Woodchuck war heats up again
Aug. 1, 2021
If my long-running battle against woodchucks were a Hollywood sequel, I think we’d be at “Groundhog Strikes Again Chapter XXIV.”
If my long-running battle against woodchucks were a Hollywood sequel, I think we’d be at “Groundhog Strikes Again Chapter XXIV.”
Richard W. Garrett, an independent author and researcher on educational reform, argues the performance of the United States’ K-12 public school system is so poor that nothing less than a major overhaul will fix its problems.
The American Journalism Project has awarded a $1.4 million grant to the Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism and Milwaukee Neighborhood News Service to be distributed over three years, WCIJ announced Friday.
The grant is intended to support the efforts by WCIJ and NNS to reshape local news in Milwaukee and across the state and will help them support additional staff positions. The two nonprofits have partnered since spring 2020 on the News414 project, which uses text messages, social media and other tools to provide important news to underserved audiences in the Milwaukee area.
After nearly three years as managing editor, Sarah Weihert is leaving the Lake Mills Leader. A Lake Mills native and UW-Whitewater graduate, Weihert had served as an education reporter for the Watertown Daily Times prior to joining the Leader. She departs to start a new job in public relations with the city of Fort Atkinson.
Taking over the managing editor role will be Amber Gerber. Another UW-Whitewater graduate, Gerber has served as editor for The Courier for the last two years. It was her second stint with the newspaper, having held the same role from August 2007 to October 2011. She's also held positions at the Sun Prairie Star, the McFarland Thistle and The (Cottage Grove/Monona) Herald-Independent.
Max Heath, one of the newspaper industry’s leading postal experts for decades, died Wednesday, July 28, in Louisville, Ky., the National Newspaper Association announced. He was 75 and had suffered a hemorrhagic stroke days earlier.
Heath, a longtime postal guru for NNA, was postal chair emeritus for the association and remained a consultant to the NNA Postal Committee. As a top postal expert, Heath advocated to preserve affordable mail delivery options for community newspapers and was a valuable resource for newspaper publishers in Wisconsin and across the country. In 2019, he was awarded the Wisconsin Newspaper Association's first-ever Distinguished Service Award for Contributions to Wisconsin Newspapers.
Empty advertising headlines that speak to no one in particular are ineffective and a waste of the advertiser's budget.
In his most recent "Ad Libs" column, veteran sales trainer John Foust provides a four-step formula that can help you generate more sales for your newspaper and for your advertisers. The end result will be a series of targeted and consistent messages, instead of the same watered-down ad over and over again, he writes.
Last month, a judge ruled that the state Legislature violated the open records law when it withheld records regarding the sexual harassment of a female staffer. However, an order to release the unredacted records has been put on hold as the governmental body appeals the decision — despite the fact that the former legislator who the allegations were lodged against says, if it were up to him, they would have been released long ago.
In a state where most higher education institutions are struggling to address financial and enrollment challenges, the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee faces some of the greatest difficulties of all.
Therese "Terri" Lescelius, who was the first female editor of the Marinette Eagle-Star and led the EagleHerald newsroom for nearly two decades, died Wednesday, July 21. She was 68.
In 1973, after attending Central Michigan University, she joined the newsroom of the Ironwood (Mich.) Daily Globe, where she met her future husband, Paul. In 1982, Lescelius joined the Marinette Eagle-Star newsroom, where she later became the paper’s first female editor. In 1987, she was named editor and general manager of the Menominee Herald-Leader, another Bliss Communications newspaper. When the two newspapers merged in 1995, she remained as editor — a role she held until her retirement in 2012.
A new poll question about readers' level of concern regarding the delta variant is available to be used by WNA members. We are asking the question in light of a surge in new COVID-19 cases fueled by the variant that prompted new CDC mask-wearing guidance.
Poll questions are available through a WNA partnership with Polco aimed at helping newspapers better engage readers and access enhanced data and insights. WNA members who have signed up for an account with Polco can access their local version of the new question, as well as local poll results, on their dashboards. Those who have not signed up can do so here.
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