Newspapers are dying

Okay, the headline is not anything surprising. In the past year, several papers in Wisconsin have undergone extensive changes, such as the Capital Times (online only now) and the Superior Daily Telegram (now just publishing twice a week).

Chicken or the egg conundrum: Was the lack of revenue for papers leading to shoddy reporting, or was shoddy reporting leading to lack of revenue?

One paper that has done a great job over these tough times is the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel. They cover Madison better than the Wisconsin State Journal or Cap Times does combined. Seriously! You'll find more stories on Madison business, politics, etc. in the MJS than in either the WSJ or TCT.

Why are these Madison papers so lazy? I know for a fact they get several major announcements in the form of press releases every now and then, and they never write about the subject, while the MJS does.

Plus, the MJS still does a lot of in-depth reporting. Read this column about the Journal-Sentinel's efforts to remain a strong publication.

Forecast is Never Correct

Forgot to post this a while back ...

Check out the forecasted high (26 degrees) for Dec. 6 from Channel3000.com, and then look at the current temperature (29 degrees). Wow, that's just pitiful. Can't they change their forecast to 29 degrees so they don't look as stupid as they already are?

As always, errors on madison.com

For those who read madison.com every day, you know that there are many problems with the site, including broken links, down time (esp. when the Cap Times stories are being uploaded), and generally lots of problems that a competent Webmaster could easily fix. Check out today's error.

Notice something? The headline should actually read "The Trail that Led to Adam Peterson." The word "lead" was mistakenly put in the headline.

I know from past experience that 1-2 copywriters read each story, then the section editor. That means that 2-3 people saw this headline and thought it was correct. Did any of you go to Journalism School? I'd like to see madison.com go one full week without any errors, either writing side or technical side.