Did you have to go there? It’s no secret to loyal readers that WISN-TV’s newsroom ranks first in our eyes among the city’s TV news crews, and we’ve long admired the work of veteran reporter Colleen Henry. Maybe that’s why we found it depressing that such a class act would even touch the smarmy story of Tiger Woods‘ alleged ex-mistress Joslyn James stripping at Silk Exotic during the PGA tournament at Whistling Straits. We would expect that story over at Channel 4 (and we’d be right). (Channel 58 also mentioned the story, as Duane Dudek noted.) We’ll give Henry and Channel 12 this: Their take had more to it. Meanwhile, the AV Club website got to have it both ways: Snarking at WISN while running a nice big picture of Ms. James and her, uh, assets. (The comments on that story are definitely NSFW.)
More pay walls: The Daily Reporter‘s website not long ago provided free access to headlined stories that it would send out on its daily e-mail blast. No more. Now when recipients of the paper’s afternoon “HardHat Email” click on a link, such as “Milwaukee alderman fed up with sewer backups,” they get a “Login required” notice. Not all stories appear to be behind a pay wall. But clearly one more print publication has decided to start selling the cow online instead of giving up the milk for free. Elsewhere, a local paper owned by The New York Times in Worcester, Mass., is doing the same thing, and Time magazine has been doing sort of the same thing for a while now. Paid Content is unimpressed with Time‘s approach, however.
Meanwhile, Jim Hopkins at the Gannett Blog looks at that newspaper chain’s experimentation with pay walls. Also from Hopkins: A lawsuit in Alabama suggests the company gets around overtime laws by overworking management employees.
Comments, comments: Speaking of Gannett, last month the chain’s paper in Green Bay was reported to be among those outsourcing comment moderation. Also on the subject of comments, in case you missed it, Sharif Durhams at the Journal Sentinel fielded an interesting discussion of (and via) online comments at the JS.
Fact-checking the guv: In Arizona, Gov. Jan Brewer defended that state’s new law (now put on hold by a federal judge) that requires local law enforcement to establish a person’s legal immigration status with wild claims of unsavory crime. Uh, not true, reports The Arizona Republic. If the press didn’t tell you, who would?
Fact-checking the op-eds: Walter Williams made some comments in his syndicated column about “Black Panther voter intimidation” that Journal-isms columnist Richard Prince found suspect, leading him to ask who fact-checks this stuff. The short answer: No one, really.
Newsweek: The news magazine’s sale to audio magnate Sidney Harman for less than the cover price of an issue (well, that plus Harman’s assumption of a ton of debt) doesn’t mean things are out of the woods for the once-venerable magazine. Reinventing itself as an opinion journal didn’t seem to help – so what will? Maybe cover stories and glossy pictures of all of Tiger Woods’ mistresses?
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