Morrissey No Longer on Radio, But His Snarky Voice Lives On New Blog

Longtime Waxing America friend Tim Morrissey isn't on Madison radio any more: our loss. His caustic personal view of local, state and national figures and events was a feature of his superior news coverage for more than 20 years here. 

A couple of months ago, Doug Moe reported in the Wisconsin State Journal that after being involved in one of the many recent purges of local media professionals, Morrissey had landed a sweet gig with the Wisconsin Broadcasters Association Foundation to build a resource website for Wisconsin broadcast news rookies. A useful and needed project for the green J-school grad at a live microphone trying to pronounce Oconomowoc and Minoqua.

The rest of us can now get access to Tim Morrissey's fertile and caustic mind at his new blog, The Ways Things R.  The current term is "snarky," but Tim accurately describes himself as "cranky, out-of-sorts, and generally pissed off about a lot of stuff."  Whether it's his take on the bonuses for UW-Madison coaches or on the need for an ordinance prohibiting "dooring" of bicyclists, we get plenty of Morrissey attitude.  Well-written and worth a click.

- Barry Orton 

Comments

[Hieronymous]

The decline of traditional news media and the erosion of the traditional line between the news and business sides of media companies is, in and of itself, enough to incur snarks from longtime practitioners of the only craft protected by the Constitution. Editors are losing their independence to the general managers, who naturally want happy advertisers and do not want to get heartburn when they go to lunch with an aggrieved customer.

Journalism under the thumb of the excecutive office inevitably suffers. This may help explain why Mssr. Soglin regards (correctly, I think) most webloggers as a bunch of nincompoops. Better if they just log off.

The news isn't going away and people need someone to bring them trustworthy and relevant information (and help them pronounce Lac Courte Oreilles). So snark on, Soglin and Orton and Morrissey. Voices like yours are our hope for the future.