Detritus

Whenever I hear people complain about how unsafe Madison is these days, I feel thankful that we don't have the violence problem that Chicago has. On Wednesday night, there were three shootings there which left three people dead and two injured.

While David Blaska's blog is in a constant state of admonishment with regards to Madison's Homeless Menace, I do have to give him credit for not running over those with no fixed address. This stands in stark contrast to Robert Novak, the guy who outed Valerie Plame.

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Despite having a cover story in this week's Isthmus and an interesting three-part look at Madison's kink scene over at Dane101, John Mendel(s)sohn is preparing to leave our fair state. I guess he just couldn't handle Pam Barrett of the Motor Primitives calling him an "L.A. reject" and barking "shut the fuck up". Other invectives can be found in The Daily Page forum. (Especially amusing for me is jammybastard's comment on page 3: "As much as I love Laskin and Ken Burns, they would never ever risk something like this. Would Kiki or the other local indie music blogerati? No way." That made me chuckle. A couple hours after I publicly called one of his band's songs a Pearl Jam knock-off, he took the MP3s he gave me and went home.)

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Isthmus has fallen on hard times and folks are leaving and/or being laid off Farewell to Marc Eisen, Dean Robbins, and Tom Laskin. I hope there's milk and honey just around the bend.



Bill Lueders of Isthmus is angry about the decline of newspapers and he's not taking it lying down. He recently expressed his anger and called on us to fight for them.

I'm angry that newspapers are falling into disrepute. I'm angry that people don't respect the quality control that goes into news reporting; they seem to think any idiot with Internet access [that's me] is worth listening to.

It's not enough to hope that newspapers stick around. We need to fight for them.

While I agree with much of what Lueders has to say and have great respect for the hard work that is reporting, I was also struck by the words of one David Steiner who wrote in a letter to the editor at The Cap Times that the new incarnation of the paper is a "shadow of [its] former self" and he describes the paper as being "sad and pathetic, with none of the Cap Times' wit, integrity or passion".

Looking through this week's paper, I realized what I'd like from The Cap Times – investigative reporting. I'd gladly sacrifice an article about laws Madison won't enact to have one in which a reporter follows a money trail. There's lots of interesting material in the paper but you'd think our politicos had direct lines to St. Peter because there's a paucity of reporting on those in power. This is Madison, the seat of state government – is anybody at TCT watching the politicians and their minions? While a recent profile of a Madison fire station was a good read, what I need as a taxpaying voter is for someone at the paper to start asking why WisDOT Secretary Frank Busalacchi is out promoting rail to the people of Kansas City but is more interested in spending money here on highways. Luckily there are people like Michael Horne, Gretchen Schuldt, and James Rowen who are looking critically at what WisDOT is doing in these days of high gas prices.