Dec

24

Before the Sports Broadcasting Act: Professional Football Fifty Years Ago

Posted by: | December 24, 2011 | Leave a Comment

Warning:  This essay contains pure, unadulterated nostalgia for the professional sports regime of the middle third of 20th century America. I remember watching the 1960 World Series on television, but the first year that I really followed major league baseball was 1961, the year of Roger Maris and Mickey Mantle’s historic assault on Babe Ruth’s [...]

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Oct

10

Do We Need an Anti-Siphoning Act in the United States?

Posted by: | October 10, 2011 | 1 Comment

The remarkable Milwaukee Brewers have now reached the second round of the Major League Baseball play-offs, but many Brewers fans have yet to have the opportunity to stay at home and watch the team play post-season games on television. The reason, of course, is that this year all first round play-off games as well as [...]

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Jul

6

The Shocking Testing Scandal in Atlanta

Posted by: | July 6, 2011 | 2 Comments

I don’t think “Bad Teacher,” the movie currently playing in theaters, is going to do damage to the reputation of teachers or education in general across the United States. It may be gross, dumb, tasteless, and a lot of other things, but it’s a movie.  People can grasp that it’s not a documentary. But the [...]

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Jun

20

The Media and Dominique Strauss-Kahn

Posted by: | June 20, 2011 | 1 Comment

Last month I was contacted by the Italian newspaper Il Foglio and interviewed regarding criminal proceedings against Dominique Strauss-Kahn.  A French banker and head of the International Monetary Fund, Strauss-Kahn has been charged with sexually assaulting a maid for the $3000-a- night hotel suite in which he was staying in New York City.  To my [...]

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Mar

21

What? Pay to Get the News?

Posted by: | March 21, 2011 | 1 Comment

So what’s the New York Times worth to me? And how high are the stakes attached to the answers that I and millions others will give in coming weeks? Are people ready and willing to pay to get stories from the Times? How about from other news organizations – the Washington Post, the Los Angeles [...]

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Mar

11

The Morning After: Lessons From the Wisconsin Budget Battle

Posted by: | March 11, 2011 | Leave a Comment

At last the end game has arrived for the budget bill, after more than three weeks of deadlock in Madison.  Indeed, it was obvious to everyone that the impasse could not persist, and that the only two options available were either a compromise (unlikely) or the eventual adoption of Governor Walker’s bill intact. Wisconsin’s largest newspaper, [...]

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Mar

4

Best of the Blogs: The Mess in Madison

Posted by: | March 4, 2011 | 4 Comments

This month’s Best of the Blogs feature takes a look at the budget debate in Madison.  In my opinion, it is myopic to focus solely on the budgetary aspects of the ongoing debate.  This is a raw political struggle, in which Governor Walker has attacked the primary source of campaign funding for Democrats.  The debate [...]

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Mar

1

Borsuk Honored for “Building a Better Teacher” Series

Posted by: | March 1, 2011 | Leave a Comment

Alan J. Borsuk, senior fellow in law and public policy at the Law School, was named a winner Monday in a major national education journalism competition. Borsuk was honored for his role in the project, “Building a Better Teacher,” which ran on the front page of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel for eight consecutive Sundays in [...]

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May

31

The Reporter’s Privilege Goes Incognito in Wisconsin

Posted by: | May 31, 2010 | 1 Comment

Few professional groups in our society are less popular than journalists, so it’s a rare occasion when legislators – obsessed as they are with reelection – take actions specifically designed to help the press. The Wisconsin Legislature showed some of that political bravery this month when it passed the state’s first reporter’s shield law (although [...]

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May

24

Can Google-TV Help Liberate Cable-TV?

Posted by: | May 24, 2010 | Leave a Comment

Tech nerds and media junkies have been buzzing lately about Google’s announcement that it will soon rollout Google-TV — a new device/platform that will turn people’s televisions into portals for online video and other web content. Google representatives unveiled the project last week at a developers conference where they staged a Steve Jobs-like showcase that [...]

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Apr

7

Televising the Supreme Court

Posted by: | April 7, 2010 | 1 Comment

Last month, Tony Mauro published a column in the National Law Journal (found here), highlighting the results of a public-opinion poll that researchers at Farleigh Dickinson University conducted to determine the level of support for televising proceedings at the Supreme Court.  Sixty-one percent of Americans, the poll found, believed that televising the Court’s proceedings would [...]

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Feb

25

International Media and Conflict Resolution

Posted by: | February 25, 2010 | Leave a Comment

I’ve just received my new copy of the Marquette Law Review, which includes a fascinating collection of papers on the role of the media in international conflict resolution.  This symposium issue emerged from the Law School’s conference on this topic last spring, which was organized by Professors Andrea Schneider and Natalie Fleury.  In her introductory [...]

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