It’s right there on page A16. The JS, patting itself on the back for its BPA coverage, shows a picture of the paper being flushed down the Tidy Bowl.
Journal Sentinel in the crapper
Archive for the ‘Journal Sentinel’ Category
JS, patting itself on the back, makes us smile
Sunday, January 31st, 2010Michael Lock: no genius here
Friday, May 22nd, 2009JS reporter John Diedrich’s series on super bad guy Michael Lock are absolutely riveting reads.
But, a few small quibbles. Anyone who buries a couple of bodies in his own back yard is not — absolutely, positively NOT — a criminal mastermind.
And any law enforcement personnel who meets with a violent drug dealer like Louis Jackson (hot grease on your crotch, anyone? Jackson can administer) in a place like Hawthorn Glen, a Milwaukee Public Schools recreation site frequented by children and families, ought to have their heads examined and their badges taken away for a while.
Yet, that is where cops met with Mr. Jackson, their chief informant in the Lock case. Really, really unbelievable.
Suburban districts not really changing
Monday, May 11th, 2009The JS had had a half story in the paper yesterday about suburban school districts’ diversity. A major point of the story was that suburban districts now are educating minorities who don’t have to be bused to the suburbs, but who actually live there.
The story, though, relied on cherry-picked statistics and an unrepresentative sampling of area school districts to make the point. It’s a half story because so very much was left out.
Enrollment data shows that of the non-white students in Wauwatosa schools, 65% live within the district’s attendance boundaries,” the story reports.
So 65% of what? What is the base number? The story doesn’t say. Isn’t it rather important to know whether there are a total of 10 minorities or 1,000?
The State Department of Public Instruction says the Wauwatosa district is about 26% minority this year, which means the resident minority student population is about 17%. Whoopee.
The county’s overall minority population is about 31% and its black population is 25%. The city of Wauwatosa’s overall minority population is 6% and its black population is about 2%, according to the US Census Bureau. That’s progress for you!
Given all that, what conclusions can be drawn from the story? Only that there was some less than sterling reporting and editing going on.
In Greenfield, according to the story:
…the number of minoirity students living in the district’s attendance zone grew faster than that of minoirty Greenfield students living outside the district.
Well, heavens. Isn’t that just as meaningless as can be. It’s total mud. Are we talking actual numbers or percentages? If it’s the latter, a very small increase in the number of resident minority students would likely mean a huge increase in the growth rate because the base is so small. (Going from one to two is a 100% increase, but going from 100 to 101 is just a 1% increase). The Greenfield district over the last three years has seen a small decline in its overall black enrollment and increases in its Hispanic, Native American and Asian enrollments, according to DPI. The DPI data does not differentiate between resident and non-resident minorities. The city of Greenfield is 94% white with a 1% black population. It has a Latino population of about 4%, an Asian population of about 2%, and a Native American population of less than 1%. That does not bode well for residential minority enrollments in the public school system.
Meanwhile, what districts did the paper omit? What about Well, there’s Oconomowoc, which is 94% white (growing slightly more diverse over three years), and Lake Country, which is 95% white (growing a bit more white over the last three years) and Richfield, also 95% white (no change over the last three years).
The overall question seems to be: why does this story even exist?
Steve Smith, rich guy with a raise, stiffs shareholders
Friday, May 1st, 2009As Journal Communications stock plummeted in value and Journal Communications employees lost their jobs, CEO Steve Smith did the real corporate thing: he grabbed the money and screwed his stockholders.
Reported the paper in March:
Total compensation increased almost 22% last year for Journal Communications Inc. chairman and chief executive Steven J. Smith, according to a regulatory filing by the company Thursday.
Smith earned no bonus, but his salary rose 3.7% to $798,077. He received stock awards worth $1,672 and option awards valued at $397,003, a proxy statement for the Milwaukee-based media company and publisher of the Journal Sentinel said. The biggest change in compensation was in the value of Smith’s retirement benefits, which grew to $233,110, compared with $74,782 in 2007. He received other compensation last year worth $16,095.
Journal Communications posted a $224.4 million loss in 2008.
And then, this morning, we are treated to this:
Citing “the challenging economic environment,” the board of Journal Communications Inc. said Thursday it will suspend the dividend on Class A and Class B shares of its stock.
Quarterly dividends on the shares had been cut to 2 cents from 8 cents in February.
“While we regret having to make this difficult decision, we believe this is the prudent choice in order to maintain financial flexibility,” said Steven J. Smith, chairman of Journal Communications. “Given the continued challenging economy and business conditions, we believe that this will allow the company to continue to direct a significant portion of its cash flow to debt reduction.”
What a damned joke.
Early prison release, reality and partisanship
Thursday, February 25th, 2010You would think that the JS, given its tough, tough economic circumstances, would understand about other institutions facing tough, tough economic circumstances.
That is not the case, however, when it comes to the state’s early prisoner release program. There’s a non-story there, and the JS was all over it. The state is letting some non-violent offenders out of prison a month or two early.
Some of them — surprise! — re-offend.
Police Chief Edward Flynn complained to the paper that the state is increasing the city’s costs. The JS, journalistic watchdog that it is, does nothing to verify or investigate Flynn’s assertion — does the chief seriously believe that if these folks are held an extra month they won’t re-offend? That the city won’t be spending time and money re-arresting them?
The early release program is pretty much of a non-issue (at least until just one of the released inmates commits some heinous crime two weeks before his original release date — then political hay will be made until the cows come home to Wisconsin Avenue) blown out of proportion to create a faux scandal. If I were in Democratic Gov. Doyle’s administration, I would suspect the paper of having a partisan agenda.
Fortunately, in its totally even-handed manner, the paper carried, on the very same day, a total non-story about two State Department of Justice press releases. Republican J. B. Van Hollen’s shop borrowed wording from other agencies’ press releases about cases they worked together.
Stop the presses! Nothing amiss here!
Gee, think the paper has ever taken a few paragraphs from press releases?
That’s it for now. I must go out and, like the paper, shovel it.
Posted in Commentary, Journal Sentinel, State Government, media | 2 Comments »