It was a paper that led in this community. There were almost 400 hardworking and skilled journalists who blanketed the state and the city. The saying was that if something happened in Milwaukee, you could read about it in the paper. And the backbone of the paper – the envy of others around the country – was the strength of its local coverage. When I worked at the newspaper it was widely regarded as one of the best in the country.

It was another in a long line of assertions about how the newspaper is going to better serve readers and the city by cutting staff, shrinking the size of the paper, cutting features, cutting staff again, using a larger font and being sold to a giant media chain. The latest peal of the death knell came over the weekend in one of those notes to readers from editor George Stanley. Stanley outlined coming changes, including the merging of several sections into one, cutting some features either entirely or to alternate weeks and the return of 'Parade' magazine on Sunday. But I don’t see or hear much sadness about what’s happened to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. When a loved one dies, the family obviously mourns. Since those days, I never wrote another death notice.Īs sad as it makes me, I am faced with the reluctant task of writing another obituary, this one for the local newspaper in the City of Milwaukee. When I was starting out in the world of journalism, one of my jobs was to write the obituaries for Wisconsin soldiers who had been killed in Vietnam. The question, and it may not be easily answered, is whether anyone under the age of 50 actually cares that Milwaukee is virtually without a daily newspaper.

Sunday milwaukee journal obituaries