certainly believe the personal politics of revenge were involved in the JFM controversy. My main point was that the Gazette did not seem to use their press power to engineer an advantage for one side over the other at the time of this posting. It gets tricky when the newspaper withholds information because it's very difficult to prove an unknown. But I think anyone who might have more pertinent information and knows that the newspaper deliberately withheld that information owes it to their community to tell their story.

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