Civics: Madison Journalism, 2020 Commentary

Ann Althouse:
The “who” and the “why” seem to have dropped out of journalism. 

“Update: Group shuts down eastbound Beltline for hours Thursday night, police say” — Wisconsin State Journal. 

A group of about 20 people in cars shut down the eastbound Beltline in Monona and Madison for about four hours on Thursday night, authorities reported…. 

So… “people.” This story has a front-page headline, and that says it went up 2 hours ago. If this happened last night, why is there no information about who these people are and why they’re shutting down the Beltline?  

The group has a barbeque set up…

Are we supposed to infer the identity of the “people” and their purpose by the fact that they’ve set up a barbeque on the Beltline?! 

… similar to a protest on the Beltline in September that last [sic] several hours.

Okay, there’s a link on that, so if I pick up a hint that these “people” must have the same purpose, I can click through and find out who they were and why they did this and then — if I chose — infer that last night’s group had the same purpose. The linked article from September says: “The protest stemmed from police-involved deaths, including that of Breonna Taylor in Louisville, and the Black Lives Matter movement, but it was unclear Thursday whether the protest was the result of a specific incident.” In that protest, they “set up grills on the highway.”