(Madison) – Local WKOW anchor Christa Dubill today announced that she would be accepting applications for a crazy person to become her personal stalker. Dubill expressed her irritation that nobody had yet come forward to serve as her stalker, despite her tenure as the station’s premier female news anchor.

“All of the groundbreaking female anchors throughout history have had some delusional individual on their tail,” said Dubill. “What’s wrong with me? I check my e-mail every day, and nothing. It’s all women wanting to talk about their babies and crap like that.”

“I work my tail off on the newscasts, and that hussy Elizabeth Hopkins gets all the good stalker mail,” Dubill complained. “It’s all ‘I want to touch your booty’ this, and ‘I want to test your melons’ that. Why doesn’t anyone want to touch my booty?” asked Dubill.

Hopkins admitted she has gotten plenty of stalker e-mail, but clarified that 72% of it is comprised offers to “love you down” by a “P. Barrows” at the University of Wisconsin.

Dubill noted that Channel 27 weatherman and stone-cold lover Bob Lindmeier has a bus full of adoring female fans waiting for him at the end of every broadcast. Lindmeier has said that he provides each member of his female fan club with the “4 minute guarantee.” His popularity has grown in recent years, since the weather forecast now takes up 28 minutes of a 30 minute news broadcast.

\”What better story could there be than me hunting down my own stalker?\” said Dubill. \”I\’m tired of sitting behind this desk reading all the dopey news that other people write for me,\” she said. \”This could be my big break,\” she said.

A controversy arose recently when Channel 3 editoral director Neil Heinen was bragging about his stalker, and it was discovered that \”chubbyluvn3000@hotmail.com\” was actually Heinen sending e-mails to himself. The plot was uncovered when police failed to believe than anyone other than Heinen himself could understand his ridiculously disjointed, hot air editorials.

Potential stalker Oscar Kreutzer, 27, when reached in his parents\’ basement for comment, said he’s been too busy making paper mache dolls of Becky Hiller to be sidetracked.

Given Dwyane Wade\’s ascendance to the top of the basketball world, I thought I\’d look back at his beginnings as a Marquette Warrior, just to see how far he\’s come.

From the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, November 2, 1999 (his first mention):

It was really quite simple. Dwayne Wade telephoned his longtime Illinois Warriors teammate from Amateur Athletic Union basketball, Odartey Blankson, and together they reached the same conclusion. Marquette University was the school for both of them. So together, they made a three-way call to Tom Crean late Monday night to give him the news.

As a result, the Golden Eagles received their final two oral commitments from Wade, a 6-foot-4 guard from Oak Lawn Richards High School in suburban Chicago, and Blankson, a 6-6 guard from Hillcrest High, also in suburban Chicago. Wade and Blankson round out an MU recruiting class for next season that includes 6-9 center Scott Merritt of Wauwatosa East and 6-7 forward Terry Sanders, a former Milwaukee Vincent player now at Hargrave Military Prep School in Virginia.

Both Blankson and Wade, who have played with or against each other since the eighth grade, said they were being pursued by Marquette\’s Conference USA rival De Paul. But both opted for Marquette because they liked the persistence of first-year coach Crean, the chance to play at the Bradley Center and the opportunity to work out against the Milwaukee Bucks in the off-season during open gym. \”I like the situation at Marquette,\” Blankson said. \”Crean is really energetic. I know he is going to get it done.\”Blankson had been recruited by former MU coach Mike Deane and also by Notre Dame and Iowa State.

De Paul wanted Wade badly, and he liked the program and its players.\”But I felt I could fit in at Marquette better,\” Wade said. \”I\’ve been thinking about this for a while. Marquette is really trying to recruit good people.\”

Wade averaged 20 points at Richards, which made it to the Class AA sectional finals. He set a school record with 87 steals last season.

Illinois prep basketball star Dwyane Wade has made an oral commitment to play at Marquette University next year. His name was spelled incorrectly in a story in the Sports section Tuesday.

MARQUETTE\’S TROPHY CATCH; Golden Eagles lure Wade from De Paul\’s grip
LORI NICKEL of the Journal Sentinel staff

Oak Lawn, Ill.– It\’s good business to have Quentin Richardson serve as your leading scorer, rebounder and big buddy for recruits, especially when he\’s the hero for so many Chicago-area hopefuls who are suddenly turned on by De Paul.

But even Richardson\’s charm couldn\’t reel in Oak Lawn Richards star Dwyane Wade. Wade wasn\’t wooed by the promise of playing time by the Blue Demons. He wasn\’t persuaded by his coach at Richards, Jack Fitzgerald, who is good friends with De Paul women\’s coach Doug Bruno. He wasn\’t even convinced by Richards assistant coach Gary Adams, once Richardson\’s grammar school coach, to stay at home. \”I went somewhere I felt the coaches wanted me and the teammates wanted me,\” Wade
said.

So he signed the letter of intent to play at Marquette.\”De Paul really didn\’t jump on me as hard as Marquette did,\” Wade said. \”I talked to all the Marquette coaches almost every other day. De Paul kind of laid off me a little bit, then they came back. They were playing tag with me.\”Of Marquette\’s four-man recruiting class expected to arrive next fall, Wade was the sleeper given his advanced skills and impressive on-court attitude. He wasn\’t in any recruiting expert\’s top 100 class a year ago. But it\’s obvious now what a find he was for Marquette coach Tom Crean.

Wade averages 27 points, 11 rebounds, three assists and five steals per game, partly because he is the star for Richards (21-4, 10-0 in the SICA North Conference). But he also hustles whether the Bulldogs are up by one point or 20. The Marquette coaching staff will fall in love with his backboard radar. He is always going after the boards and he has huge hands for scooping up rebounds, especially offensive ones.\”I
know (those are) easy points. I watch Quentin Richardson do it all the time,\” Wade said.

At 6 feet 4 inches, he can jump, so he can play on the blocks. He\’s versatile enough to play the point when teams try to trap Richards\’ small point guard. Yet Wade might be only a partial qualifier next year. If he doesn\’t get the necessary standardized test scores, he will be limited to just practice next season.\”I understand what the colleges are doing with this ACT stuff,\” Fitzgerald said. \”But if there\’s any reason why standards should not be what they are, he\’s the reason. He came from a very, very poor grammar school elementary district (in Crestwood, Ill.).\”He\’s worked hard to improve himself in every area, and yet he\’s maybe not going to be able to play basketball next year. He could cut it in any curriculum, with the exception of maybe the Ivy League schools, you know what I am saying? You talk to any teacher on this staff and they love him. He comes to school every day, he\’s working hard.\”I feel bad
that he is in that situation. That he could possibly be labeled a Prop 48 every time he takes a free throw, I think it\’s sad and I think it\’s ridiculous, and I\’m resentful of it.\”

Wade took the ACT recently and will keep taking it. He is the only one in the Marquette recruiting class who presents a concern for qualifying. Scott Merritt of Wauwatosa East and Odartey Blankson of Hillcrest High in Country Club Hills, Ill., already have qualified, and Terry Sanders of Hargrave Military Academy in Chatham, Va., said he was very close.

Wade met future teammate Blankson at the Blue Island recreation center in Illinois, and they called Crean together back in the fall to tell him they were both signing on. Blankson\’s Hillcrest High was one of the few to defeat Richards this year. Wade\’s only limitation has been his knees, which have been painful because, he said, he is having growing pains. His jump shot needs work to become consistent, as well. Wade was 3 for 22 in one game this season, although he still came away with 15 points and 10 rebounds.\”He\’s kind of a streaky shooter,\” Fitzgerald said. \”He either hits it or he clangs it.\”Every day last summer, Adams, a retired public schools teacher, picked up Wade and brought him to the hot gym for 500 to 600 shots a day. Wade scored 48 points in a morning semifinal game of the St. Xavier Christmas tournament. Then in the evening finals that same day, he scored 41.\”I was hot,\” Wade said with a laugh. \”That was the day Marquette came to the game, too.\”

Wade was named the player of the month by the Chicago Tribune for January and has led the Bulldogs to a top-15 ranking in both the Chicago Tribune and the Sun-Times. He is also getting Chicago player of the year consideration.

Yesterday, the Wisconsin State Journal announced in a front page, above the fold headline that recently convicted legislators may be able to collect the pensions that they had accrued during years of service. Today, in the most predictable editorial ever, the State Journal makes the shocking claim that they oppose these legislators being able to collect their pensions, something that was inherently clear given the story the day before.

Set aside, for a moment, the likely unconstitutionality of yanking these pensions away from the elected officials, regardless of how little they actually deserve them. Does the State Journal really want to set the precedent of pulling away benefits from workers who they believe don\’t deserve them, but have rightfully earned them over years of service? If a State Journal editor signed up for a job with a retirement benefit agreement in place, then worked for 20 years before being caught soliciting minors on the internet, would they think it was fair to have to give back 20 years of benefits? I doubt it.

What is noticeable about this editorial, however, is how often a paper will do some \”investigative\” journalism that is supposed to get a reader to think a certain way about an issue, then immediately follow up that story with an editorial that perfectly echoes the sentiment of the preceding article. In fact, in some cases, you have to wonder whether the editorial was actually written first, and they needed the story to give their opinion some cover.

For example:

On March 21st of 2006, Steve Walters of the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel wrote an article informing readers that the legal bills of the convicted legislators would be paid for with tax money (something that had been known for about four years.) On March 22nd, an editorial appeared in the Journal Sentinel denouncing the practice of paying legal bills with tax money.

On April 13th of 2006, Patrick Marley of the Journal Sentinel wrote an article critical of legislators for exploiting a 30 year old law that allows them to toss their records when they leave office. On April 17th, the editorial board printed an editorial supporting the view that you were supposed to get from Marley\’s article that something untoward was afoot. In fact, the Wisconsin State Journal even jumped in the fray, criticizing the law and the legislators. Perhaps their vitriol is merely embarrassment for being the official state newspaper and clearly not knowing this law existed for 30 years.

On December 26th of 2005, the Journal Sentinel printed a story about State Senators voting by what are known as \”paper ballots.\” Despite this being a virtually uncontested practice for 30 years, the article was clearly trying to get the reader to think this was some sinister plot to keep votes away from the public (despite the results of the voting being public record). Sure enough, on December 28th, the Journal Sentinel editorial board denounced this practice of \”secret\” voting.

Of course, editorial boards can feel free to editorialize about anything they want. But in these cases, and many, many, more, their editorials are clearly companion pieces to their supposedly neutral news articles. It lends the appearance that many times, they have made up their mind on certain practices or stories before the news is even written.

It\’s not even as if some of the things for which they advocate are even bad ideas. But it\’s pretty clear that they are advocating in their news articles, then using their editorials to drive their point home. Maybe their reporters appreciate getting backup from their editorial boards. Maybe they try to keep the story alive for a couple more days with an editorial. But this happens time after time after time, which leaves many readers wondering whether there truly is a bright line between the news and editorial departments. An editorial board shaping the content of the news department would certainly run counter to the mission of any legitimate newspaper.