Now, newly emerged public documents show that as long ago as 2000, Administrator Dean Zuleger (left) was claiming extraordinarily favorable coverage in the Wisconsin daily, a warning sign of a possibly too-cozy relationship with a paper that was supposed to be his watchdog.I'm still sifting through the documents, part of Zuleger's public personnel file, which I got yesterday under Wisconsin open-records law. I don't know whether his monitoring of the paper continued in the years that followed.
Zuleger got paid $123,000 last year in base salary and a special $5,000 bonus, making him one of the state's highest-paid professional administrators. The following is from an undated annual self-evaluation.
Task: As town administrator, acts as "public information officer for Village of Weston, keeping news media informed and current."
Grade Zuleger gave self: D/E (an "E" is exceptional, an "A" needs improvement)
In a comment, he wrote: "Since 3/20/00 we have appeared in the WDH 73 times. 68 positives, 4 negative, 1 neutral."
I got the documents after filing a request under Wisconsin state law. Cost: $14.77 for copying charges and postage.
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Bumping my comment to the most current thread on this topic.
ReplyDelete(I'm 5/07/2009 9:01 AM)
10:08 PM wrote:
Mike Beck screwed up. He made a mistake. There's no conspiracy. He's a good guy who made a mistake."
It was very bad judgment.
It was a good thing that corporate reminded everyone to shore up the firewall between newspaper coverage and access and personal friendships.
On the surface, it looks like Mr. Beck and the Wausau city PR guy were buddy buddy. The city guy didn't like it that he was being mocked in comments in the paper. He asked a FAVOR and it looks like Beck granted it. Doesn't that seem WRONG to YOU?
Beck is an editor and he is unlikely to lose his job over this "mistake." But what if the information had come from a reporter or mid-level editor? How do you think they would have fared at a time when corporate is pushing Gannett papers to shed employees?
What I want to see is the Wausau city council or citizens to take some action against a sleazy city employee who tried to bully a private citizen by threatening him with a lawsuit because he suggested that a fat guy was disagreeable and fat.
$123,000 for a PIO. Wow! He'd better be getting all positive stories for that salary.
ReplyDeleteWow, how stupid of that WDH editor. IF Zulueger had gone over to the poster's house and ranted and they had come to blows or he had assaulted the poster then the editor and newspaper could have been sued bigtime. How utterly stupid to give that info out. Where i work we are not even allowed to give the shipping address of a fraud order out to the credit card holder whose card was used fraudulently to place the order! Why? Because we could be sued if ever the credit card owner decided to go to the thief's house and shoot him or beat him up, etc. We basically have to protect the rotten, lousy thief at the expense of the card's owner! In any case, did Beck think the fact that he gave out that private info would not get out??
ReplyDelete