The nearly 175 years young Madison Literary Club hosted a talk by Paul Fanlund and John Nichols on “The Business of Journalism”.
mp3 audio // Machine generated transcript
Overton Window, explained.
A few personal notes on the newspaper era:
I was blessed to grow up with parents who prized literacy and lifelong learning. Local, regional and national publications were delivered on the regular and our local library was well stocked with everything else.
A snow storm “baptized” my first day delivering the morning Milwaukee Sentinel to subscribers’ doorsteps.
“Circulation” people mastered the art of heavy and relentless sales tactics.
Perhaps my biggest disappointment in much of the legacy media across the decades are twofold:
1. Rapid decline of inquisitiveness. Stenography has prevailed for most of the journalism world.
2. Brain boxing. Simply accepting a declining Overton Window when we live in a time of unprecedented data/information flow.
There are some exceptions. When asked, “what do you read”, I reply as follows (a sublist):
Local/Regional
Chris Rickert, Danielle DuClos, Erin Gretzinger, Marc Eisen, Rory Linnane, Corri Hess, Allen Borsuk and Laura Scandurra.captimes.com Madison.com https://www.illinoispolicy.org (Pritzer drops millions in the Wisconsin Democrat Party, worth keeping an eye on Illinois spending, debt and regulation practices), ditto for the https://www.chicagocontrarian.com, jsonline, Wispolitics.com (curiously owned by the cap times for a number of years)
National/Global
Seymour Hersh, Matt Taibbi, Eric S. Raymond, Balaji, John Robb, Gregg Easterbrook, Glenn Greenwald, Chris Arnade, Kevin Kelly, Dave Winer and Katja Hoyer.ft.com wsj.com nytimes.com economist.com
Finally, a few questions that I did not have time to ask last night.
It’s been 19 years since the Cap Times transitioned from a daily newspaper to being primarily an online news source with a weekly print edition. How has it gone? What have you learned? Problems and successes? Talk about the staff. How many reporters, news producers and editors does the CT have today compared to 19 years ago?
Why did the Cap Times buy WisPolitics.com in 2011? It doesn’t seem like the purchase was ever positioned to strengthen the cap times editorial product. Am I wrong in saying that? You then subsequently sold WisPolitics in 2023 to the State Affairs news chain. Why did you sell it?
As you know, The cap times has always had a tremendous strength in that it shares advertising profits 50-50 with Lee Enterprises, owner of the Wisconsin State Journal. Is that agreement, which dates to the late 1940s, still in effect?