WEB SITE http://www.geocities.com/~billweber/

IS FREEDOM OF SPEECH AND EXPRESSION IN JEOPARDY?

Last weeks Tomah Monitor-Hearld made the announcement in it's April 10th Monday edition that within the month the Monitor-Hearld, Tomah Journal and the Tri-County Advertiser would be sold to the, LEE ENTERPRISE GROUP.

For seventy one years prior to November 1998, the Kenny Family owned and published these newspapers. In November of 1998 John Kenny, owner and publisher sold the Tomah Journal and Monitor Hearld to the South Central Wisconsin Newspapers (SCWN) Both papers have been a part of the Tomah Community for a good many years. The Tomah Journal was first published in 1867 and Monitor Hearld in 1880.

These were local home town papers, owned and published by local people mostly for the benefit and well being of the local community. On the whole they served their communities very well, in fact so well that they became desired by a non-local publisher (SCWN) who purchased them two years ago. Now an even larger publishing company, Lee Enterprise Group has offered to purchase the papers, further removing the ownership away from the community. This time the purchasers headquarters are in Davenport Iowa. Their WEB Site is at:http://www.lee.net/

As you will notice after reviewing the WEB site they are not a small group of publishers. It is true they are not yet Time Warner or CNN, but no doubt they are positioning themselves in the future to be an attractive buy to such powerful news companies.

So why should us peons out here in western Wisconsin be worried about our local newspapers being gobbled up by big corporation owners? Simply this, that them who have the gold dictate what goes into their newspapers and broadcasts. The news media today(both print and electronic) are more than reporters of news they are too often the creators of news for their own special interests.

Back in 1992, I went to work for the Foxxy Shopper, which was then and still is a publication of the Lee Enterprise Group. For over four years I did a large part of their advertising and wrote many of the articles for their publication, THE SENIOR SAMPLER.

I truly enjoyed the work and relationship and often regret that I quite the SENIOR SAMPLER assignment for what I thought was a better job. I will admit that the owners and publishers gave me a pretty free hand in the content of the articles written. Perhaps this will be a part of their policy to local writers when they take over the Tomah newspapers.

I wish the company well in their new adventure here in the Tomah area even though I have misgivings about how many local writers will remain a part of their publications in the years to come.

Or if it becomes necessary how many local would be publishers, would willing to step forward like, Bill Smith, did in Elroy last year, and initiate a truly local community newspaper for this area.

This will be my last article to you under the present management. I hope that I can continue to contribute to this column under the new owners. But if not, thanks to all of you for your support and we will continue to carry articles and information on our WEB pages not only the one noted above but also on: http://www.cyberspaceadventures.com/