Wet, Wild….. Wisconsin? – The Dells as a Major Destination

Posted on by


Neal Karlen:

The lobby of the Kalahari Waterpark in the Wisconsin Dells at check-in time on a recent Saturday afternoon was equal parts Marx Brothers anarchy, Andy Hardy freckles and “Dude, Where’s My Car?” goofiness. Just as the line to the front desk began moving, five revelers barely into their teens hijacked an empty luggage rack, and with one pushing and four aboard, raced, shrieking, around the lobby, which seemed roughly the size of a par-three nine-hole golf course.

I quickly cruised the lobby in search of my friend Julia, a fine-arts administrator who did not want her last name used because she was embarrassed even to be seen in the Dells. Not finding her, I went back outside and ran into a traffic jam. The gridlock consisted mostly of two types of vehicles trying to get near this hostelry, which has a 125,000-square-foot indoor water park, the largest in the country. On the one hand were the monster-size recreational vehicles, which disgorged the incoming families. Going up against them were teenagers revving the engines of a score of pizza-delivery cars, lined up like impatient taxi drivers at the airport as they waited to drop off their wares and rush back for more.

Northwest Adds Milwaukee Flights – trying to kill Midwest Airlines

Posted on by

Tom Daykin:

In adding service to Denver, Northwest is creating another direct challenge to Midwest Airlines, which is owned by Oak Creek-based Midwest Air Group Inc. Northwest in February added daily service to Pittsburgh and Toronto, destinations also served by Midwest Airlines.

Note that Northwest is using cramped regional jets, which, I don’t believe will be much of a problem for Midwest to compete with.

Local Media: State Journal Selling Access?

Posted on by

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.

Jerry Brown on the Schiavo Case: Florida vs Texas

Posted on by

Jerry Brown:

The death of Sun Hudson – a 6-month-old with a fatal genetic disorder who was taken off life support against his mother’s wishes in a Texas hospital last week – adds some depth to the emotional debate over the fate of Terri Schiavo. The MSM are hanging on every twist and turn in the Schiavo case, and protesters have descended on Florida to denounce what they call “murder.”

Werblog: The End of Broadband Service?

Posted on by

Kevin Werbach muses on a recent anti-consumer broadband FCC decision that will prolong our slow broadband service….

The FCC reached a decision this week that could effectively end broadband service as we know it. The order hasn’t officially come out yet, but the result was leaked.
The FCC granted a petition by BellSouth to pre-empt state regulators from requiring “naked DSL.” The procedural aspects are convoluted, so the effect of that action may not be clear. Here’s what the FCC is saying. The local phone companies (and, although the ruling doesn’t specifically cover them, cable companies) are free to force customers to buy pay for phone service in order to get broadband. Whether or not you use the phone company’s voice service is immaterial — you have to pay for it. Although there are a few telcos willing to sell DSL as a stand-alone service (notably Qwest), one wonders if they will continue to do so.