There’s an interesting story coming out of the Wisconsin recall election. The latest polls show Wisconsin governor, Scott Walker, in a virtual dead heat with Tom Barrett, his most likely opponent. This comes despite a huge advantage in advertising spending by Walker.

John Jackson, a veteran political scientist at the Paul Simon Public Policy Institute at Southern Illinois University, recently told a room of newspaper editors that the media are partly to blame for the misperception held by most residents of Southern Illinois that they don’t get their fair share from the government.

Almost eight of ten residents of the 18 southern counties in Illinois told Simon pollsters that they got less than their fair share in state spending. Jackson says that clearly false belief results partly from shallow media coverage.

As the Christian Science Monitor enters its fourth year as a “Web-first” operation, it seems an appropriate time to see where the news product now stands.

After about 100 years of publication, the Monitor indeed has changed. Once considered by most media experts to be an elite print daily newspaper, it’s a bit unclear whether it still is a newspaper, or rather a weekly print magazine with daily online trappings. And can such a bifurcated product, with a niche all its own, still be considered “elite,” when it has no real products with which it might be compared?

The USA Today ran a piece about the plight of many college newspapers and their uncertain future. Gateway Journalism Review’s next issue devotes a portion of its magazine to this issue. What problems do college newspapers face and what are they doing to alleviate those problems.

This issue affects more than just college campuses. College newspapers are breeding grounds for tomorrow’s journalists. Tomorrow’s professionals are today’s students. Perhaps the answers to today’s problems in the professional newsroom will be answered by the innovations needed in college newsrooms. Or maybe college newspapers will continue to try the methods professional newsrooms are using. Maybe students can make them work.

Late in the 20th century college newspapers seemed to be weathering the newspaper industry’s financial downturn better than most professional dailies. That’s no longer the case.

The latest college paper to make death-rattle headlines is the Daily Illini at the University of Illinois in Champaign where movie critic alum Roger Ebert is helping raise money for the paper where he got his start.

Populist philosopher Will Rogers once said, “I’m not a member of any organized political party; I’m a Democrat.” This political season, though, it seems to be Republicans, not Democrats, feeding on their political young. Will’s likely turning in his grave in astonishment.

Will also said, “There can be no higher law in journalism than to tell the truth and to shame the devil.” But would Will think that journalists this political season are being all that accurate in their truth-telling? Amid all the political horserace hoopla, are Americans instead being fed a media diet laced with indigestible half-truths?

Two announcements from GateHouse Media draw attention to the newest trend used by media corporations to cut costs and consolidate production. On Jan. 18 the Illinois Times, an online newspaper covering Springfield, Ill., reported about staff reductions at the Springfield Journal-Register. (story) To cut costs, the story reported the Journal-Register would lay off up to a dozen copy editors and page designers over the course of the summer, and that the Journal-Register would send its copy to a central publishing desk outside of Springfield.

On Feb. 8 the Rockford Register Star announced that Rockford would hire 60 or more staff to work the new central desk to be housed in Rockford. All GateHouse Media newspapers with circulations more than 5,000 will be sent to the hub in Rockford. Newspapers with circulations of less than 5,000 will be sent to a hub in Framingham, Mass.

Hundreds of journalists from around the world will convene at the St. Louis Union Station Marriott Feb. 23-26 to share strategies and discuss the latest trends in data journalism during Investigative Reporters & Editors’ annual Computer-Assisted Reporting Conference.