Pressroom Buzz

Photo credit: rangizzz/Shutterstock The man who will run the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel’s new parent company is in town this week, meeting with executives and others at the newspaper and its corporate offices. Currently head of the newspaper group at E.W. Scripps, Tim Stautberg (right) will in 2015 ascend to the post of CEO of the new Journal Media Group – the new Milwaukee-based company that will install the JS as the flagship of more than a dozen newspapers across the country in the complex transaction that will cede all of the Journal Communications broadcast holdings to Scripps. “It’s important for me…

Photo credit: Paket/Shutterstock So what lies ahead for the new Journal Media – the new newspaper company that will launch when the Journal Communications/E.W. Scripps deal is completed in 2015? Journal Communications Chairman Steve Smith – who was present at the first private conversations out of which the complex merger-and-spinoff grew – enthusiastically declared it an “everyone wins” transaction when it was announced July 30. Meanwhile, in an email message to me, a New York media consultant compared the arrangement to cutting off a rotting leg. To recap: Scripps – owner of 14 newspapers, TV stations in 16 markets and…

Mary Burke holding up nomination signatures in Waukesha on Thursday. (photo by Mary Burke campaign) You’ve heard about the recent PolitiFact item that declared reporting from the Journal Sentinel “False”? No? Well, that’s not surprising. The paper buried the lede – and blamed a politician for repeating its own error. That the politician happened to be Democratic candidate for governor Mary Burke simply fueled the suspicion of political activists, who saw it as one more sign (along with the ownership of conservative commentary website Right Wisconsin by the paper’s corporate parent, Journal Communications) that the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel is in…

Two Wisconsin media institutions with a national reach are becoming one. This week, The Progressive and the Center for Media and Democracy went public with a merger the two left-of-center non-profit corporations quietly consummated last month. It’s a combination that Lisa Graves, the CMD executive director who will now head the combined operation as president and publisher, says will help both win larger audiences while sharing resources. Graves spoke with me Wednesday morning, just after news broke that the U.S. Supreme Court ruled 5-4 to abolish federal limits on campaign donations – a ruling that she ascribed to “arrogant judges…

Much to my disappointment, Jim Hopkins decided to hang it up last month.   Who, you ask?   For years Hopkins maintained the Gannet Blog, which kept an eye on the Gannett newspaper chain as it struggled through the implosion of the mainstream news industry over the last decade. Hopkins, a former Gannett employee, was a sort of highly specialized Romenesko, covering just one news organization – albeit one with outlets all over the country, including 10 daily papers in Wisconsin.   I haven’t found a data point yet, but it’s my sense that a huge number of working journalists…

Last week, Sen. Ron Johnson put out a press release excoriating the Federal Communications Commission for plans – now abandoned – to, as Johnson described it, “question how journalists work.”   What was that all about?   It’s a very long story, but it boils down to this. The FCC, founded 80 years ago this year, has a wide range of responsibilities, all revolving around the idea that the radio airwaves aren’t the private property of broadcasters, but belong to you and me – the public. Much of its regulatory role involves technology: The FCC is what prevents someone from…

More like this please. I wasn’t sure what to expect when I opened up my Sunday Journal Sentinel and saw Gina Barton’s latest Watchdog report on the criminal justice system – this one on deaths in police custody.   I think Barton has done important work over the years. Investigative reporting on law enforcement can be among the most thankless of jobs in journalism.   At the same time, I’ve been highly critical of some of the newspaper’s ventures into this topic – most notably its ham-fisted coverage on mistakes in police crime statistics, which I wrote about here and…

  Rod Stewart When pop superstar Rod Stewart played Milwaukee some years ago, he made a point of visiting one locally based communications enterprise. No, it wasn’t the daily paper (or a monthly magazine, alas). Nor was it an alt-weekly or a radio station. The visit in question had nothing to do with the raspy rock singer’s day job. On an idyllic Saturday in April 2007, Stewart took a quiet ride out to Waukesha on Interstate 94 and dropped in on the offices of Kalmbach Publishing – and the enthusiast publisher’s flagship magazine, Model Railroader. And so began what has…

The new look that the renamed Milwaukee Business Journal sported when it landed on newsstands and in some 12,000 mailboxes last Friday is part of a nationwide makeover for the paper and its 39 sibling publications, all owned by American City Business Journals. “This is really a national effort to rebrand all of our papers,” says MBJ editor Mark Kass. The San Jose edition of the paper was first to get the design changes; Milwaukee was no. 24. By the end of March the revisions will be complete at all 40 papers in the chain, which is a unit of…

The latest installment of Meg Kissinger’s ongoing investigative reports for the Journal Sentinel on mental health care in Milwaukee County appeared last week, and once again, it bore her unmistakable stamp. It was passionate, yet controlled. The voice was strong and compelling. The point of view was clearly defined. And the reporting was informed by the distinctive personal connection Kissinger has brought to the subject. Mental illness has affected three of her siblings, two of whom died by suicide. Kissinger’s stories on mental illness date back a quarter century. Her repeated forays into the shortcomings of existing programs – both nationally and in Milwaukee…