Community Conversations

We invite you to Community Conversations: Costs and Coverage in a Time of Communications Changes at noon with Dave Skoloda and Rusty Cunningham. We meet from noon until 1:00 p.m. and lunch is served (free will offering for the lunch). These monthly conversations are sponsored by the Interfaith Leaders’ Coalition and hosted by English Lutheran Church.

Our February Conversation is Wednesday, February 19: Local News – Costs & Coverage in a Time of Communications Changes

Local newspapers have long been the prime source of credible and comprehensive news and information that we must have for self-governing and civic life. Yet, in the past decade and a half, nearly one in five newspapers nationally has disappeared. La Crosse is fortunate to still have its daily newspaper, but local news has not escaped the impact of the decline in newspaper advertising, the shift of readers and advertisers to digital sources and the hit to newspaper budgets. Two veteran local newspaper journalists discuss news in our town, the costs of coverage, and what’s at stake in this time of communications changes.

Dave Skoloda, who retired after some 60 years in journalism, wrote for the Milwaukee Journal for eight years where he won national awards for his reporting, was part owner and editor of a weekly newspaper in Lodi, Wis. and, for a dozen years, the papers in Onalaska and Holmen. In retirement, Skoloda is a frequent contributor to the opinion pages of the Tribune.

Rusty Cunningham is executive editor of the La Crosse Tribune and River Valley Media Group. He is a former publisher and an award-winning journalist who serves on the Wisconsin Freedom of Information Council and the Wisconsin Newspaper Association Foundation boards. Cunningham is the fourth consecutive generation of an Illinois journalism family.