Bill Novak:

Community activists upset with the Wisconsin State Journal for including a seat on an advisory panel with a $25,000 sponsorship package for a new business journal took their protest to the newspaper offices this morning.

State Journal Publisher Jim Hopson and Editor Ellen Foley met with a half-dozen activists from nonprofit organizations. Both emphatically denied that access to the State Journal is for sale.

“We do not sell access to the State Journal,” Hopson said. “We give it away freely.”

Interesting to see this surface in the State Journal’s sister publication, the Capital Times. Both own and operate Capital Newspapers, a joint operating company where its monopoly is protected by the Newspaper Preservation Act of 1970. Background on the 1970 Act: Clusty. Somewhat related, Jay Rosen is calling for the de-certification of the press. The Economist (paid link) also jumps in:

Behind all this lies a shift in the balance of power in the news business. Power is moving away from old-fashioned networks and newspapers; it is swinging towards, on the one hand, smaller news providers (in the case of blogs, towards individuals) and, on the other, to the institutions of government, which have got into the business of providing news more or less directly. Eventually, perhaps, the new world of blogs will provide as much public scrutiny as newspapers and broadcasters once did. But for the moment the shifting balance of power is helping the government behemoth.