Oshkosh Examiner announces expanded coverage of education, criminal justice

Based on reader feedback, a review of operations and concerns about the continuing decline in local news, the Oshkosh Examiner is pleased to announce that it intends to expand its coverage and to maintain its three-day-a-week publishing schedule.

The Examiner will increase its reporting on education and crime while opening its site to commentary from outside contributors. These are three areas that present opportunities for the Examiner to set itself apart from other local news outlets and to continue its mission of publishing “local facts that matter so that you can be smarter about your community.”

This is a back-to-basics shift that will result in somewhat fewer investigative or explanatory articles. But the change will result in closer and more consistent coverage of education and of the criminal justice system. 

The Examiner will continue to publish its Friday Focus, but most weeks the focus will either be on education or criminal cases in Winnebago County Circuit Court. The education stories will be based on regular coverage of school board meetings, and the crime stories will draw on court documents. From time to time on Fridays, the Examiner will publish a trend story on another topic or possibly a piece of commentary. 

Even in normal times, education is a vital interest to the community and critical to the future of the community. But these are not normal times, and how we teach young people, and help them recover from the effects of the pandemic, is something that everyone in Oshkosh has an important stake in. 

Some of the crime stories may be hard to read, but they are real. These accounts reflect actual situations that our fellow citizens are struggling through, sometimes as victims and sometimes as perpetrators. A community can’t hope to fix its problems unless it knows what they are. While some of these accounts may be startling, the Examiner will not be publishing graphic details or stories that don’t point to a community-wide concern. 

Traditionally education and crime have been bedrock news beats, but there is far less coverage in these areas in Oshkosh than there was even 10 years ago. One of the reasons why is the ongoing demise of Gannett, the corporate owner of the Oshkosh Northwestern. 

Gannett recently reported that it lost $54 million in the second quarter, and on Friday the company told employees that it was starting to cut staff and eliminate open positions. In Oshkosh, the company said it would take one of its local reporters and promote her into the dual rule of editing the paper here and the one in Fond du Lac. It is unclear when her reporting position will be filled.

A third area where the Examiner hopes to fill a journalistic void is local commentary. As all of us know, this is not the easiest time to express an opinion on any number of civic issues. Under the circumstances, it seems that providing a space for an exchange of ideas may be a way forward to reestablishing the practice of civil discourse. If you are interested in participating, please contact the editor at miles.maguire at oshkoshexaminer.com.