On Sunday, the Wisconsin State Journal published an impressive in-depth story by Matthew DeFour looking at the glaring problems that marked the launch of the Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation.
It is really, really good. I encourage you to read it if you haven’t.
The story also illustrates the sad truth in Wisconsin that the news media is the only form of oversight left in Wisconsin.
The idea of the three branches of government providing checks and balances is a joke when one party dominates every position of power. The word farce doesn’t even seem to do our government justice after reading Justice David Prosser’s rhetorical loop-de-loop of a defense to explain why he didn’t need to recuse himself from a case involving the people who gave him huge campaign donations.
If I have any knock against DeFour’s story, it is that the article relies heavily on hearsay from former employees. WEDC was the product of a massive reorganization of the former Commerce Department. It is only natural that there are going to be a lot of former employees who are going to have complaints about new managers and new ways of doing the work.
But these disgruntled ex-employees are the only people DeFour could get to talk. He doesn’t have the power to make the managers and executives come and testify the way the Legislature could. The Republicans who control the Legislature have no interest in doing that — it would just make them look bad. They’d rather go on a witch hunt against the Government Accountability Board or the Department of Natural Resources than go after an agency hemorrhaging taxpayer dollars.
Those who are currently in power in Wisconsin only make changes to WEDC after someone — the press, the federal government, one of the two Democrats on the board — makes a problem public. That’s not oversight, that’s damage control.
Stories like DeFour’s remind me why it is a loss for everyone when newsrooms lay off some of their most experienced writers, the ones that are viewed as liabilities rather than assets by out-of-state corporate management.
What DeFour did — contacting multiple sources, checking their statements against other sources — is hard work. It is much more difficult than relaying a candidate’s statements at a press conference or writing a ranty opinion blog (cough, cough). It’s not that journalists today don’t have these skills. It is just harder and harder for them to write in-depth stories while they are stretched so thin. You have writers singlehandedly covering a beat that used to have two or three dedicated reporters a decade or two ago.
Just look at DeFour. He’s writing investigative features, covering Walker’s presidential campaign and still contributing to State Capitol coverage alongside reporters Molly Beck and Mark Sommerhauser. That is a lot for one writer to juggle, and his ability to do so has been impressive — but that doesn’t mean that this is a great model for a healthy news industry.
It is why I fear the rise of ideologically slanted “newsrooms” funded by groups like the Bradley Foundation that try to fill the gap. I doubt even a liberal group would go to this kind of effort to uncover what went wrong at WEDC. They’d focus on the most salient details, whatever they could use to give a bloody nose to the opposition. They wouldn’t point out, as DeFour did, that many of the problems in WEDC started in Commerce under the administration of former Gov. Jim Doyle. More importantly, they wouldn’t bother asking why these problems surfaced. Asking why is what is truly useful to the public. Asking why is how future administrations, both Democratic and Republican, avoid the pitfalls of WEDC’s embarrassing launch.
Journalism is all about the why; fake online journalism is more about the how. How can they best serve the talking points of their funders and their candidates?
I like to make fun of local news outlets on Twitter and in these blog posts from time to time. When they repost a slideshow of Larry the Cable Guy facts, how can I resist? But in reality, these sadly dwindling newsrooms are providing a public service that is needed in this state now more than ever.