Two words: Dave Begel. You may remember Dave Begel as a longtime Milwaukee theater critic and a longtime media person. You may remember Dave Begel as a former writer for OnMilwaukee and an unabashed strip club fan (“Let me start by saying I have been in strip clubs in big cities and small towns…”) You may remember Dave Begel as the author of OnMilwaukee‘s infamous “Top 10 Milwaukee foods to eat while you are driving.” You may remember Dave Begel as the inspiration for our own “I ate Dave Begel’s ‘Top 10 Milwaukee foods to eat while you are driving’ while I was driving.”
But now, Dave Begel will be known forevermore as something else: the creator of The New Milwaukee Journal. Yes, just last week, Dave Begel launched a new website called The New Milwaukee Journal. Again: Dave Begel launched a new website called The New Milwaukee Journal. Its mission? In an introductory post titled “A paper for the city,” Dave Begel writes:
The old Milwaukee Journal was one of the great regional newspapers in the country. No longer. Economics have forced incredible cuts. There are days when there are a dozen pages in the paper, and that counts the ads. Milwaukee needs another paper, unbiased, fair and interesting. That’s The New Milwaukee Journal. We will publish interesting stuff and important stuff.
Dave Begel goes on to list some of the people he hopes will contribute to The New Milwaukee Journal, like former Old Milwaukee Journal scribes Eugene Kane and Duane Dudek. Elsewhere, Dave Begel promises that The New Milwaukee Journal will contain “no rants.”
In a rant posted earlier this week, Dave Begel gets to the bottom of litter on our expressways and exclaims “Welcome to Milwaukee! Look at all Our Crap!” In a rant posted yesterday, Dave Begel gets to the bottom of parking tickets (long a thorn in his side) and exclaims “$14 Million in Parking Tickets. Holy Cow!” The latter’s lede:
It’s a war out there.
On one side are 60 sadistic devils who travel in bright white and blue jeeps, armed with paper missiles.
On the other side, there are the rest of us.
“I know this is a pipe dream, but you never can tell,” says Dave Begel on The New Milwaukee Journal‘s as-yet-unsullied GoFundMe page. “Dream on,” says Old Milwaukee Journal business reporter Tom Daykin.
