When Will The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel Drop Rick Esenberg’s Blog?

There’s been some conversation on Facebook about Christian Schneider’s op ed pieces in MJS. Liberal posters have accused him of being a hack and a direct mouthpiece of the Republican Party of Wisconsin. MJS editor Ernst-Ulrich Franzen stepped up to defend him as a paid columnist. All well and good…well not really good…but you know what I mean.

But that brings up MJS’s relationship with Rick Esenberg. Mr. Esenberg as far as I know isn’t a paid columnist…he’s a very very conservative blogger in their Purple Wisconsin blogs. There are quite a few bloggers in Purple Wisconsin from both the right and the left…all well and good. And Mr. Esenberg makes good use of his access to the blog. He’s published 8 articles during the month of June. That doesn’t seem like a lot but when you consider that he’s got a full time gig as President and General Counsel of the Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty and is an adjunct at Marquette University’s Law School…you wonder where he finds the time.

But here is the rub: As President and General Counsel of the Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty, Mr. Esenberg has become a news maker…not just a blogger anymore. And I included quotes from him in my post about voucher schools earlier this evening.

And he’s quoted in this MJS article and this one and this one and this one. That’s just in the last 30 days…but you get the picture.

It’s not a bad thing when politicians or business people or educators or other citizens are allowed to write the occasional op ed piece for the paper…and even Mr. Esenberg would be expected to appear in that role from time to time. But I think it’s time his tenure at Purple Blue came to an end…allowing him to continue to have that platform seems a bit of a conflict of interest for the MJS. Or of course they could stop looking to him as a news source…naw…that’s too much to expect.

BTW: I wouldn’t have really noticed except I was trying to find the two articles on line that I used in the voucher school article and the open records article tonight. I had the hard copy in hand. I knew who the authors were. I knew the topics. I searched and searched the JSOnline site and they wouldn’t come up. I had to Google them to find the articles. But when I tried Esenberg as search term on JSOnline for the voucher article, I found how many blogs he’s published and how many times the MJS has used him for a source in the past 30 days.

BTW II: As a long time subscriber…I really would appreciate a more robust search engine on JSOnline…really…it’s 2014!

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3 thoughts on “When Will The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel Drop Rick Esenberg’s Blog?

  1. Ed, thanks.

    Walker uses taxpayer dollars through his WEDC (Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation) to buy advertising from the Journal Sentinel.

    My guess is a bunch of oligarchs own JRN stock.

    An actual plus of Esenberg being on the Editorial page is that it marginally reduces the oligarch’s pressure the on the JS Newsroom.

  2. And from the “Mo Qwater,” (say it quickly) MJS reporter mouth-piece, Dan Bice, positively remembering who he gets a pay check from, we are informed of the obvious that might be anticipated by any political party when their main opponent is on the ropes for half of a news cycle. Controversy about wrong doing by the TOP Republicans and mundane LEGAL party political actions brought in to distract and disarm the real story.

    With that kind of “fair and balanced,” from the state paper of record, expect to see much more of Esenberg.

  3. Sure, because the MJS is so right of center……. LOL. Just enjoy your liberal media bias and stop whining about the one view that proves all if yours false.

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