A Holiday Must-See, Laugh

If you’ve never met Jodi Cohen, too bad for you. And even though she’ll be presenting “Oy to the World! Comic Relief for the Holidays” right here in Madison this week, you won’t get to meet her even if you just want an autograph. Why? Because she will be busy impersonating a warm and hilarious cast of characters to an audience of folks eager to find joy AND laughter this holiday season. Cohen’s writing and comedy/improv work is coastal caliber, but like a lot of us she fell in love with Madison and the Midwest. So lucky us.

Jodi, who has worked with the likes of Chris Farley and Brian Stack, a writer for Conan O’Brien (read an earlier blog on this), is not only gifted and talented, she’s warm and generous with her time. I know this because I asked her to ask one of my favorite characters a few questions for my blog and she was kind enough to let Helvi give us a preview of the kind of funny you’ll experience when you go to the show. Click here for the schedule.

So, without further ado, heeeeeeeeere’s Helvi!

Tell us a little bit about yourself, Helvi. Well, I’m a social and political macaroni sculptor, making macaroni sculptures to express my feelings about what is going on in the world and to make changes in the world. I used to use clay, but well, that was not for me. I found my inner macaroni and now I have a cable show, “Helvi’s Corner,” and I’m the hostess of the radio show “Pasta and YOU,” where we talk about changing the world one noodle at a time, and I also am the editor of the Macaroni Monthly.

So what were you doing last Friday while the rest of us were skipping, um I mean SNOWED IN, from work? When it snowed I was outside, I was making a snow angel. Then I decorated it with uncooked macaroni. It was itchy, as I laid down in the snow and the uncooked macaroni. But that is what I do for art.

I understand you have some important political statements you’re planning to make in this year’s show. Without giving it all away, could you give us a hint of what you’re going to try to accomplish? Fer cryin’ out loud. I did such a great job canvassing in Wisconsin during the primary that I was awarded the Canvasser of the Year award and invited to the inauguration. Ya’ hey. I’m going to wear my special apron. I’m going to connect with other social and political craftspeople. We’re going to meet in a corner somewhere.

Do you work with a number of different macaroni styles or do you stick with the quintessential elbow? I work mostly with elbow macaroni, but that is just me. You can work with anything that floats your boat. Some people work with clay! Not this pony. No. I tried it, but it lost some of its zip zap sop along the way. I did start working with Spaghetti-O’s as an homage to Obama. However, I feel a little cramped when there’s sauce involved.

Do macaroni ingredients—say, egg or no egg—make a difference in your work? Some people like eggless pasta. It doesn’t hold together in the same way when you get to the decoupage part of the project. But still, whatever works. You have to do your work, make your art, in order to be heard and seen and known in the world. With enough super glue you can do anything.

Is there a friendly competition among the characters you present in “Oy to the World,” or are you all, like, best friends? Everyone who shows up for “Oy to the World” is amazing. I have to say, it’s an honor to be there. People are so nice and friendly and what have you. I give away potato salad recipes as rewards to people who are speaking out. You have to speak out whenever and wherever possible. That is what I always say.

Are there any other artists who work with macaroni—or other artistic media—that you admire or are inspired by? I love Twyla Tharp. I’ve asked her if she’d like to collaborate and I’ve yet to hear back. I’m also inspired by Babs Gillespie, my friend from years ago. She works with laundry in these fanciful ways. It’s hard to explain. I haven’t seen her or her laundry for years and I miss her terribly. One time she wore just a sheet all night because everything she owned was in the wash. She is a consummate artist gal.

What is your New Year’s resolution for 2009? To be realistic about my resolutions. To start small and keep it all very small. One noodle at a time, is what I always say....

OK, I saved the toughest question for last: What’s your producer/director Jodi REALLY like? Ah, well, she’s, you know, normal. I guess. She’s a bit nervous sometimes and is always saying, “Oh, Helvi, where’s your macaroni sculpture? Where are your noodles? Where are your potato salad recipe cards? Where’s your guitar? Do you know the song you’ll do for the sing-along? Have you written your poem? Do you still want to do some modern dance as a way of interpreting the global financial meltdown that’s occurring?” I just say to her O FER CUTE! Build a bridge and get over yourself already then there now. Real good.

See? I told you she was good. Go see Helvi and the rest of Jodi’s gang this week. You’ll get delicious Imperial Garden Chinese food to boot.

Two Journalists You Should Know

Back when I was studying for a master's in journalism at UW–Madison, I spent a lot of time on news.wisc.edu, the University Communications website. The depth and breadth of its coverage made it a fertile ground for article ideas and academic experts for my writing assignments.

After I joined the magazine I signed up for their media press releases and often marveled at how thoroughly reported and well written they were. I used to joke about how the newspapers should've just printed the releases verbatim; often they were smarter and more provocative than the stories that showed up in the next day's news.

When uber-talented UW communications staffer Tim Kelley was lured back to the State Journal, I wasn't surprised. He penned a ton of great stories that came out of the press office. Tim also wrote for the magazine for a time. He was one of those freelancers who took an assignment, you wouldn't hear boo from him for a month, and then he'd file a story you hardly had to edit. You never quite felt like you were earning your keep. Tim's still at the State Journal as its digital media manager for madison.com.

Another UW communicator I admire is Michael Penn. He wrote and edited for the UW alumni magazine On Wisconsin for many years and is now with a College of Agriculture and Life Sciences magazine called Grow. Michael is an excellent storyteller, and he has a knack for reporting that a lot of writers think they have but don't. He gets that readers want more than the who, what, where and engages them in an intellectual joyride.

Check out Penn's recent article on corn, called "Grain of Doubt." If you've read The Omnivore's Dilemma, or even if you haven't, it's a local complement to the global discussion about the corn crop and how it is, in detrimental ways, taking over the planet's agricultural system. Remarkable, and a little bit scary.

Diversity Almost Done!

While I hope readers are busy devouring all things pet in our current issue of Madison Magazine, my staff is a little busy on the next issue. Thing is, it’s not just any issue, it’s two magazines in one. For more than a year now we’ve been planning for a new, 68-page magazine celebrating diversity in the Madison area. It’s called Spectrum Magazine, and the organization we’re producing it for is the Madison Area Diversity Roundtable. They are an amazing group of Madisonians I’ll blog about later, but for now I want to brag about the writers and designers who are, like I said, B-U-S-Y putting this important publication together.

Laura Salinger, who has deftly covered a broad range of issues and topics for The Madison Times, Capital City Hues and Asian Wisconzine, wrote most of the major articles, and a whole slew of smart, talented people, including all of our editors, designers and more than a dozen area freelance writers and photographers, have been laboring to make this magazine matter in a community that embraces diversity but doesn’t always follow through in executing it. (More on that later, too.) For now, just know that I can hardly think straight, much less blog straight, because I’m so nervous and excited about sharing Spectrum with you.

It’s been hard and exhilarating to help birth a new magazine … and remarkably, the labor has been longer than my seven-year-old who took her own sweet time in production. But in a few short weeks Spectrum Magazine will ride along with the January issue of Madison Magazine, which we’re dubbing “Big Ideas.” The Spectrum concept is a perfect fit for a magazine about what our city and its people can accomplish if we set our minds to it. Because we all know that ideas are only as good, or as big, as those of us willing to work to make them happen.

Op-Ed Epiphany

This is going to sound so corny, but as I read the State Journal’s latest op-ed, “Don’t let pols pick their votes,” I had an epiphany about Wisconsin politics. Last Sunday the thoughtful and paid-to-be opinionated editorial page writers were opining about the state’s rotten redistricting rules designed by and for incumbents to protect their legislative seats. Lefties and conservatives both took the heat for allowing the once-a-decade line drawing to conveniently shed voting districts that aren’t exactly keen on their brand of politics.

As a trained journalist, I can be skeptical about the reckless nature of power and influence. And I can wax all poetic about how crucial it is for democratic societies to examine and question the role of leadership and government. Frankly, that’s why I’ve been so pissed lately that newsrooms have been virtually abandoned by their corporate owners and ungrateful advertisers. (Is it just me or do the ads in the State Journal lately look like invasive species choking healthy flora?). But at the same time, I have always felt that most people in charge—be they teachers, priests, doctors or politicians—have their community’s best interests at heart.

So it’s with a heavy—and a little bit guilty—heart that I share my epiphany. Wisconsin started its journey into the 20th century a progressive and principled role model. It finished out the 1990s a fat and happy cat, the kind that led to political cronies, legislative caucus scandals and now, because all good things must come to an end, five-billion—BILLION—dollar deficits. It’s atrocious. And what I realized reading the op-ed column Sunday was that Wisconsinites like me are so used to good, clean government and a reputation for years and years and years of best behavior by our elected officials that we can't acknowledge or accept how much damage has been done. We’re no longer a role model; we’re the girl you don’t dare bring home to your parents.

Fellow Midwestern states like Iowa—let me repeat: IOWA—have gotten the best of us when it comes to something as straightforward and little “d” democratic as redistricting. Then there’s another neighbor called Minnesota, with sparkling clean lakes and a taxation system that experts say is a friend to businesses, government and education without bleeding taxpayers’ wallets.

For so many years we’ve voted so many good and honest people into office—Democrat, Republican or Ed Thompson—that we’ve taken for granted our privilege and responsibility to hold these humans, with all of their imperfections, accountable. Then we’re shocked and appalled when they pass a Band-Aid solution to funding public education, campaign on the taxpayers’ dime, or hold a budget hostage to protect the special interests and party leadership that got them elected.

We’ve all had our political epiphanies. Mine is admittedly a variation on a pundit’s theme, and frankly, a little too late. While my belated “aha” moment won’t do much for that state of our state, it reminds me of the incredible importance of our editorial voices, whether they are in print, online or over the airwaves. They are made up of smart, well reasoned and well-read professionals who tell us what they think--not because, like our politicians, they want our vote in the districts they’ve drawn like kids with too many crayons, but because they want us to know the facts as they see them.

We might not agree with the op-ed pages every time, but we should respect what they have to say, and in many cases, thank them for having the courage to put pen to dying paper.

First Step

Our November story on domestic violence (on newsstands now!) has struck a chord. The advocacy community praised it (though I received some understandable flak for not running the crisis hotline number: 251-4445). Survivors identified with it and took the time to let us know. But best of all, we’ve heard an anecdotal story or two about how it helped bring someone the courage to leave an abusive situation.

That’s exactly why we titled the article “Seeing is Believing.” If you see yourself or a loved one in one of those remarkable stories of survival, you might believe in yourself and your situation. You might acknowledge that it’s real, and happening to you, and that you need to get help.

The title was also intended to shed light on one of society's greatest failures because so often domestic violence goes unnoticed or ignored by friends, neighbors, employers and the media. It takes a village to recognize and refuse to allow chronic and dangerous emotional and physical violence. And when we do so, we take the power out of the hands of the abuser. It becomes a community problem—like homelessness, burglary, or jaywalking—that is no longer tolerated just because it goes on behind closed doors. It says to the abuser: what you are doing is wrong, even illegal. So stop, get help, or go to jail.

The subject has so deeply affected the author of the article, Maggie Ginsberg-Schutz, that she is building an online community of support for a new blog called Violence UnSilenced. Here’s Maggie’s latest update on her own terrific blog, which is spawning her new advocacy campaign.

When the domestic violence blog goes live, I’m going to ask survivors to speak out. And because they are brave enough to speak out, I’m going to ask the rest of us to pledge to listen. I hope you will take up that challenge. Please, keep listening.

A few days after Maggie’s article came out, I ran into my friend Bill at the Harmony Bar. Bill is a writer and a poet, a gadfly and a grandpa … an all-around good guy. Though I respect his politics, we usually disagree. And yet, when we got to talking about domestic violence Bill launched (as Bill is wont to do) into a diatribe about women’s liberation. If women are not free, healthy and educated, Bill told me, economies collapse, democracies fail and societies are ruined. The world needs more women in power, he continued, because they won’t let their sons go off to war without a fight of their own.

While Bill was pontificating I thought of the Taliban in Afghanistan and their oppression of women. I thought about how every nine minutes a woman in the U.S. is beaten. I thought about how women still earn substantially less than men, which is often why they can’t leave an abusive situation. I thought about my mom, who helped get my hometown’s first battered women’s shelter off the ground. How she would make me close my eyes when we drove there because even a little girl might tell the wrong person where it was.

But not everybody understands the fundamental truth about women like Bill does—he and I do agree on that one. Which is why we need more survivors telling their stories to Maggie and more Maggies launching blogs and more moms volunteering at shelters and more Bills spreading the gospel from barstool to barstool. We all have something we can offer the cause.

What can you do?

Well Done

So it’s an embarrassment of riches when we are lucky enough to have two well stories in a single issue. In the magazine business, the “well” is the place where you run the meaty, in-depth features, which usually includes the cover story. With our little glossy—as opposed to, say, Vanity Fair—the well is often home to only one feature-length story. We try to dedicate as much space as we can to the well because it’s important to let a story breathe, to let the pictures compel the reader to come join in the conversation. And that it will be worth their precious time. In November we had two important stories to tell, so we decided, come hell or high water, to squeeze them both in.

The first is a profile of Madison’s Police Chief Noble Wray, who we named our 2008 Person of the Year. Public safety is on everyone’s minds—tonight’s Halloween festivities, which haven’t always ended well, are a prime example of why. And while Chief Wray has worked hard to make Halloween less drunken, reckless debauchery and more good, clean fun, citizens throughout the city aren’t feeling as safe these days. So we asked award-winning writer Frank Bures to explore the problem through the lens of a quiet and thoughtful Wray, who is policing a city that can no longer afford to see itself as a quaint little college town.

The second well story is a stunning portrait of seven survivors of domestic violence. Writer Maggie Ginsberg-Schutz weaves the stories of isolating fear and remarkable resilience together in a way that somehow gives me hope. That these women were brave enough to tell us what they went through means we can no longer ignore the pain and suffering that goes on behind closed doors. When women and children are abused and subjugated, societies weaken. Look at the Taliban in Afghanistan for evidence of the worst possible outcome of inequality and rule by ignorance and force. And even in a place like Madison, violence against women happens everyday but we don’t hear about it unless someone is severely injured or killed.

So if I was lucky to have two well stories in the magazine this month, I hit the jackpot with the writers who penned them. Frank and Maggie are two of my favorite storytellers, so I decided to ask them a few questions about how they do what they do so very well.

Maggie: What was it about the story of domestic violence that made you want to write about it? How prevalent it is (one in four women), and how little press it gets unless someone dies. The whole “murder-suicide” thing bugs me to no end, because it makes these events seem like isolated incidences—well, they're not. They are the inevitable end to a long-standing cycle of abuse within a relationship. I also knew that one third to one half of all Dane County arrests are domestic-violence related, so that made the lack of news coverage even more appalling to me. But it’s not that the media is being irresponsible, it’s far more complicated than that. Because of safety and privacy issues, because of fear and shame, these women are essentially muzzled. But abusers get their power manipulating those very same things—so maybe if we keep dragging the issue kicking and screaming out into the open, some of that power can be reversed. Mostly, it was really important to me to give these survivors a voice, and to show everybody else just how common these stories are.

Frank: You’ve profiled Bishop Morlino, Sen. Russ Feingold, brain researcher Richard Davidson and others for me over the last few years. What was different about Police Chief Noble Wray? One of my favorite writers, Gary Smith, says, “Each person’s life is a problem to be solved.” I think that’s really true. And not only is their life a problem they (and you the writer) are trying to solve, but there’s some larger story around their personal story that gives their story meaning. With Morlino it was the search for absolutes in a shifting world. With Feingold, it was a question of how you make the biggest decision of your life. With [UW–Madison men’s football coach] Bret Bielema it was the personal cost of success. With Davidson it was a question of free will. Noble Wray’s story, how he came from a tough background and rose to the top, is the perfect American story. But the larger narrative around that is about how Madison is changing, evolving, and what part Wray plays in that story. The challenge with writing about him was that he doesn’t much like to talk about himself, which is fine if you’re his neighbor, but not so good if you’re profiling him.

Maggie: You told me you envisioned the way you would write the story before you actually interviewed the seven survivors. How did that evolve as you went through the interview process and then sat down to write? If you’re trying to get me to publicly admit I hear voices in my head, then fine, you win. From the beginning I could hear the women’s voices in a chorus, kind of overlapping. Since I don’t like to go into a story knowing what I’m going to write, I tried to just get out of the way and focus on being a megaphone for them. But as the interviewing process went on, I was really struck by how different each of these women were, but how many of them were saying the exact same core things. One night I dreamed the story in its current format, with the women’s stories connected by identical quotes. So when I sat down to write, the only real outline I did was connecting those quotes in the right order. Then I just let the women speak. You’re welcome, I look totally crazy now.

Frank: I talk to a lot of young writers and journalism students about how in magazine journalism we “show, don’t tell” a story. In your profiles, you often do this by setting some amazing scenes for the reader. Talk a little bit about that process. Yeah, that’s a big difference between magazine and newspaper writing. What I do is sometimes called “narrative nonfiction,” where you’re trying to recreate a scene and transport the reader there. It involves more detailed and imaginative reporting, and I think it’s where my background as a travel writer comes in handy. You want the reader to be able to see and feel and hear the things that were going on, and in a way that contributes to the storyline, not in a way that’s just throwing things in. It’s basically storytelling through pictures and images—you have to visualize it. In the classic anthology, The New Journalism, Tom Wolfe says that with this kind of writing, information isn’t the basic unit of reporting. The scene is. So you have to imagine it, report it, recreate it and interpret it. And this can be hard with profiles, because you’re basically taking someone else’s life and making it your own.

As far as “show don’t tell,” it’s easy to say, hard to do. Basically I avoid adjectives, and try not to write in a way that manipulates someone into feeling/thinking/seeing something. I want them to arrive there themselves.

Maggie: It’s difficult to do these kinds of stories without being personally affected by them. How has this experience affected you? Well, I’m not letting it go. It’s definitely under my skin. I am considering starting a domestic violence blog to keep the conversation going, and I’ll probably keep bugging you for follow-up stories. I am completely humbled by the bravery these seven women showed in trusting me, in allowing me to speak for them— but there are many, many more who don’t have that option at all. Yes, it was emotional and depressing, but more than that it was really inspiring. I’m raising daughters. I feel like it’s my mandate to do my part in solving a social issue this critical. I want everyone else to feel that way, too.

Frank: You have two bylines in the November issue—you also wrote our travel essay and it’s this crazy trip you took from the suburb of Verona to downtown Madison by foot. First, what the hell were you thinking? Second, what are trying to convey to the reader through this kind of travel writing versus the more conventional service-oriented “go, see, do” story?
1.) I have no idea what I was thinking.
2.) One big pet peeve of mine is how everything in our society is preconceived and packaged for sale. This peeve doubles when it comes to travel, because travel is so much about your own experience in a place. And half of that experience—or more than half—is the imagination and insight you bring to it, as well as how you let it change you. So one thing I hoped to do with this piece was to inspire people to create their own experiences rather than just pay to consume someone else’s. There are so many fascinating things in this world, but they’re all on the road less taken. And that road lead me from Verona to Madison. It involved some chafing.

Chafing. I think I’ll leave it at that. Now do you see why I’m a very lucky editor?

Get Thee to the Festival!

The Wisconsin Book Festival is one of those community events you can take pride in—even if you had absolutely nothing to do with its launch or its success. You read. You buy books. You read some more. Of course you’ve contributed to the cultural milieu that could sustain such an enlightened gathering of authors and book worshippers! I, for one, can’t say the same for the Ironman. Swim, bike and run all you want. Make Madison look like the fittest city in the country—at least for one day—and I’ll be proud as punch. But I can’t lay any sort of claim to that remarkable survival of the fittest.

But if you are a book lover then this is your weekend to flex your literary muscles. If you like books and cooks, you might want to come on down to the Dardanelles on Sunday evening, where two of my favorite writers and foodies will be sharing stories and advice on how to ready a recipe for publication. Since I flirt with my microwave far more than my stove, it’s always amused me that the lovely Joan Peterson (see bio on book fest website), author of the terrific Eat Smart series of culinary travel books, has asked me to keynote the event for the last few years. I’m so grateful, though, because I get the chance to listen to and mingle with smart, fascinating people who experience both the joy and the art of eating in their lives.

My friends Terese Allen and Ronnie Hess are headlining the evening, followed by food sampling and conversation with the who’s who in local food writing and publishing. So come on out and join us at six for the talk and 7:15 for the food.

Hey, Ironman: it’s the ideal spot to load up on carbs!

For a primer on the event, I chatted with Terese Allen, who is busy preparing recipes for Sunday’s event, called The Book and the Cook.

What kind of stimulating conversation and delicious flavors we expect at the Book and the Cook? When people think about translating recipes there’s two ways to look at it: the writing of the recipes for publication and the process you go through. We start with the testing process … and how you might have to convert metric measurements from foreign languages or reduce recipes from a large size to a small size. Or it could be a professional chef’s language translated into everyday cooking language, or a language spoken in history with different terms or ingredients.

Ronnie is going to take a couple recipes and demo them. I’m going to take a recipe from each of four categories—professional, historical, café cook, and a home cook—and illustrate the before-and-after and why things need to be worded differently to be recreated in today’s home kitchen.

How is your latest book project coming along? We’re in the galley stage … It’s called The Flavor of Wisconsin, and it’s a revised and expanded second edition of Harva Hachten’s The Flavor of Wisconsin, which came out in 1981. It’s been a generation and everything’s changed…. The Wisconsin Historical Society Press asked me to fill in the historical dots and talk about what’s happened in Wisconsin culinary history. We’ll have 450 recipes with eight essays that take you through Wisconsin’s food and cooking history, both by chronology and by topic. Most of the recipes were in the first edition. This book was researched throughout the 1970s and during that time Harva and her staff were collecting recipes from Wisconsin kitchens. It’s just this really wonderful collection … they narrowed it down from 900 recipes. My job was to round out what possibly could’ve been missing from that and then to include recipes from New American cuisine and Wisconsin’s role in it, which is much bigger than people realize. I also added two chapters that expand greatly on her chapter on food and business.

*Ed’s Note: Harva Hachten (who wrote articles and columns for Madison Magazine) died suddenly in April 2006. “I wish she could’ve seen it but I’m very happy she knew before she died we were in this process,” says Terese.

Cookbooks and culinary writing seems to thrive here. Why? It absolutely does. Madison being the food town that it is, and also Wisconsin in general being such a literary place with lots of writers—a lot highly concentrated in Madison. I don’t think people understand what an epicenter we are, with the local food movement, the farmers’ market, the university, the seasonal cooking restaurants. We’re drawing from so many different interests around here. So the food and cooking comes together. It’s just a wonderful place to be if you’re interested in both… I’m sitting pretty!

When I started writing about regional food back when I was a chef at Ovens of Brittany in the eighties, I didn’t feel quite legitimate. It’s wonderful to look back now and see what’s happened. And it’s become a national phenomenon.

This Just In: I just got a press release reminding me that “October is pizza month! Although it's almost half way over, pizza is a timeless culinary treat you can savor any day of the week. To celebrate, the Wisconsin Milk Marketing Board has put together an assortment of delicious recipes, from a traditional Margherite pizza to an innovative Bananas Foster pizza.”

And you thought ham and pineapple was a little weird...

P.S. Joan Peterson, author of the Eat Smart series of culinary travel guides, will also be appearing at the Madison Food & Wine Show this weekend!

The Beat Goes On

Despite the fact that former Isthmus executive editor Marc Eisen won’t write for me (not yet, anyway), I thought it would be fun to let folks know what he’s been up to since he opted to become a staff cut. When the alt-weekly had to make some tough budget decisions this year, the veteran journalist decided it was time to try something else. Fortunately for all of us, Eisen had no intention to stop writing.

Since leaving Isthmus in August he’s picked up gigs with Milwaukee Magazine and The Progressive, even landing the latter’s November cover story, an interview with Berkeley professor and “The Omnivore’s Dilemma” author Michael Pollan.

Here’s how Eisen describes his very successful career, which is still very much in the making:

“I spent 30 years at Isthmus over two tours of duty. I also worked at The Capital Times, The West Bend News and The Racine Labor paper, and had a cup of coffee at The Janesville Gazette."

Here’s a bit about his personal life:

“My youngest daughter Hannah is a senior at East High and my oldest daughter Lauren ls a senior at UW-Oshkosh. Both have been instructed to not go into journalism. I'm married to Connie Kinsella, who is an executive with the University Medical Foundation."

Marc’s not the kind of guy that spends too much time contemplating his own navel. He’s too busy reporting and writing about the issues and ideas of the day, which is why I decided to ask him some unconventional questions. You could say I took the easy way out … or you could say that I was smart enough to know I’d be too easily beaten at my own game.

Since I left Isthmus I....have consciously made an effort to be less of an idiot with technology and to go to the Y regularly. There is no connection between the two except that my IPod is really loaded these days.

It never works when....I violate my deeply held belief to always anticipate—and avoid—situations where nothing will work.

The thing about journalism is....that lately I think of it more as an art than a craft.

The thing about journalism....is that the economic model that sustains it is collapsing with amazing speed.

The thing about journalism is….that the cyberspace version is very different from print—and in some ways deficient.

The thing about journalism is….that today people can create a media world—through TV, radio and the Internet—in which they never expose themselves to a single word that challenges their existing beliefs.

Barack Obama and John McCain....are engaged in the most important presidential election in 40 years: The winner will have to deal with the fact that America, after eight years of George W. Bush, is in decline.

I've always wanted to know....how neuroscientists and evolutionary biologists explain the internal monologues that run through our minds. Think of James Joyce's stream of consciousness. Wait, you mean you don't hear those voices?

If I ever wrote a memoir....it would be an act of extreme conceit. My life isn't that remarkable. Now, how I process my daily experiences in that internal monologue is another story. As a writer, I wish I could tap into that never-ending narrative.

How Ya' Doin? (No, This Isn't About Sarah Palin)

People always ask me, “How’s the magazine doing?” Lately, though, the apologetic tone of the question feels more like somebody’s asking me about my terminally ill uncle than my place of work.

“Better than newspapers,” I tell them, because the magazine business really is OK. In fact, the outlook is very promising. Readership is up, which includes a nice spike in the younger demographic, and with the decline in newsrooms people are hungrier than ever for in-depth stories about the world they live in.

Sure, the advertising has slowed down in a sluggish economy, but by no means has it dried up. Businesses still need to hock their wares, and our magazine has produced great results in all of our core categories, from home, health and travel to dining, retail and entertainment. In a down economy, you want an advertising vehicle you can count on.

You also want content you can trust, which is how our magazine has consistently distinguished itself from the local competition. Sure, good press doesn’t hurt, but if you or your ad agency buys an ad because a magazine says it will write about you if you do, the press you get is tainted, and readers don’t trust it. What we offer instead is editorial integrity, which attracts eyeballs—more than 107,000 sets of them—attached to Madisonians who are invested in their community, and in concepts like buying local, whether it’s a meal, a car, a health care plan, or a kitchen table.

If you don’t believe me, here’s a snippet of media expert James Brady’s conversation on Forbes.com with former chairman of Magazine Publishers of America president Jack Kliger on the topic:

“I don’t know if the magazine business will ever again be as robust,” [Kliger] said. “But ads will still be very important, the dominant revenue. Magazine advertising really works. And consumers like magazines. There’s value to original and trusted third-party content. Young people may not like newspapers anymore, but they like magazines. And we really do have good print journalists and editors who can learn the new digital platforms."

Original and trusted. And doing just fine, thanks.

Local Sleuth Is A Writer, Too

I hate that saying about how nice guys finish last. I don’t believe it. I just think they have to wait patiently while the mean guys do each other in. Not only is Kevin Hughes one of the nicest guys I’ve never met, he waited forever to find a publisher for his second novel, Casualty Crossing (StoneGarden.net Publishing, $14.95). And then he waited even longer for me to write about it.

A few years back Hughes’ day job as a Dane County Sheriff’s Office detective inspired his night job as a writer of detective novels. Hughes’ characters are so well developed, and his plots so interesting that it’s easy to lose yourself in one of his mysteries. He’s a thoughtful and conscientious guy, and his books reflect not only his passion for his career but his optimistic outlook on life—remarkable given his line of work. You’d think after more than thirty years investigating crimes a person could get a little jaded. His main character Toby Jenkins sure does.

Now Hughes is hard at work on his third book, a sequel to Casualty Crossing, and he says the fourth is slowly materializing in his head.

I talked to Hughes about his books, his job, and while I was at it, I threw him some tough questions about Madison and whether or not it’s a safe place to live anymore. Hughes was decent enough to answer them, proving once again my theory about nice guys.

What did you learn from your first novel, Just Another Shade of Blue, that helped you in crafting Casualty Crossing?

After I had written Just Another Shade of Blue, I enrolled in a writer’s course in which I was paired with a novelist who was also a former staff editor for the New York Times. This one-on-one training afforded me some valuable insight into what makes a novel tick. By using chapters from Blue I was able to see how certain applications can make your characters and plot much more believable. I ended up reworking Blue based on his teachings and was happy with the results.

I applied the techniques to Casualty Crossing from its onset and as a result, the methodology proved to be quite successful. One of the most important things I learned is that a good editor can make a huge difference in your final product.

Your characters have so much depth. They could jump off the page and start walking around. They’re very real. I imagine your ability to get inside people’s heads is what makes you such a good detective. Also, I loved the Madison references—dinner at Paisan’s, the construction of the new Dane County Courthouse, the lakes, politics. Did you have to think about basing the story in Madison with the kind of work you do?

What I do for a living didn’t enter into my decision-making process too much. My trepidation was rewriting the complete novel only to find the change of milieu was a poor choice. Once I worked on a few chapters, it was obvious to me that the story was meant for Madison and not in a fictitious city in Ohio.

The transition allowed me to bring TJ and the other characters alive in a setting that was familiar to me, which fortified the sense of place that plays such an important role in a novel. The added bonus was the opportunity to share my perspective of Madison with the reader.

At times the crime, in particular the brutal rape of the woman, which led to Toby’s courtroom outburst and suspension, felt more real because you situated it in the city in areas I’m very familiar with. It was a bit of a harsh reminder that bad people are out there doing bad things. The spate of recent murders here not withstanding, most of us feel pretty safe.

When I was a kid, I could hardly wait to grow up because I thought life would be so much easier. And back in those same old days, Madison and Dane County were growing up with perhaps the same expectations as a kid. And, we both are still learning that be it a kid or a city, growing up isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.

As Madison continues to mature, the challenges of the community increase and one of those challenges is crime. All of us bear the responsibility to keep our cities and towns safe but in the process, we must not fall victim to the fear of crime to a point that it causes us to alter our lifestyle in a drastic fashion.

Wherever you are, no matter what time of day, you must be aware of your environment and digest what is occurring in your vicinity. I’ve lived by a rule that has saved me more times than embarrassed me, which is to follow my gut instinct. The rule should apply to everyone: if you think something is amiss, you are more than likely correct and you should act accordingly. Don’t live with the regret that you could have helped mitigate a terrible incident if you’d only made a call or written down a license number.

Madison is facing issues that have impacted other medium-sized cities, some of which are dealing with the issues quite well and others that have fallen into the abyss of hopelessness. It is expensive to run a city, village, township or a county. Residents must decide where their tax dollars are spent and inform their elected officials. Our representatives are charged with moving their constituents’ agenda forward. But in order for our politicians to act on our behalf, we all must make an effort to inform them of our priorities so they can make the correct decisions regarding public policy.

Regarding the unsolved crimes in Madison, I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: Madison is fortunate to have such a competent, talented and professional police force. I know that the police are putting forth a great effort to solve pending cases and are committed to locating and charging the person or persons involved for their actions.

Do you share some of main character TJ’s frustrations with the court system, about how sometimes the very same rules that can save an innocent person can also free a criminal? Justice isn’t always served.

Okay, TJ is a fictional character so he’s on his own on this one. As for me, I hold Dane County and Western Federal District juries in high esteem. I have learned that when those twelve to sixteen jurors sit in that box, they are attentive, intuitive and most of the time render what I believe is the correct verdict based on the facts of the case and information that the court allows them to consider.

What do you love most about writing? I love the creativity of fiction, which is my forte for now. When I’m in the writing phase of a project, oftentimes the characters will highjack the plot and, although this might sound a little odd, I let it happen because I become curious as to where they will end up, which can be quite different than my original concept.

I was amazed by your level of detail. You describe every scene right down to the pattern on the couch. I imagine that’s the kind of trait good detectives must have in order to solve crimes.

My writing technique is somewhat based on the reports I’ve prepared regarding investigations during my career in law enforcement. Prosecutors are very fond of the minutia of a case and I strive to include as much detail as possible to convey the situation as well as the perspective of the victim, witnesses and suspects. Based on that experience, I believe an author should never fake the details of a procedure. Doing so demonstrates lack of respect toward the reader.

Some of the scenes involving Billy’s abuse at the hands of his stepfather are pretty graphic. They were hard to read. What was it like writing them, or had you seen it all before combing through police reports so it was easier to write?

In spite of my experience with abuse victims, I still had difficulty writing the abuse scenes. I honestly thought I had toned down the brutality, but I also knew I had to convey the message of the hell-on-earth lifestyle that so many children must endure. Among the investigations I’ve worked, abuse cases have been some of the toughest and most rewarding of my career. There were not always happy endings, but I always felt that if my actions changed the course of a child’s life I had made an impact on the world.

How do you emotionally detach yourself from the tragic side of your work?

I spent nearly two hours trying to answer this question when I finally realized it could all be summed up in one succinct paragraph: What works for me is to understand that I do not work in the real world. The real world has much more good than evil or we’d really be in trouble.

Who are your favorite fictional detectives?

My all-time favorite was Lenny Briscoe of the old Law & Order shows (I loved his attitude and cheap suits); Harry Bosch, the protagonist in the series by Michael Connelly; Matthew Scudder, the police detective turned private eye in the Lawrence Block series and the list would not be complete without Andy Sipowicz of NYPD Blue—I’ve never met a cop who didn’t love his character.

Are you a patron of the Madison bookstore Booked for Murder?

Uh-oh, not really. I sent an e-mail and dropped off a sell sheet asking them to carry CC, but I don’t think it happened. I’ve been thinking that I might just drop of a copy for the owner and see if reading it will prompt her to stock some copies in her store.

What made you decide on a sequel to Casualty Crossing as opposed to a whole new plot, and can you give us a sneak peek at what Toby will be up to?

Primarily because I think the characters work so well that the reader will want to keep in touch with their endeavors. And of course, I enjoy the cast and have a lot of fun hanging out with them whenever I’m in the writing or development mode.

Hmmm ... a sneak peek at [third novel] Dogging Truth ... well, I can’t give too much away because it’s somewhat based on Casualty Crossing, but here’s a clue or two: This story is based on a murder in Madison in which a deputy sheriff is the defendant. TJ’s ex-wife, Elizabeth, just can’t leave well enough alone and conjures a way for the two of them to work together on the case, which leads to a very interesting journey that involves the cast of Casualty Crossing. Dogging Truth is set to be released on May 19 and around the first of the year, I’ll share a few more details with everyone on my website. In the works is Archer, the third in the series that will be published in 2010 ... can’t offer a clue on that one because a lot of it is still in my head, which means that all bets are off on where it will end up once the characters take over the keyboard.

When Memory Fades

It’s amazing what you find out about a person after they’re dead.
My grandmother, Elizabeth Sullivan Nardi, died two weeks ago at age 91. I read in her obituary that after she graduated from high school she worked at the Grit Newspaper in Williamsport, Pennsylvania. I had no idea anyone on my dad’s side of the family had any sort of a career in journalism. I didn’t have time to ask my grandfather what she did at the paper. I assume it was some sort of administrative work, but even still, it was fun to know that she and I had shared that kind of experience in our lives.

Nanny, as we nine grandkids called her, was my godmother and I her namesake—Elizabeth is my first name. She and my grandfather, Francis Anthony Nardi, moved into their small but brand-new brick bungalow in Harrisonburg, Virginia, in 1946, raised seven kids there, and until this summer when my grandmother suffered a stroke and moved to a nursing home, lived the respectable, small-town, middle-class life together. They were married for an unbelievable 67 years. Their house on 310 New York Avenue was just a few blocks from my junior high and high school, and so I spent lots of lunch hours and weekdays after school hanging out with Nanny and Pop-Pop. They were wonderful to my two older sisters and me—always proud of whatever we were up to and happy to have us around.

A few years ago, Nanny’s diabetes began to take its toll on her body, while dementia set in to play tricks on her mind. She had finally quit smoking on her 83rd birthday, and we all got a kick out of how she swore it was the reason she started feeling so cruddy after all those years of relatively good health. Thankfully, my aunt and several uncles were around to take care of Nan as her health declined. Pop is very healthy for 92 years old, but his knee aches a lot and, hell, it’s hard enough taking care of your own self at that age. I’ve often thought of how remarkable it is that they were able to stay in their home, and our family is grateful for the love and sacrifice their kids made to see to it that they were together for as long as possible.

When I saw Nanny for the final time last November, she was confined to a walker and spent most of her days nodding off in a recliner. As always, Pop wasn’t more than a holler away, poking around on the computer he’d discovered with joy a few years back. She was mostly blind and deaf, and we talked loudly and repeated ourselves for the hour or so we spent with her. She remembered who I was, though, and marveled at how far we’d driven to visit. We probably told her about the 1,000-mile trip from Wisconsin to Virginia four or five times that afternoon—she was always amazed by each rendition.

After I got back from the funeral last week, I was cleaning out some files and stumbled on a children’s book by a local author, Jeannie L. Johnson. It’s called Do You Have A Moon At Your House? and it’s the tale of a young girl named Madison, who is bewildered by her grandmother’s struggle with Alzheimer’s disease. The title is the question Grandma poses to Madison in the final passage of the book, after they share a lovely moment looking through a telescope one evening. “I felt it was a perfect story to help children learn about this painful disease that takes their loved ones away in degrees,” writes Johnson in the postscript, who also reveals that the book is based on the true story of her mother’s battle with Alzheimer’s. Johnson’s nephew, Lukas Gaffey, complements her very nice writing with lovely illustrations that capture the heart of the story. It’s a warm tribute to Johnson’s mother, and I’ll keep it around in case I have any friends or family who might benefit from the story’s intent.

As I read Johnson’s book I thought of my own grandmother’s memory loss over the last few years. It really bugged her, and she was harder on herself than I thought she would be when she couldn’t conjure up a name or finish a thought. I suppose … Nanny was no dummy. She knew what was happening to her and she didn’t like it one bit.

I’m pretty sure my grandmother’s stint at the Grit Newspaper was one of the last jobs she ever held. She was your typical 1950s housewife, busy raising six sons and a daughter like society expected. My uncles told some great stories at the funeral. My favorite is the one about how she’d pump up the boys before a big game. My dad and his brothers were short and skinny, so the pep talks had to be good. “It’s not about the dog in the fight,” she’d tell them. “It’s about the fight in the dog.” That’s pretty much how my grandmother lived her final days. I know they weren’t easy but she lived them with dignity and surrounded by love. Nanny was a tough broad, with lots of grit. I’m gonna miss her.

Editing at the Crossroads

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

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

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 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

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

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?

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

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

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 Northwoods 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.