My hunch is that two of the more obvious acts of Gazette inspired chaos sent him on a trajectory out the door.
After the Gazette recently published a negative article about Paul Ryan's democratic challenger John Heckenlively, Milam bragged about the Congressman's good fortune to have a newspaper perform such a wonderful hit job on the democratic challenger and declared Heckenlively's campaign over. Milam said, "stick a fork in him, he's over," as he used the newspaper's distortions to further ream him on the air - Fox News style.
In October of last year, Milam made veiled threats of newspaper retaliation to Janesville city council members if they refuse the newspaper's request to start council meetings earlier so the paper can meet its publishing deadlines. That went over real well.
I bring up those two examples only as evidence that Milam merely echoed Gazette office banter and inadvertently channeled what the hierarchy at the Gazette were up to and thinking - one too many times. For this he became dispensable.
Although I rarely found common ground with Milam's political perspectives, I also never considered him a lead technician in the local media’s socio-political agenda, but he did carry their water and it's for that reason he became an honorary subject of about a dozen of my blog postings.
So far it looks like he was forced out, but more details might come out in the next couple of weeks - his last day is August 20th.
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