LIVING HERE
The Geneva Shore Report staff reads every issue of the Lake Geneva Regional News that is published, from beginning to end.
Sometimes, there’s really interesting stuff in that paper the GSR has not covered or even heard about. A week ago, the former Managing Editor, John Halverson, published the best opinion editorial he’s ever written in the GSR staff’s opinion. It was about revisiting the old Regional News building on Broad Street that’s been closed since the Pandemic hit. It was a sad but so deeply sincere opinion piece about how the newspaper has gone from a vibrant media organization staffed by over twenty employees and owned by one family into a shadow or mask of itself, staffed by seven employees, with no real office and losing its identity.
The fact that the Regional News published the editorial surprised the staff of the GSR. The GSR publisher would never have allowed the piece to appear in the GSR as it was just too much of a sad attack on that newspaper’s attempt to survive. The GSR wants the Regional News to succeed and make a comeback. The GSR likes being the alternative media and not the official news organ of the city. The Regional News once again gave Halverson a free license to take it apart in this week’s following opinion article. Halverson offered up the idea that the Lake Geneva area isn’t getting much of the news and that he would encourage the creation of a new leaflet or pamphlet that should be placed in every citizen’s mailbox. That John has no idea that such papers, not sent through the USPS system cannot be placed in mailboxes legally is understood but also where would these news articles come from that would appear in this new ‘reach out everyone’ sort of production? John didn’t mention that such news would be his own opinion.
In one discussion with the publisher of the GSR years ago, John indicated that the Regional News was all fact and the GSR was all opinion. The GSR publisher asked him how many stories he got in a week and how many of them could he publish because of limited space and expense. John thought for a moment and then said, “About half.” The GSR publisher informed him that the stories he didn’t cover would never have their contents revealed and it was his opinion what news would reach the public, just as it was the same for the GSR. News is all opinion, even if it’s only to choose what’s going to be published or not. John did not mention the GSR in either of his recent articles.
We, the staff of the GSR, have some advice if he wants to start his news organ. He will likely need 13 years to build to the kind of following it has taken the GSR to get to. He will also need about three million dollars to pay for the effort. John Halverson doesn’t believe that the Regional News, Nancy over at 96.1 FM, nor the GSR do a sufficient job getting the news to the local public. To that, the staff of the GSR says, “Come on John, give it a go!” As far as the city having its own newsletter, well, who would write it and send out five thousand copies every week (not to mention the work, pain, and expense of doing that) when the city can’t even get its act together enough to write much at all on its website?
