What happens when a city's media are subjected to wave after wave of staffing and budget cuts? One consequence is that even obvious, important and interesting stories fall through the cracks.
Exhibit one is the almost total failure of local media to notice that William Cronon, a UW-Madison professor of history, geography and environmental studies, has a standout role in all six episodes of Ken Burns' stunning series
Cronon says he's gotten emails from people all over the country, many of them complete strangers, thanking him for his contributions to the series. "I'm proud to have a small role in a series that is focusing so much public attention on a topic the national parks and more broadly our national landscape and its importance to all Americans to which I've devoted my whole life."
The son of David Cronon, the famed history professor and dean, Bill Cronon is the author of two classic books, Changes in the Land (1983) and Nature's Metropolis (1991) and is working on a new tome about the evolving relationship between environmental history and environmentalism. A few years back, apparently in his spare time, he headed the committee that established the UW's Lakeshore Nature Preserve.
If the national parks are America's treasures, he's one of Madison's.
