I don’t live in Portage Wisconsin but I happened to be in that area the other day and, like I usually try to do whenever I’m in a community for a night, I ended up picking up a copy of their local newspaper; the Daily Register.
I have to tell you, the people in that community should feel lucky to have a paper like that.
I have made it no secret that I’m not a huge fan of my hometown paper. I think it relies too much on the AP wire and doesn’t print enough local news; unless you count stories from 20 or 30 miles away as local.
The Daily Register is the exact opposite of my hometown paper (even though I do think they are owned by the same company).
First, I was impressed with how much local news was in the paper. Almost the entire first page was local articles. And, when I say local, I mean stories that took place right in the city limits or in one of the communities a short drive away. I’m not talking something that might have happened in Madison, a half hour drive from there. Considering this is a paper that is in the same readership area as the much larger Wisconsin State Journal, this is a big plus for the citizens who probably wouldn’t get local coverage from that larger paper.
And, it was a good mix of articles too, ranging from hard news like court cases and police stories to feature stories and local sports stories; things my local paper just doesn’t provide for me. The paper wasn’t overly thick and probably was a bit more expensive than it was worth. But, I’m willing to overlook that somewhat considering this is a rough economy and there aren’t many people advertising right now. After all, the size of the paper is always going to be determined by the number of businesses placing ads inside it.
The editing left a little to be desired. Some of the photos seemed a little off-centered and there were a lot of spelling errors. The latter can almost be forgiven a bit though considering it is a small enough paper where I figured they don’t have a full-time proofreader on staff. As a former newspaper reporter myself, I can tell you it’s hard to proofread your own work when you are on a deadline; even with spell check.
But, the one thing that could definitely have been improved on was the placement of some of the stories. It’s one thing to get a good mix of stories on the front page (which, again, was almost all local news) but there were some stories that probably were better suited for the front page than the ones chosen and they were buried in the paper instead. That shows me they lack an experienced person running the show. Either that, or they aren’t very good at that part of their job.
I’m sure there are those in the Portage area that hate their newspaper. I’ve written for enough in the past to know that you will always have people like that. Personally though, I think they should count their blessings that they even have a newspaper and they have one that actually gives them news that pertains to them rather than some community in a different part of the state; like a certain paper I’m very familiar with at home.

Rating: 6