Foreword

Editing at the Crossroads

2008-08-29T13:16:00.000-07:00

Back in 2003 when Patrick Strickler, then-UW communications director on Bascom Hill, contacted Madison Magazine about Chancellor John Wiley’s interest in penning an article on the state of higher education, editor Brian Howell and I were excited. The legislature was gridlocking, tuition costs were rising and faculty pay was falling. And yet the university held so much promise in so many multifaceted ways. We believed our readers would want to know how the head of the University of Wisconsin–Madison felt about it all.

Wiley’s article ran in the November issue, and for us it was a prelude to the magazine’s new Madison Business section we debuted the following March. The new business content would feature in-depth stories about UW spinoff companies that might someday cure killer diseases, as well as up-and-coming professors-cum-CEOs drawing venture capital to Madison so they could transfer their ideas into the marketplace. Our vision was to tell the story of the Wisconsin Idea in the 21st century, to provide a forum for the sifting and winnowing dialogue the university was famous for, and to connect those conversations to the larger economic fabric of the community and the quality of life we cherish here. It was a bold vision, but Brian only operated in big-ideas mode, and I was more than ready to share the responsibility for making it happen.

When we published the 2003 article, “Higher Education at the Crossroads,” we hoped the Chancellor’s “wake-up call” on funding for public education, and his opinions about UW’s enormous influence on our local and state’s “ailing economy” might raise a few eyebrows, even stimulate some much-needed debate on the subject. We were wrong. Even Wiley, in the first draft of the follow-up column he published in the magazine this month, called the original effort “largely unsuccessful.” He did, though, defend his premise that higher education was at a crossroads, which is why he said he felt compelled to try again five years later. This time, he told readers, the situation has evolved “From Crossroads to Crisis.” This time, his voice has been heard.

Brian, who died of lung cancer in November 2003, would have loved the recent buzz after last Thursday’s posting of the article online, which included wire stories on CNNMoney.com and Forbes.com. Ironically, the cogent, well-written and remarkably candid article earned statewide and national attention and praise in part because the business lobby group he chastises, Wisconsin Manufacturers and Commerce, quickly issued a press release to “Wisconsin editors” challenging Wiley’s assertions. It wasn’t exactly the kind of damage control I was expecting, but I guess that’s why I’m in journalism and not politics.

I have to thank our sister media enterprise WISC-TV, which reach further out into the southern Wisconsin region than Madison Magazine does, for breaking the story for us the evening before the magazine came out. Political reporter Jessica Arp conducted a compelling interview with Chancellor Wiley (search for "Wiley" to see interview highlights) and Marc Lovicott’s strong reporting led to some revealing information about the storm that’s brewing inside the closely guarded doors of the WMC. The story headlined another sister entity Channel3000.com, and it's huge viewership helped deliver record traffic to the story on our website. Both Madison newspapers printed stories and editorials, which contributed richly to the dialogue, and Journal Sentinel reporters sniffed out some conflicting statements made by the WMC.

For my part, it was extremely rewarding to edit both of the articles Wiley published in the magazine. The Chancellor is a strong writer who is always open to suggestions for ways to tighten his writing, sharpen the focus and clarify his points. There’s nothing I love more about my job than to work with a writer to make every word count. “Our politics has become a poisonous swill” is my favorite passage in the piece—once again proving the pen to be mightier than the sword. Of course, Professor Wiley’s academic side came out when I removed his footnotes in favor of the journalistic use of attributions, but thanks to the Internet we were able to hyperlink his references in the online version of the story. I think he was relieved.

Whether or not you agree with Wiley—and I made it clear in a testy phone call from the WMC that a column of opinion was not an editorial endorsement—the immediate and for the most part praiseworthy reaction to the article (I was told he received a standing ovation at this week’s downtown Rotary meeting) is an important signal to citizens, politicians and business leaders that we are indeed in a crisis and solutions need to come next.

Fall Essential

2008-08-21T13:37:00.000-07:00

I stopped liking baseball in the third grade, when I came off right field with a shiner from a fly ball my glove forgot to catch. I’m not a Wisconsin native or a baseball fan, either, which is why I’m surprised at how much fun I’ve been having watching everybody cheer wildly for the Brewers this season. And now that I’ve read Tom Haudricourt’s book, Brewers Essential: Everything You Need To Know To Be A Real Fan, I can hold a semi-intelligent conversation on a barstool. With so much human drama in the dugout, on the field and behind the scenes, I can see why it was dubbed America’s favorite pastime. That’s not to say there’s never a dull moment—baseball will always have a hard time keeping my attention—but now that I’m a “real fan” I’ll pay more attention to the notable ones.

Brewers Essential is packed with more than a half-century of highlights and lowlights, club facts and trivia, intimate conversations and memorable moments among players and management—the kind of stuff only a talented and trusted reporter like Haudricourt could capture. If you’re a true-blue Brewers fan, the book is a wonderful trip down memory lane, from the early years as the Milwaukee Braves, to the dark days in the sixties when baseball was dead in the city, to the thrilling moment when Bud Selig brought the Seattle Pilots to the Midwest and the Milwaukee Brewers were born. Haudricourt of course spends some time on the famous/infamous 1982 season, the only World Series run the team ever had. It’s where you really get a feel for what the game was like before free agents and monster salaries take over.

From start to finish, the book is written with such authority and compassion for the team that even the lean years—which apparently was most of them—were fun to read about. After all, it led us to now, where the Brewers are back in contention for the pennant.

Between the Brewers' busy August schedule, Tom kindly answered a few questions about the language of baseball, 2008 season highlights and more from the team’s newest fan.

The book is such a great mixture of your play-by-play storytelling style, which is so much fun, and recollections from all the greats. Can you explain how you gathered the material? A lot of the material I pulled out of past stories from the old Sentinel and Journal, then the Journal Sentinel (after the merger in 1995). A lot of those stories were written by me, which shows how long I’ve been around. I then went around and interviewed many of the players and club officials involved, and asked them to tell me stories I might not have heard before. I wanted to provide insight from their viewpoint, including conversations and occurrences that might not have been publicly documented. Basically, I wanted to give the readers an “inside” look at memorable moments in Brewers history that might tell them things they hadn’t heard previously.

I love all the nicknames in baseball—Harvey’s Wallbangers, Bambi’s Bombers, Stormin’ Gorman, The Kid—Are they a product of a bygone era? Baseball writers talk all the time about the nicknames going away, and how unfortunate that is. Perhaps it’s our fault. Perhaps we should give more players nicknames, whether they want them or not. But a lot of the color has gone from the game, as it has become more of a business. Maybe the players don’t want nicknames because they’ll get razzed by teammates. Who knows? That, along with men wearing hats, are two things I’d like to bring back to the game.

I noticed you didn’t interview pitcher Teddy Higuera, who broke some impressive club records in the eighties. How come? Teddy's difficult to get hold of, and to be honest with you, his English is not good enough to come over that well in a book. He does OK, and he tries, but it’s still limited. Thus, I thought it would be better to talk to others about him. Former catcher Bill Schroeder gave me some real insights on Higuera.

As I was reading the book, it dawned on me that there are no coaches in baseball, only managers. Can you help a newbie out on this one? Well, there are coaches. Each manager has a staff of coaches. There are pitching coaches, hitting coaches, third base coaches, first base coaches, bullpen coaches. But the ringleader is the manager. Just the way the game was developed. The manager in essence is the equivalent of “head coaches” in other sports.

The sports world is all about numbers and statistics, but I was astonished at how often one record or another was being broken. It feels like a bigger deal in baseball … is it? I think records are more revered in baseball because there are more of them, with such legendary names as Babe Ruth, Hank Aaron and Cy Young associated with them. That’s why there was such a big stink about the so-called “Steroids Era” and the offensive records that were shattered during that time in baseball. Many purists believe those records shouldn’t count, that they are tainted. But because we’ll never know exactly who was cheating and who wasn’t, it’s virtually impossible to place asterisks by all records during that time.

I was a summer intern at the Journal Sentinel in 1999. I had just finished a day shift when the crane collapsed at Miller Park. Later that night, I logged onto the newspaper’s website for an update and couldn’t believe how many stories–good, solid, well-reported stories—had been filed. I had so much respect for the hard work and dedication that newspaper reporters and editors devote to the craft day in and day out. Where were you when “Big Blue” went down? I had just returned from the All-Star Game in Boston. That was such a tremendous experience, with the appearance of Ted Williams and all that. Then to come back and see the horror of the crane collapse. Ironically, I had done a story on Big Blue a few weeks prior to the collapse as part of a series I did on the building of Miller Park. That story was used as reference by our other reporters that day and I believe was put back on our website so readers could see what that crane was all about. It is days such as that, whether the subject matter be horrifying or uplifting, that show what newspaper staffs are made of. The next day, I followed commissioner Bud Selig to the opening of Safeco Field in Seattle. I’ve never seen a man with such mixed emotions. He was so happy for the people of Seattle, but so sad and heartbroken about what had happened at Miller Park, especially the loss of life.

A few weeks after the accident, I covered the hard-hat game with the families of the ironworkers who lost their lives in the accident as well as all the construction workers. It was amazing to me the sense of pride these people had in that project. Did you find the same thing? Those ironworkers were immensely proud of that project, and deservedly so. They were building a landmark for the city. After the accident and deaths of their co-workers, they became even more determined to see the project through and build a memorial, if you will, to those who died. I thought it was great the way the Brewers honored those ironworkers, including wearing patches on their uniforms for the remainder of the ’99 season.

Has the book—or the one you published last year called Where Have You Gone, ’82 Brewers?—gotten a bump in publicity or sales with the kind of season the Brewers are having? It’s always beneficial when a team plays well when you’re writing a book about its history. Originally, Brewers Essential was supposed to be published in the spring of 2007. But the Brewers didn’t play that well in ’06 and the publisher, Triumph Books, decided to delay publication for a year. The Brewers fought for the division title right down to the wire in ’07 and I added a chapter about that season. The book then came out this year with hopes higher for the team than in many years, which turned out to be a nice bit of timing.

You’re a great sportswriter. I got the biggest kick out of your creative turns of phrase. A “gimpy-kneed Gorman Thomas” is my personal favorite. Another fun one is in the chapter, “The Big Tease,” which is about the team’s almost-comeback 2007 season. On Prince Fielder’s inside-the-park home run against the Twins, you write: “He did a few chopsteps at the bag and emptied his gas tank.” Where do you come up with this stuff?! Baseball, and sports in general, provides the leeway for using descriptive phrases you might not be able to use in pure news stories. And every night there seems to be something different to write about. I try to be as descriptive as possible so that the reader can picture in his mind what I’m writing about. They say a picture is worth a thousand words. Well, a few well-crafted words can paint a pretty vivid picture.

If you were writing the next chapter of your book on the ’08 season right now, what would be one highlight? If I were writing a chapter on the 2008 season right now, one of the highlights would be the four-game sweep of St. Louis on the road just after the all-star break that was part of a 7-0 trip. Two late home runs by Bill Hall and another by Ryan Braun snatched victories away from the Cardinals in dramatic fashion. Had those games been in the post-season, folks would have talked about them for years.

The situation is obviously completely different, but I still couldn’t help thinking about Favre and the Packers’ fallout when I read about Paul Molitor’s rocky departure from the Brewers. What’s your take on it—and on Favre if you care to comment? I heard a lot of comparisons to Paul Molitor’s departure when the Brett Favre saga was playing out. One of the main differences was that the Brewers were stripping down their payroll at the time and jettisoning a lot of players. Many Packer fans consider the team a Super Bowl contender with Favre, which raises the stakes. Plus, a quarterback is so much more high profile than any baseball player is. I think the story of Favre’s departure will have much longer legs than the exodus of Molitor.

Diving Into Diversity

2008-08-02T10:46:00.000-07:00

I'm late to post! What a week. For the last few months I've been working on another magazine. It's called Spectrum: Celebrating Diversity in the Greater Madison Area, and we'll publish it in January, along with the regular issue of Madison Magazine. We'll also overprint 70,000 of them for you to pick up at key spots around the city and region. Finally, the businesses sponsoring the publication will integrate it into their recruitment and retainment portfolios.

Initiated by an up-and-coming business collaboration called the Madison Area Diversity Roundtable, the magazine is the first of its kind in the community. Not only will it highlight the broad diversity we enjoy here in Madison, it will shine a more inclusive light on how we live, work and play together. All of us. Black and white. Young and old. Gay and straight. Walking and wheelchair-bound. Academics like Richard Florida (The Rise of the Creative Class and Who's Your City?) and business consultants like Madison’s own Rebecca Ryan (Live First, Work Second) are showing us how and why it's to our economical advantage to place a high priority on diverse communities and workplaces. Now it's our turn to show what it could look like.

I'm excited that former Cap Times web editor Shauna Rhone has signed on to write and edit a large portion of it. Her resume is impressive, and she understands and appreciates Spectrum’s goals. Shauna and I have gotten to know each other over the last year or so as part of another cool project, Race & Media Forums. Coordinated by The Center for Democracy in Action, the program brings together members of the media with people and institutions of color for social and professional conversation and networking. We'll feature the forums in Spectrum, along with a lot of other exciting and innovative ways Madison is embracing diversity.

Lately Madison has also embraced the Brewers with a fervor I’ve never experienced in my fourteen years living in Wisconsin. That’s why I’m spending the weekend reading the recently released book, Brewers Essential: Everything You Need To Know To Be A Real Fan, by Tom Haudricourt of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. I need to play some serious catch up on the team and its history, plus I’m going to interview Tom for my next blog. This Virginia girl has her work cut out for her to earn her "real fan" stripes.

Achy, Breaky Hearts

2008-07-24T09:38:00.000-07:00

Madison Magazine contributing writer Maggie Ginsberg-Schutz blogged for a year, retired last month, then pulled a Favre last night and posted a blog at the behest of somebody named Amanda, who told her a web-zine named BlogNosh was featuring some of her oldies but goodies. I'm glad she's back honing her craft because she's one of the most gifted writers I've ever worked with and if we're lucky she's got, like, a hundred more years of journalism ahead of her.

I told Mags that while I'm delighted she's blogging again, I take issue with her lumping magazines in with the following comment:

"I keep reading about the death of newspapers, of magazines, of my field, the drying up, the washing out. My gut tells me there is something to this online community, this forum, that maybe my future lies not in the traditional journalism, but in a hybrid of sorts."

Magazines and magazine readership are fine, dammit!--and especially with younger readers: Madison Magazine boasts more people in the 18-34 age demographic than ever. Take that, all you advertisers flocking to the web!

Unfortunately, some of the same can't be said for newspapers, though the recent Editor & Publisher report that readership hasn't declined much at all since 2006 was a bright spot in an otherwise dark and dismal landscape. So bright that I blogged on about it two entries back.

But if you're like me and rooting for newspapers—and the journalists they're shedding like a dog's fur come fall—you'll appreciate this effort by the Columbia Journalism Review to capture the voices of the veteran reporters who've been downsized. Imagine how difficult it must be for those affected to see their lives, their livelihoods, and their loyalties change in an instant.

I forwarded the posts to some of my colleagues who've taken The Cap Times buyout or who've left their newspaper jobs of their own accord after seeing the writing on the newsroom wall. I hope they'll contribute. I'll keep checking the CJR posts—they're running one a day right now—in the hopes that I'll see a familiar byline. Madison's chapter in this ever-evolving book has gained national attention and our struggles need to continue to be told.

If I were writing a chapter in the story the nut graph would go something like this: Amid the age of Internet, wonderful, talented writers who happen to also be trained professionals are being asked to stop covering the news of our communities and our world. If they won't, who will? That's my biggest fear. Who will be fair and balanced? Who will accurately, ethically and with integrity report the news? Who will want to major in journalism and populate the news outlets left standing after all this said and done? Where's my next Maggie?

Fortunately, she's out there. I put an ad for writers on Craigslist and since have been inundated with strong resumes and interesting, well-written clips. (Mostly.) But that's only one leg of the stool that supports and sustains the good publications that will still have these talented folks. Citizen-consumers have to purchase and subscribe, and businesses have to advertise. And if a newspaper isn't the news, weather and information vehicle that we want to invest in anymore—though I hope it's not—then we have to choose something else.

I agree with Maggie that journalism's future will be a "hybrid of sorts." I'm just not smart enough to figure out what that will be. Whatever we end up with, we need those people that have little to do at the moment except pour their hearts out to CJR. I have faith, though. Journalists became journalists because they are curious, adventurous and enterprising. Look at The Politico. A couple of guys (and a very rich businessman) voluntarily left The Washington Post to start the Washington-centric website that, according to Wikipedia, "is rumored to get 14 million hits a day."

Oh, and it publishes a NEWSPAPER three days a week when Congress is in session, too. How novel. A newspaper.

Oh, the Irony

2008-07-22T08:32:00.001-07:00

You have to slog through my last blog to appreciate the news that Editor & Publisher is upping its digital ante. They haven't given up on their print edition (yet), but they'll publish a duplicate electronic version for "multiple distribution channels." Though still subscriber-only, the new format will allow readers more access points, like cell phones and search engines. Sounds like more betting on the come and probably a smart move for an old codger like E&P, which began publishing in 1884. That's NOT a typo.

Here's the Press Release:

Editor&Publisher magazine to offer its first Electronic Edition via a partnership with Pressmart Media

New York, N.Y.; July 14th, 2008 -
Editor & Publisher magazine (www.editorandpublisher.com) today signed an agreement with Pressmart Media Ltd. (www.pressmart.net) to provide a digital, same-as-print electronic edition of the newspaper publishing industry’s leading trade publication.

In a joint statement E&P Publisher Chas McKeown said “the Pressmart state-of-the-art solution will provide our readership access to Editor & Publisher on multiple digital distribution channels including eEditions; Podcasts; Mobile devices and eArchives.”

“We are very excited by E&P’s choice of Pressmart as their new media delivery partner. E&P had a choice of vendors and chose Pressmart’s best-of-breed solution,” commented Myles M. Fuchs, President of Pressmart Media Ltd.

About Editor&Publisher
Editor & Publisher is the authoritative journal covering all aspects of the North American newspaper industry, including business, newsroom, advertising, circulation, marketing, technology, online and syndicates.

Based in New York City, the magazine dates back to 1884, when The Journalist, a weekly, was founded. E&P was launched in 1901 and merged with The Journalist in 1907. E&P later acquired Newspaperdom, a trade journal for the newspaper industry that started in 1892. In 1927, E&P merged with another trade paper, The Fourth Estate. In January 2004, E&P switched from weekly to monthly publication, while revamping its Web site to offer more breaking news and content on a daily basis.

E&P Online (www.editorandpublisher.com) offers breaking news free to all visitors in our Top Stories section. Each week, selected proprietary stories from E&P staff are made available free to all visitors, but the majority of our analysis, industry news, features, columns, and trends are restricted to E&P subscribers.

About Pressmart
Pressmart ( www.pressmart.net ) is a New Media Delivery Partner of leading newspapers and magazines, delivering same-as-print content on multiple distribution channels including the Web (as a print-replica ePaper edition), Mobile, RSS, Podcasts, Blogs, Social Networking Sites, Article Directories, Search Engines and eArchives. Pressmart has digitized over 400 years’ worth of newspapers, magazines and journals.

Media Contacts:
E&P: Chas McKeown – (646) 654-5120
Pressmart: Myles M. Fuchs – (949) 395-7560

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What's Black and White and STILL Read All Over?

2008-07-18T14:41:00.000-07:00

Almost three months ago, I grabbed my last edition of The Capital Times out of the company mailbox before heading home for the day. About the same time, I switched my laptop's homepage from the default to Madison.com/tct, ready to embrace the newspaper’s pioneering foray into cyberspace.

I don’t log on at home as much as I thought I would—the kid, the dogs and summer in Madison all conspire to keep me away from the computer. It seems the evening newspaper ritual I had hoped to continue in cyberspace is instead lost to the hands of time.

I keep up with the Wednesday edition and Thursday’s 77 Square, both of which appear in my driveway once a week tucked inside the Wisconsin State Journal. But I know it’s only a fraction of TCT news, information and opinion I should absorb as a citizen and a journalist. How ironic it feels to be so unplugged, so disconnected from a news source that’s now—in theory at least—so connected to the world over the Internet.

According to a recent poll, I’m not the only newspaper reader whose habits haven’t changed much in the last two years, despite the doom-and-gloom reports that readership is plummeting. This week Editor & Publisher reported that 62 percent of respondents to a Readership Institute poll said they’ve never logged onto their local paper’s website. And like me, only 14 percent said they’ve visited in the last seven to 30 days.

“Readers are more engaged with the print newspaper than newspaper Web site,” the article stated.

But here’s the quote that nearly knocked me off my big, red office chair: “…[R]eading customers aren’t deserting newspapers at anything approaching the rate that advertising customers are.”

Madison Magazine associate publisher Mike Kornemann, who was with Capital Newspapers (which owns both The Cap Times and the Wisconsin State Journal) for many years, tells me advertisers are too infatuated with the younger demographic into the wild, wild web. Another irony here, as Mike points out, is that since newspapers have always done poorly with the younger demographic, why would they be anymore likely to find Next Gen online when they don't think what newspapers print is relevant to their lives just yet?

Kids don’t start looking for news in any large numbers until they turn into grownups with jobs and families and decide it’s time to put down roots. That’s when trusted, reliable news and information about their communities, their countries and their world starts to register. That’s when they become newspaper consumers.

I’m beginning to think newspapers should stop chasing their tails and start to refocus on the loyal, engaged readers (and consumers: Helloooo, affluent, retiring baby boomers!) they apparently still court. If you like the Readership Institute’s study, readership has only declined an teency-weency bit since the group’s last report in 2006.

Advertisers panic, and all of a sudden it’s a foregone conclusion that technology has won the arm-wrestling match over how we consume our news?

I don’t buy it.

Like to Hike

2008-07-11T14:38:00.000-07:00

It’s hard to keep up with a weekly blog when you take seven days of vacation. I didn’t post last week and I hope I don’t fall down on the job again for a while. Catholic guilt is never far from my conscience.

If you read my last entry, you know I spent time in the northwoods, where the lakes dot the landscape like fresh drops of deep-blue paint. I’ve spent nearly every summer of my life there, yet each time I return I am in awe. As far as the eye can see, evergreens stand tall and stoic around these glacial kettles, resolved to be there for as long as Mother Nature will have them. It’s hard to come back after a respite up north.

Several miles before we reached the cottage on this particular trip, a big black bear came lumbering out of the forest and across the road in front of us. I hadn’t seen one in more than fifteen years. The next day we heard there were more bears—and bear sightings—than in years past. Like my fear of flying, my bear anxiety got the best of me and I only ventured out once to hike my favorite trail on earth. Environmental and science writer—and Madison Magazine contributor—John Morgan included Fallison Lake Nature Trail in his tote-along guidebook 50 Hikes in Wisconsin (The Countryman Press and Backcountry Guides, $17.95), which he co-wrote with his wife, Ellen. John and Ellen compare the trail to a movie set, and describes a lake that “shimmers like black glass.” He’s right on both counts.

Like pocketknives and bug spray, the Morgans book is a nature trek essential. It heightens the adventure, and even gives advice on how not to encounter a bear! Sounds counterintuitive, but making noise while I hike and smelling like sun block and insect repellent are two of his suggestions, both of which I will do from now on.

Winter, spring, summer or fall, Fallison is achingly beautiful. I’ve heard coyotes howling in the spring, seen beavers damming the creek in summer, crushed leaves under my feet in fall, and trekked through new-fallen snow in winter. When I read John’s chapter on this magical place, I felt better gushing about it and bringing new visitors to hike it every chance I get. I’m not crazy—it IS the most majestic places on earth!

Back home, I used 50 Hikes for some trails in and around Madison. In addition to digestible and descriptive prose, John and Ellen did a really nice job with charts, maps, directions, and safety recommendations (like how to keep the bears away!).

A few weeks ago 60 Hikes Within 60 Miles (Menasha Ridge Press, $16.95) showed up in my mailbox. I knew about the Madison-area trail guide by Kevin Revolinski because the publisher had sent my a galley and asked me to write a review for the back cover. Since I’ll probably never have the patience to author a book of my own, I was honored and excited to be asked. I called the book “spectacularly comprehensive, well organized and fun to read.” I was truly impressed, and now, flipping through the actual book a few months later, I’m amazed at the level of detail Revolinski, who lives in Madison, provides for each of the hikes he recommends.

I especially like the way he organizes the hikes. The table of contents lists them by city and county, but a few pages later he also breaks them out by all sorts of measurements: length, best maintained, good for kids or bird-watching, dogs or wheelchairs. The hike descriptions are accurate down to the bat houses, benches, and where the mosquitoes are particularly bad.

If you’re my kind of hiker, you’ll be looking for a place to grab a bite or a cold one after your adventure. Fortunately, Revolinski’s got that covered, too. At the end of each chapter, he recommends “nearby activities.” For Cherokee Marsh just a mile or so from my house, the book recommends taking in a Mallards baseball game while you’re in the neighborhood. I can taste the veggie burger and Mallards Ale already.

The Art of Vacation

2008-06-27T15:31:00.000-07:00

When you’re on vacation, even the mundane daily chores don’t feel quite as taxing. Whoever piles the last piece of laundry on the top of the basket throws a load in the washer. If you hear the dryer buzz you fold the clothes while you catch the tail end of the movie. Peanut butter and jelly sandwiches take twice the time—and twice the fun—to assemble, and dishes get done in an assembly line formation. Save for the family member who volunteered to cook that night, everybody pitches in until the last pan is dry and the stove is clean enough for pancakes and eggs the next morning.

In our northwoods cottage, the kitchen is command central. It’s the first room you enter, where the crowds gather and disperse. It’s where you’ll always find a bottle of sun block or bug spray, where you stack the books, magazines and movies you’ll enjoy, and where you make the grocery list (Don’t forget the marshmallows!). On a top shelf next to the pantry is where the cookbooks live. Some come and go with the vacationer—a favorite recipe you didn’t have time to copy before you left home. The rest are donated to the cottage because the recipes inside have summer vacation written all over them.

The first one that found a permanent home up north is appropriately titled, The Nor th woods Cottage Cookbook, by Isthmus food critic Jerry Minnich. Fine writer and friend John Motoviloff reviewed it in Madison Magazine a few years back, and when I saw it at the Wisconsin Historical Museum a short time later, I bought it for our cottage. Imagine my surprise when I turned to the page that dedicated the book to friends of mine on Plum Lake. Turns out many of Minnich’s fondest northwoods memories—and well-worn recipes—were from time spent in Sayner, Wisconsin, my family’s summer home for the last six generations. Now that I know Jerry and I have shared some of the very same breathtaking lake views and calls of the loons, I have to say he’s spot on when he insists that cooking at the cottage be hearty and tasty but shouldn’t turn into a production. Why? Because a northwoods sunset waits for no one, not even the cook.

Another reason the recipes should be short and straightforward is that when you stay at a summer cottage, the person who starts the meal isn’t necessarily the same person who finishes it. This happened just the other day and provides the perfect example.

Husband and brother-in-law bring home a basket full of perch for dinner. Husband cleans and filets them and then excitedly heads back out to the boat muttering something about needing a few more fish to feed the whole family. Since time apparently flies when you’re fishing (always seems to me like it stands still), dinnertime rolls around and husband hasn’t returned with the rest of the day’s catch, not to mention his mother's fish-fry recipe he keeps tucked inside his noggin.

As luck would have it, I’d brought a new cookbook to add to the kitchen shelf called Apple Betty & Sloppy Joe, a delightful collection of childhood stories and recipes by four sisters who grew up in Oshkosh and vacationed in the northwoods. The book was out on the kitchen counter because I was in charge of the potato dish and found a simple recipe for the mashed variety: butter, hot milk, salt, done. By the time I’d changed out of my bathing suit and headed downstairs my sister had already scrubbed and dropped a dozen red potatoes into the pot to boil. I’d finish the dish while she tended to the kids. Meanwhile the bro-in-law steps in to fry the fish with another breezy recipe from Apple Betty for pan-fried trout. Flour, salt, pepper, beaten eggs (his addition), done.

By the time husband comes in off the water (without anything more to fry, I should add), a delicious dinner is on the table and the sun is just setting behind the pine trees across the lake. A toast to Apple Betty and the Sanvidge sisters on a meal well done.

I tried one other recipe during my week’s vacation, this one from another fun new book called Wisconsin Cheese: A Cookbook and Guide to the Cheeses of Wisconsin, by Martin Hintz and Pam Percy. Admittedly, I’m a lousy cook, so I chose an appetizer I knew would be hard to screw up—and one the kids could help with if they weren’t off reading in the hammock or learning to water ski. Cube as many pieces of cheddar, brick, Colby, and Muenster as you like, drown them in beaten eggs, then roll them in breadcrumbs and fry. Turns out French-fried Wisconsin Cheese tastes a lot like a bite-size grilled cheese sandwich—greasy and good. The book is definitely a keeper—there's lots more simple recipes I’m dying to try, like the “Inside Out” Grilled Cheese with Red Onion Jam. Be still (quite literally) my heart.

Whatever I decide to cook up, it’ll have to wait ’til next year. My new cottage cookbooks are resting on the kitchen shelf at the lake—sigh—waiting for my northwoods summer vacation to come around again.

The Media March

2008-06-20T09:26:00.000-07:00

When circulation director (and blogger) Kent Palmer plops the latest issue of Madison Magazine down on my desk one Thursday a month, I’m often so engrossed in the production of the next issue that I hardly even notice. We publish as early as we can so distributors have time to make the switch at newsstands, and to give our advertisers time for their ads to soak into the local consumers’ consciousness. (Our ads sure are pretty—and they get results.)

The July issue dropped onto my desk and into subscribers’ mailboxes June 19. The Best of Madison cover is drop-dead gorgeous. We used what we call a “type attack,” where words instead of pictures visualize the cover story. The typeset is an Arts and Crafts style closely associated with Frank Lloyd Wright, whose architectural footprints are all over Madison and its surroundings.

The man responsible for such an appealing look is art director Tim Burton, who has taken home enough design awards in the last few years that national magazine industry professionals and experts are taking notice (You can’t have him! He’s happy here!). Yet even with a beautiful cover and—if I do say so myself—great content that I’m excited to share with readers, when the magazine went thunk! on my desk yesterday I stopped typing and stared at it wistfully. No. Wait. Stop! There’s eleven more days in June!

I’ve been at the magazine for eight years. That’s damn-near a hundred magazines I’ve helped produce. And while I love each and every one of them like one of my kids (the birthing process is often as painful), I have to admit that June 2008 is my favorite. Despite the daunting economic challenges, our incredibly talented and hardworking sales staff sold enough ad space so that we could spread our wings and take flight as a city magazine.

Like we do every month we covered every topic our readers expect, from politics to food to home, from health to travel to arts and entertainment. We also elbowed enough white space to publish a long-form narrative on the decades-old controversy over primate research at our world-class university. It was the longest and meatiest article I’ve ever edited, and I loved every second of it. As difficult as the topic is to digest—monkeys are dying in our attempts to save human lives—it’s critical that we think about these issues. Madisonians are smart but it doesn’t mean we’re always an enlightened bunch. We need this kind of journalism—and more, not less of it.

That’s why I’m so happy the magazine is spilling out onto the Internet these days, joining our dailies and weeklies in the fight—and it is a scrappy, ugly fight—to keep journalism alive and relevant. Just imagine what it would be like if Isthmus wasn’t watchdogging city government? What if the State Journal lost the strength and the will to take the state legislature to the mat on its excessive use of power? What if The Cap Times could no longer represent the progressive voice our city is both revered and reviled for?

John Roach exercises this privileged freedom of expression in the blogosphere for the first time this week, talking about these very issues and how the digital age might affect us. All I can say is, Watch out, Paul Soglin and Waxing America, our candid, passionate back-page columnist is now wielding his own mighty keyboard and will be waxing the heck out of Madison and beyond. I’m kidding. It’s remarkably important that our former mayor is blogging to the issues. These are heady times.

I know the media will persevere. I’ll get another chance to publish the kind of journalism that drills down into people’s psyches. And since we archive all of our content online I no longer have to worry about losing a story as good as primate research to the march of time.

Likewise, my incredibly talented colleagues will find their footing in the digital age. We’re journalists because we like to challenge authority, to hold people and institutions accountable, and to do it with accuracy, integrity and often, good humor. If we continue to do our jobs and do them well, citizens will continue to value what we do. They’ll keep consuming our products, and the marketplace will follow.

Onward. Or is it … Onlineward.

The New American Girl

2008-06-13T08:04:00.000-07:00

For Christmas in 1979, my parents gave me the best present in the whole world, My Book About Me by Dr. Seuss and Roy McKie. The big, yellow hardback—a veritable tome by my childlike standards—contained the most complete and unabridged encyclopedia of my eight-year-old life.

Page after page of meticulously filled in blanks confessed my love for Oscar Mayer wieners, and reported the number of steps from my door to the first tree. Judging from the sketch of a bird I named “George” on page 45, I was wise not to choose “artist” from the exhaustive list of future occupations a few pages later. There are lots of ways to boost a kids’ self-confidence—sports, drama, praise of a job well done. And for generations Dr. Seuss has been doing his part, too—in my case giving the youngest of three girls permission to explore her surroundings on her own terms.

A few years ago, I was browsing in a Madison bookstore and stumbled upon a copy of My Book About Me. The idea that I could watch my daughter examine the carefree days of her youthful existence in the exact same way I had done thirty years earlier sent shivers of joy up my spine. I snatched up three copies (I was a little overzealous) and hid them away in a closet.

My seven-year-old’s last day of first grade is today, and I’m hoping My Book About Me will be the perfect graduation present. Chloe has finally reached the age of self-examination (I had no idea it happened so soon), drawing contrasts and comparisons to the world around her. She has discovered that when she’s annoyed she rolls her eyes just like her dad, and just like her mom she hates going to bed for fear she’ll miss out on all the action. While I find myself amused by a lot it, some of it’s starting to terrify me. She’s slowly beginning to wonder how others perceive her, like whether Braeden thinks she’s “girl-cute,” or what the school kids will say if they see her underwear while she’s hanging from the monkey bars in a skirt.

The self-examination that will soon develop into self-consciousness is the reason My Book About Me will be but one of several books on my young one’s summer reading list. There’s a new generation of reading material, much of it divided by gender, which builds on Dr. Seuss’s genius. The American Girl series has grown into a wonderful treasury of advice and activity-driven learning that celebrates girls with books that encourage them to “follow your inner star.”

If you don’t hang around little girls much, here’s a brief bio on American Girl. The Middleton-based company is famous for its line of historical dolls with accompanying biographies. They make Barbie and Lil’ Bratz look downright barbaric. Founded in 1986, Madison educator and entrepreneur Pleasant Rowland made a fortune when she sold the operation to Mattel in 1998. (The $205 million her husband Jerry Frautschi earned from the sale of the stock in the company paid for Overture Center).

One of several American Girl titles due out this September is Food & You. It teaches girls the building blocks of good health and nutrition in a fun and engaging way, promoting independent thinking and exploration as opposed to boring information overload. The book uses thought-provoking quizzes, Q&As and easy-to-digest language to tackle everything from the food pyramid to feeling fat.

Because we now know we establish our relationships with food from the day we latch on to breastfeed or take our first bottle, Food & You teaches girls to think about the kind of eaters they are. If you horse down more Happy Meals than dad’s home cooking, you need to make some changes in your eating style. “Whew! You’re a busy girl,” the book declares. “Try to make time for at least one sit-down meal a day.” A “Special Diets” chapter takes a Dear Abby approach to problem solving by dishing out advice on living with food allergies, being a vegetarian or being just plain picky.

I’m thinking the book might come in handy for Chloe and me during the vulnerable times in her life when there’ll be as much “acting out” as “acting in,” where feelings of low self-esteem and negative body image can so easily manifest themselves in eating disorders, from obesity or dieting to—Lord help me—starving herself or binging and purging.

I think Chloe’s really going to like My Book About Me. I hope she’ll spend less time in front of the computer and more time counting the steps from her mailbox to the first store. Meanwhile, I’m on a mission to spoon-feed her American Girl books like Food & You, Dance! (also due out this fall)—even Coconut’s Letter-Writing Kit (maybe encourage her to take up writing like her mom!). We’re already making our way through Just Mom & Me, with fun activities like guessing each other’s favorite things and coupons for spending time together.

I know books alone won’t save her from a lot of the hardships that lie ahead. I just hope they’ll reinforce the words of wisdom she hears a lot from me these days, the same words her grandma said to me: “Head up, shoulders back, and remember who you are.”

Winners & Losers

2008-06-05T21:17:00.000-07:00

I read in next month’s Mad Mag that gardening is “relaxing,” but I bet uber-gardener Karen Johannsen wasn’t busy fighting back a dandelion insurgency when she made the observation. I just came in from the backyard, where I wielded this AMAZING hook-shaped, ax-like tool in last year’s vegetable garden called the Cobrahead. I bought the handy-dandy weed weapon at the magazine’s Green Expo last month, where I can attest to you that I was relaxing.

No, the ten-minute exercise in futility on this dusky Thursday evening, alone in my backyard jungle, was anything but relaxing. It was more like a mass murder. I must’ve ripped up and yanked out the tenacious roots of two-dozen dandelions, easily a foot-high and aiming to take over my garden and my yard like a tumor on the brain.

Relaxing. Right.

Inside, I wash my dirty hands, check on the kid sawing remarkably large logs in her bedroom, and toss my muddy flip-flops in the corner. That’s when I notice my toes—the coiffed, pedicured peds I spent fifty-five dollars on three days ago and hours before the big awards dinner at The Peabody in Memphis. At thirty-seven years old, this was my first indulgence in affairs of the feet.

After the pedicure, I spent a few more hours in seminars, soaking up the web-saturated conversations and resolving to take home the hints, tips, and words of wisdom to justify the expense of a business trip in these heady economic times. Then I threw on my fancy new dress, slipped my swanky red pumps onto my pedicured feet, and marched downstairs to win an award.

We took third—bronze—for general excellence in city-regional magazines with a circulation of 30,000 or less. We took gold for multimedia, a nod to the work we do with sister station WISC-TV and web wonder Channel 3000. Both are stellar honors. Both put Madison Magazine head and shoulders above our peers in the industry, as well as our local competitors, who couldn’t qualify for a prestigious award like this because they aren’t audited or opt not to abide by the basic guidelines of journalistic integrity. That’s another story.

Thanks to the City Regional Magazine Association for judging us worthy. Thanks to my incredible staff of writers, editors and designers. Thanks to Neil, my compass-slash-navigator in this fascinating and complex city. Thanks to my family for being my biggest fans. Most of all, thanks to Madison, Wisconsin for making a Harrisonburg, Virginia girl feel right at home these last fourteen years—without a fancy-dancy pedicure.

Monkeys, Monkeys Everywhere

2008-05-29T15:26:00.000-07:00

So when one of your all-time favorite writers calls you up and says you should give this newbie named Maggie a shot at freelancing, you give the guy the benefit of the doubt. Frank was right. Maggie is amazing, and not just because she works for practically nothing. (I’m seriously going to take her up on her offer to barter with booze if this economy doesn’t let up.) She’s a natural, gifted writer. She is also willing to collaborate, which is harder to do (and to elicit as an editor) than you’d think. So when Neil and I decided the magazine needed to publish a story on primate research, Maggie was our go-to girl. A serious story needed a seriously good writer. Here’s my fancy interview with my friend and freelancer, Maggie Ginsberg-Schutz.

What were you thinking when we were sitting in Neil's office and we pitched you the story a couple months ago? I honestly knew next to nothing about the subject matter, but I was so excited by the assignment. It's every writer's dream to get a "real" story, one with teeth and guts and room to spread out. I kept waiting for the other shoe to drop, but it never really did. Well, if you don't count the near emotional breakdown I had writing the damn thing.... (laughs)

You knew going in that the debate between animal rights activists and researchers was vitriolic. What surprised you most? Going in, I thought I could follow the formula, you know, interview persons A,B,C, and D on the animal rights side, and then balance them with persons A,B,C, and D on the researchers side -- easy. The problem was, I had a list a mile long of animal rights people begging to talk, and NOBODY wanted to talk to me from the researchers side. I had countless unreturned phone calls and emails, and it bothered me. It was very easy to draw my own conclusions about why they wouldn't talk, to swallow whole what the animal rights side was telling me about them. Once I realized it was a little more complicated than that, their reasons for clamming up became an integral part of the story itself.

How did you approach the story as a reporter? I went to the bookstore, of course! Any excuse to buy a stack of books.... I didn't have to, though, because the animal rights people deluged me with information. It was stunning how well-researched and organized they are. I had brochures, newsletters, videos, DVDs, magazines, journals, you name it. It was overwhelming, and very impressive.

When you sat down to write, what came out first? The beginning and the ending. In order to avoid the boring "he said she said" I knew I wanted to give the first and last word to the monkeys somehow, so I purposely boxed myself in from the start. It gave me more freedom writing the middle, because I didn't have to worry about one side or another having more airtime or leaving the last impression with the reader. I also knew how rare it was to get inside the labs, so that seemed like a good place to dwell.

How are you different now that you've had this experience?
I see monkeys everywhere. I'm totally not lying. I never knew how many pairs of monkey pajamas my kids owned. I also think harder now, and differently, whenever I hear in the news about medical advancements. It's not really a judgment, it's just more awareness about what they are doing and what it all means. I'm also not afraid of word count anymore. Everything sounds manageable. (laughs)

What's been the feedback so far? Everything that's getting through to me has been very positive. If there's negative stuff, I imagine you're keeping it from me, and me and my thin skin are just fine with that, thank you very much. I've had dozens of people pull me aside and ask me what I REALLY think about research on monkeys, and I like that best of all because my ultimate goal was that the reader wouldn't be able to tell my personal feelings by what I had written.

What sort of writer's remorse are you having about the story (I'm not being presumptuous here... I'm your editor, I KNOW you're wishing you'd done something differently!)? In a way I wish it could have been longer, although that's silly because I don't think people would want to read something that long. There are a lot of people I left out of the story, a lot of subplots I didn't have space to introduce. Even what made it in wasn't given enough attention, and I hate thinking anyone might feel underrepresented or worse, that the shape of the story would have changed with more words. I don't know. Everything I've ever written I would probably write differently now. That's why I don't read any of it.

Shameless Editor Question: Would you ever consider a follow-up? Have I ever said no to one of your assignments yet? I'm no dummy.

Bad Transition Question: You shared the New York Times Magazine piece on blogging, "Exposed," with me last week--how much of you and your experience was present in her experience? Not a whole lot, because she's so young. As I was reading I kept thinking "Damn, I am SO GLAD BLOGS DIDN'T EXIST WHEN I WAS YOUNG AND ANGST-RIDDEN." What made it to my bedroom walls, all that bad poetry and the awful sketches of crying girls, that was bad enough. I really feel for kids today whose every move is forever enshrined in cyberspace.

There were parts, though, that hit home. Blogging is a weird thing. In a way it's a real community builder, an interactive forum, a way to practice your craft and find your voice and learn a lot. In another way, it's a powerful tool that's easily abused -- or misused, really. I've learned what not to talk about on my blog, but I've learned it the hard way.

What motivates you to keep your blog going? Fear. Guilt. Obligation. Perfectionism. (laughs) Some days it feels very sophomoric and egotistical to even have a blog at all. Sometimes I feel a little too exposed. It's strange, the more readers I have the less "me" I become on there. At first, when no one was reading, I felt no pressure at all. Now I feel like every post has to be profound and eloquent, and when nine times out of ten it isn't, I feel like a failure. Then again, when I really feel the need to connect with people, this amazingly supportive group is right there at the push of a button. I've made real-life friends from blogging, and I've become addicted to so many other people's blogs. That makes me want to keep going.

Last Question: Will you still write for me when you're rich and famous? I keep forgetting to get rich and famous, I've got to get on that. It's funny, though, I heard writing might not be the best way to do that.... but I also heard you get to use real silverware in first class so I'm forging ahead.

You want to read the story now, don't you? Well, if you're not my family, my contributing writer, or a subscriber (and why aren't you, may I ask?), hop in your hybrid and go find one at any of these fine magazine purveyors. Ready. Set. Go!

If you want to hear me babble more about the June issue, Maggie and monkeys, check out the C3K Live Show (6/08) in my Video Archive.

Lake Take

2008-05-22T21:15:00.000-07:00

Rob Zaleski, former reporter and columnist for The Capital Times, did some of the best environmental reporting I’ve seen in years before he took a company buyout this spring. When I called to tell him Madison Magazine was honoring him with an Editors’ Choice award for his series on Madison lakes and what we need to do to clean them up once and for all, we got to talking…

(Photo credit: Mike DeVries, The Capital Times)

Rob Zaleski: When I wrote [the lake series] I just decided that I was going to cut to the quick. I was going to tell all those that I was interviewing, “Let’s not be diplomatic here. What’s the problem, and what has to be done? Let’s not worry about offending anyone.”

It was amazing to me the number of people I interviewed who were willing to spill their guts out. They all had strong feelings, and I think the fact that people did express strong views really resonated with the public. And I must tell you I was very surprised.

The first story I did I compared Madison to Minneapolis. Roger Bannerman, who’s the stormwater runoff expert in the Midwest– THE guy–he’s the one who first told me about it, that Madison could use Minneapolis as a model even though [the city] didn’t have the agricultural runoff problem in its lakes.

I go up to Minneapolis quite often to visit my youngest daughter. Last summer I probably went there four times and swam laps in their lakes every time. Lake Calhoun, as I noticed in t he article, their biggest lake, has clarity levels of twenty feet right now, which is almost unheard of for an urban lake. That’s why I did that story.

There’s no question there were some local officials in Madison who were angry, who felt that the story suggested that Madison has been complacent in doing anything. And I tried to tell them, “No, I realize steps have been taken but the fact that there were thirty-nine beach closings in Madison last year, what does that tell you?

So that was very encouraging to do those stories and to get that kind of response right at the end of [my tenure at] The Cap Times. It meant a lot. Fortunately, to do a series like that you have to have the support of your editors, and Chris Murphy, the city editor, after we got the response to the first article, just said, “Keep going, keep going.”

I still have four or five people who’ve contacted me in the environmental community who have good followup stories regarding the lakes.

I’m not going to claim that that series is THE thing that’s triggered this reaction to do something about the lakes but I think it helped. It was one of a number of things.

Brennan: What were those other factors? It includes business, and I think [that] component was largely absent in the past, where maybe they paid lip service to it. The business community got involved even though their effort was community driven. The businesses realized that the lakes were their drawing card.

Because of this unified effort, last year they drew 5.5 million visitors to their chain of lakes making it the second-most popular destination in the state behind the Mall of America. It has had a staggering impact on their economy.

If you go to the lakes of Minneapolis, even on a day like today where there isn’t swimming yet, all the beaches will be packed. They’ve got bike and running trails around all the lakes. It’s a gathering place for all different ethnic groups. It’s really something to behold.

Brennan: Maybe our state tourism department should be subsidizing the lakes cleanup here… Madison Community Foundation is working with Clean Wisconsin to come up with a vision. [Dane County Executive] Falk and [Mayor] Cieslewicz happen to be two pro-environment leaders. All the se entities are starting to come together and it’s a matter of coordinating that effort.

Another factor that I think was vital in Minneapolis—they did launch a huge public relations campaign. It’s my understanding—I’d have to check my notes—but there was an advertising agency in the Twin Cities that took on that challenge pro bono, reminding average citizens of the role they play in limiting phosphorus and things like that in getting into the sewers.

Another key component in Minneapolis was they hired a guy whose job was to coordinate the effort and to prevent the inevitable turf wars that break out—different agencies wanting to take credit, different citizen groups wanting to take credit—so that they weren’t fighting each other. He told me that was a full-time job in itself to make sure everyone got a fair amount of credit and that everyone was working together. I see that as the next big step in Dane County, where everyone’s on the same page.

The thing that I found most surprising was that the citizen group was more rigorous and demanding that changes be made than anyone. And the politicians were just kind of swept along. They were surprised that the citizen group finally said, “Enough.” They reached a point in the late 1980s where their lakes were scummy and filled with weeds and people just said enough. I hope the momentum [in Madison] continues in that direction.

Brennan: Give me a brief bio of your career. I’m from Milwaukee, grew up in a blue-collar neighborhood, Bay View—home of DeMarinis restaurant, the best pizza on the planet, near the South Shore Yacht Club. My dream as a kid was always to be a sportswriter and to cover the Green Bay Packers. Lo and behold I ended up being sports editor of a newspaper called the Green Bay Daily News in the early 1970s at age 25. It was a newspaper started by striking printers at the Press Gazette. I was there for three-and-a-half years and then I went to United Press International in the mid-1970s as a general assignment reporter and night editor. I became sports editor at The Cap Times in 1981. Did that for three years.

Then I had a fascinating but at the same time nightmarish experience. I was hired by the Los Angeles Times in 1984 and had a dream job as sports editor of their new San Fernando Valley section. It was the best job I had in journalism. The LA Times was a remarkable place to work. But when I got out there I realized I could not in good faith raise three girls in Los Angeles.

[Cap Times editor] Dave Zweifel heard I was unhappy. He created a position of columnist and special projects writer, which I began in 1985. That’s what I’ve been doing ever since. In the last ten to fifteen years I began to focus on ordinary people who didn’t have a voice. People who were trampled down by the system, or in their daily struggles needed a voice.

I love writing about ordinary people. It reminded me of my youth in a blue-collar, lower-middle-class neighborhood. Those are the people I’m comfortable with and those are the ones who don’t have anyone looking out for them.

Brennan: What happened at TCT? You were asked to reapply for your job? What I’m telling people is that I was very disappointed by what happened. I wish them all the success in the world because some of my best friends are still there. Like Doug Moe, I was disappointed that I had to reapply. Not only that but quite frankly, none of the new jobs that were created had my name on them as far as I was concerned. And so the buyout was fairly generous—I had been there twenty-six years. But as I told them, I’m looking forward to a second career now. I sure as heck am not done reporting and writing in the Madison area.

It’s unfortunate what happened. I wish I could’ve stayed there under the same circumstances but obviously it’s a different operation now. I could’ve reapplied but the five-and-a-half years that I worked for UPI was the only journalism job I really didn’t like and the reason is the motto at UPI is “a deadline every minute.” You’re constantly feeding that beast. I prefer to do in-depth stories. That’s where I think my strength is.

Most anybody who’s worked for the wire services would tell you that the journalism is somewhat reckless. I’m not convinced that the web is the wave of the future for daily newspapers. That’s another two-hour conversation! I think it’s going to play a role but it’s not going to be the wave of the future. They’ve got to find a way to draw more average people to the web.

The people who are reading newspapers on the web are still the eighteen- to thirty-year olds. The majority of those are males and they’re only being selective in what they read. To me, blogs—Mike Ivey at The Capital Times described it we—are just commentary without the facts. There’s a lot of yelling and screaming on forums. Average people are intimidated by that.

I think the long-term future is probably going to come back to TV somehow. But I still think there’s a place for in-depth reporting and it’s probably going to be unfortunately almost all of it in magazines.

One of the first things I did after I left The Cap Times was take out a subscription to the New York Times. Thank God they’re still around and I hope they always are. … Now the first thing I do when I get up in the morning is get my New York Times and go to a coffee shop. I gotta tell you, it’s wonderful.

So what are some other memorable stories that made a difference in someone’s life? I can tell you the craziest reaction was to a column. Sometime in the early 1990s I was looking at the AP wire and saw that South Dakota was bracing for a tourist boom because of the success of Dances With Wolves. It was a slow news day and I wrote a column poking fun at South Dakota, warning tourists that if they’re expecting to see Kevin Costner sitting next to a stream in the Black Hills it’s not going to happen. I was basically saying that South Dakota was a nice state but it was one of the dullest, most "blah" states in the union and it’s shocking to think that tourists were going to be flocking there in large numbers.

Someone in Madison, who was from South Dakota, sent that column to a disc jockey in Rapid City. The way I was told, the disc jockey read it over the air all day on a Saturday. I was flooded with hate mail. It was unbelievable. There was a fifth-grade class in Pierre that spent its whole writing session [on it]. One guy threatened me. We got phone calls from taverns in the middle of the night. How they got my number I have no idea.

It got so bad. I still have the boxes in the basement. I ended up getting over five hundred letters. It went on for over a month. To try and appease all these people—TV stations were calling and interviewing me and wanting to know how I got to be this horrible person—The Cap Times ended up running a full page of hate letters. It was funny at first. But when it continued on and on… it was bizarre.

Out of over five hundred letters I got one applauding the column. It was from some little old lady who lived out in the middle of nowhere who said she was from Wisconsin. She had met a guy from South Dakota, gotten married, and he had dragged her out there. She had been living in hell ever since. She thought I was right on and she actually said that she was writing the letter in her attic and that if her husband knew if she was writing it he would kill her. She signed it Myrtle from Aberdeen.

Brennan: Any others? A series I did about five years ago on how Wisconsin lost its democracy and fell prey to corporate interests, a trend that began with the election of Gov. Tommy Thompson in 1988; a piece I did in 2006 on the devastating effects of coal-tar sealants on the environment, after which the Dane County Board banned the use of such sealants in the county; and a story I did in 1990 on the 25th anniversary of unbeaten Monroe High School's victory in the 1965 state boys basketball tournament—the last year before the tournament was divided into various classes.

As for my most enjoyable interview, it was one I did in 1990 with a man named Pete Tollefson, who several hours earlier had gone on strike and was about to lose his job—after 21 years—as a bus driver for Greyhound. We met over coffee on East Washington Avenue, and he was one of the most charming, decent people I've met—and he was absolutely heartbroken at the thought of never being able to drive a bus again. (He'd grown up on a farm in Mazomanie and said he'd had only one dream from the time he was 9 or 10: to drive a big, shiny Greyhound bus.)

Brennan: What are you missing right now? As a columnist, for twenty-six years I could get up two or three times a week, see something on the news or hear about something and I could write about it or I could go out and find someone who was linked to a major story. Or someone would contact me. Most of my stories actually came from readers who heard about someone who was down and out or something that was happening. And so all of a sudden for the first time in my adult life I wake up in the morning and while this is great, I don’t have an outlet for my feelings, for my views. It’s very strange. And that’s why, sometimes in the next couple months I’m just hoping that I can start writing again.

We do too, Rob. We do too!

Mrs. Farley's Son

2008-05-15T10:17:00.000-07:00

I hope Chris Farley’s mom Mary Anne had a nice Mother’s Day last Sunday. I hope her four living children called from wherever on earth they were to say they love her, sent her cards that made her giggle and flowers that make her happy. If anybody was nearby, I hope they stopped over with the grandkids and fussed over her more than usual. And I hope these bright spots in the day brought her joy, because you have to believe Chris Farley’s mom was in pain. I imagine it was a quiet pain, the kind you feel down deep, the kind that washes over you, then weighs down like an anchor on the tips of your toes. The kind of pain that can only come over a mother who has been made to endure the death of a son—a young son, a loving son, a smart and funny son.

Mrs. Farley’s son was the kind of famous only a handful of humans get to be. Rock-star famous. Some Saturday nights Chris Farley was the funniest damn guy on the planet—at least to the parts of the planet that aired Saturday Night Live and the people on the planet who could stay up late enough to watch him. How somebody could get into a character the way he did—with such “gusto,” as one person who worked with him back in his Madison improv days put it—is the stuff of genius.

The Chris Farley Show, released in hardcover by Viking last week, describes in detail the funnyman’s rise to renown. But to the Farley family’s credit the story does not shy away from the ugly tailspin into obliteration that followed. To be honest, it sort of feels like E! True Hollywood Story with a purpose. Chris’s biography is at times so sad it’s almost too hard to go there with him—even in the pages of a book. But his brother Tom, who co-wrote the book, did. He went there. He says it took him ten years, but he did it. And so I think you should, too.

I promise you won’t regret it. To be honest, I had no personal or professional investment in the book (see the blog before this one). I only know Tom a little, though I think he’s a really nice, warm, well-meaning guy. I certainly don’t know the rest of the Farleys or anybody particularly close them. My closest claim is a friend who grew up a few blocks away from their home in Maple Bluff. That and the time I stumbled into a Northwoods bar to find Chris holding court on a visit to the summer camp he and his brothers cherished. It’s a memory I’ll never forget.

As for Chris’s career, I wasn’t all that impressed with the guy the few years he was an uber-celebrity. Hated Tommy Boy. Still do. Other than the fact that I’ve spent the last fourteen years living in his hometown, and for the last eight I’ve edited a magazine named for that city, I didn’t have any compelling reason to connect with the story—and yet I devoured the extremely well-edited string of recollections from the people who knew him like it was my first meal in a week. SNL captain Lorne Michaels said part of Chris’s attraction was you felt like you knew him. But after reading the book, it’s clear I didn’t. I had no idea the depths of his talent or the sad, frightening toll his addiction took on him and his loved ones.

After speaking with Tom yesterday during a taping of Neil Heinen’s For the Record, I came away feeling like the book was cathartic for him, and that it’s given him a renewed energy to pursue his noble efforts to reach kids battling addiction through the Chris Farley Foundation he runs. Tom turned me on to one more reason to read, appreciate and share this book with others: it can help heal people. Read the speech Chris gave at the Hazelden rehab facility during his three years of sobriety, then turn the pages that lead to his death just a few years later. It’s a real wakeup call to how deep and devastating it is to battle alcohol and drugs.

Tom told us that when Chris was sober, “nobody could touch him.” The skits etched into our collective memory, such as motivational speaker Matt Foley and rabid fan Chris fawning over Paul McCartney, were crafted and performed when the man was healthy. When Chris’s mom could sleep at night.

Everything Happens for a Reason

2008-05-09T08:00:00.000-07:00

It took me a while to get over being snubbed by Tom Farley’s publisher, Viking Press. Okay I’m still not over it, but, anyway, a few months ago I asked about excerpting The Chris Farley Show, the new oral history out by Tom and Tanner Colby (he's the guy who co-wrote the John Belushi biography). They said no, that I couldn’t have at anything in the book until after Playboy’s excerpt came out in May. Niiiiiiiiiice. Because I am THE GOLD MEDALIST in the Holding Grudges Olympics (just ask my spouse), I decided I was going to let the book release occasion pass with nary a written word. But then I ran into Jodi Cohen last Friday and I realized why Tom couldn’t secretly break the Viking Press rules for Chris’ hometown magazine—a magazine that put him on the cover in 1994. The reason is, duh, because Madison Magazine is supposed to write about Chris’ early career in Madison. And Jodi, who co-founded and directed Ark's second improv company Animal Crackers, where Chris got his start, is my conduit to those years. Off we go.

What’s your history with the Ark Improvisational Theater (whose most famous members were Farley and Joan Cusack)? I think I joined the Ark in ’84. They were still at Club de Wash and it was before we moved into 220 North Bassett. I was there until it closed in 1991. 220 N. Bassett was a Brinks truck garage that (Ark founders) Dennis Kern and Elaine Eldridge rented and turned into a black-box theater. I started out doing improv and then, when we got the theater, we did started doing sketch comedy and musical revues. Then Dennis and Elaine asked me to direct a (a new company) Animal Crackers, and so we auditioned people. That’s the first time I met Chris. I didn’t know until the book came out that he had come to the theater the night before and talked to Dennis.

In the new Chris Farley book, which is basically a string of quotes—an oral history—that tells his fascinating life story, you get 109 words on page 57. Really up until I had read the book I had very much packaged and just robotically talked about Chris, what I knew about Chris, my experience with Chris. My standard response was, “Chris Farley was in my improv company.” People were like, “Ohhhhhhhhhh! Oh my God what was that like?” It’s like, “Well, it’s hard to be with somebody who’s an addict.” Improv is all about trust and it was always an adventure because I never knew what shape he was going to be in the night of the show. The other thing I would always say, and this still remains true is that he was a really great improviser. And once he became famous and once you saw him on SNL or in the movies you never really got to see what was so great about his comic genius.

What was so great about his comic genius? He was really physical and he could think on his feet. Reading the book, that was kind of the beginning of my feeling the heartbreak of Chris not being on the planet anymore. It really hit me. It was like, "He's gone?" And he was so young and he was really talented. I feel like when he got to be at SNL and in his movies he seems kind of two-dimensional. You know it’s the difference between live theater and something that’s videotaped, it’s not the same. He was a great scene partner. People did get to see him being a physical improviser in the moment. What was so fun improvising with him is how his physicality would manifest in whatever was happening in the scene.

Do you have a specific memory? I remember we would do these characters where we were performing surgery using these teeny, tiny instruments that we would use. He’s so big so the contrast was so funny. And he would take it really seriously, which makes the comedy all the more heightened—that he would really commit to whatever was happening. The other thing was I remember something about him barbecuing and doing this character of Mr. Carruthers and “Yeah, come on over.” It was very much a joyful, jovial character. On SNL all that stuff is scripted so you don’t get to see a lot of the joy or a lot of the creativity that would come out that you do in improv. He was very physical as an improviser and we would always do this one beat in a certain scene where I would run across the stage and jump into his arms. For all the garbage that went on off stage … he had a lot of gusto as a scene partner.

Dennis Kern talks about Chris’ motivational speaker character, Matt Foley, getting its start at the Ark. I don’t remember that. That character scared me when I would see it on TV. It just felt too out of control. And you know he was really trying to pimp his scene partners by either varying off the script or just breaking the boundaries. I do remember watching them crack up, which is always fun. I remember at the Ark, Todd Brown, one of the improvisers, would do “Elvis Before.” And then Chris would come out in some white jumpsuit and do “Elvis After”—after all the drugs and the drinking.

Brian Stack, who was at the Ark with you and Chris, says in the book, “He could do the same thing fifty times and somehow always make it funny." I think part of Chris being a good improviser is his total commitment to whatever was happening in the scene. … I always think comedy basically comes down to taking something really mundane and you add something bizarre. Or you do something really bizarre in a really mundane way. It’s the contrast and that you’re not expecting it, and then when you really commit to it, it just heightens it all the more.

There are a lot of similarities to Chris in the way that you use humor. You wrote, “Humor is what helps me get through, get by, get around, get over things and people … keeps me from digging around on the inside.” That’s Chris. All I have is my own experience. What was so sad about reading the book was the depth of the struggles that Chris had. I think about what it means to live a self-examined life and what it means to just stay at the surface. I know that I’m really sensitive. The good things are really great. The bad things are horrible and I feel like I need to leave the country and I’m going to go live on the side of a mountain and eat a grain of rice that’s lifted up to me by a bucket every day. That’s the ultimate escape fantasy. The thing about being sensitive is that we feel everything. I had no idea about Chris’ OCD (obsessive compulsive disorder). It just seems like there was so much suffering and no matter how many people tried to help he was alone with it. I didn’t understand about alcoholism and I didn’t understand about addiction back when I worked with him. In my ignorance I just thought, “You can’t do that," or, "That won’t work," and I didn’t understand what I was up against. As the director, I was the authority figure and Chris was not happy with my response to his habits.

In hindsight what might you have done differently? I didn’t understand how addiction works so I didn’t understand the loyalty to using and what happens when you interrupt that or get in the way of that.

Were you writing for the troupe? I'd written some sketches that the improv group performed. The first thing I ever wrote was with Lois Nowicki, who’s since passed away, and Nancy Deutsch, who lives in San Francisco. The three of us did a show together called “Just Listen, It’s NukeSpeak,” where we did a series of characters, monologues and scenes. It was this very sweet three-person show. I remember Chris was living in Chicago and came back to town and saw the show when he came to the theater to say hello to folks. He had broken his foot. He was on crutches, which I read about how that happened in the book. I remember him being in the lobby one night. We didn’t get along off stage so he’d be very aloof, very cool, and said, “That was really good.” And I was very icy, very aloof, and said, “Thank you.” Just dagger, dagger, dagger, dagger, back and forth.

Is your current improv company Spin Cycle a mature, grownup version of Animal Crackers? I’m still doing short-form improv. Everything I learned back then is what I still do. I very much have Dennis and Elaine’s sensibility. We weren’t really encouraged to do gutter humor. The thinking behind that was anybody can do gutter humor. It's an easy choice in a scene. And what I've learned since is that it never serves the scene. Somebody will grab focus for a laugh or a joke but it never really moves anything along. Also we were encouraged not to swear. I feel a little bit prudish about improv that way. Elaine and Dennis had theater backgrounds. We would do a game called theater styles, and I would read Chekhov and Shaw and Ibsen and Williams, so that when somebody called those things out I knew what those plays were. There was so much theater that occurred in the improv and then in the sketches. I remember we were rehearsing a sketch and Elaine said, “Who brought the samovar?" and I was like, “What the hell is a samovar? I don’t even know what this is but I’m supposed to bring one.”

You wrote in your blog: “Real humor has little to do with telling jokes and everything to do with connecting with others.” I think with anything done well it looks easier than it is. I think that telling stories is really age-old and it's how we connect with each other. I keep thinking that Chris, in his own way, with all of his shtick and everything that went on, he was such a great storyteller. He used all of his body and everything that he had got used in the communication when he was able to do that.

Your writing makes me laugh out loud. I get such joy out of it. Thank you. When I’ve written something that I like, I love to re-read it. I love to let it alone and then come back to it. It’s nice to find it again. I always encourage people who are writers to take improv because you’re working on your writing skills. It’s very much writing in the moment. You are called on to invent things and write on the spot without the censor. And when you’re improvising you really have to keep things moving. I think it’s great training for anybody that writes.

You wear lots of hats in the work that you do. I think about us being human “doings” and us being human “beings.” I’m a writer. I’m a storyteller. I’m an improviser. I’m an artist. I’m a creator. I’m a comedienne. Those are the labels. And then I think about what I do. I do improv. I do keynote speaking. I do motivational speaking. I do training. I teach. When I think about what’s most important to me, I really think it’s art in whatever way it shows up. When I’m performing I feel like this is what I’m meant to do–when it’s going well, I should say. When it’s happening and it’s clicking there’s nothing else like it. I feel like this is why I’m on the planet this time around. And then when I’m writing and the writing goes well and the writing is well received, I think, “This is my real work!” I think it all has to do with offering something and being received in whatever format that is. I think I know how to do that best when it comes to creating art.

Finally, Jodi, please finish these sentences…

After Russ Feingold came to my one-woman show... I finally realized that we would never job share.
The difference between being funny and writing funny is... being funny doesn’t necessarily involve sitting down, writing funny is all about the editing. This is my final answer after three edits. Make that four edits. Five edits.
What I really love is... making art that is well received by people.
What I really hate is... feeling disconnected from people.

Jodi’s spiffy bio: Jodi Cohen translates how the principles of ‘Improvisational Thinking’ impact our everyday lives, liberate our innate talents and awaken the muscles that allow us to connect, collaborate and generate big ideas. Jodi teaches ‘Improvisational Thinking’ strategies to an increasing number of business and community leaders to afford them new ways to think, respond and behave. These simple, profound and user-friendly ideas inspire improved performance, increased productivity and rampant innovation among participants. Jodi’s studied and taught improv for twenty-five years and is artistic director of SPIN CYCLE Improv Troupe.