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A Wisconsin company is looking to change the media landscape and the way citizens consume information by focusing on truthful local news reporting and a restoration of civil public discourse, broadcasting concepts which have been degraded by increasing corporate consolidation in the media industry. It’s called Civic Media and it now owns and operates 20 radio stations and has an online presence statewide.
It’s the brainchild of Sage Weil, a 46-year-old former open-source software engineer for dot-com startups who moved to Wisconsin in 2016 and founded Civic Media in 2022. In an interview with Shepherd Express, Weil said he had been bothered by the “prevalence of misinformation and disinformation in the corporate media ecosystem,” especially from right wing media outlets. He said the current state of media has contributed to harmful societal division and rancor.
“I heard a talk about it and what struck me most was how the radio space in particular is one of the most effective conduits for spreading disinformation. I was stunned by how profitable that entire endeavor has been,” Weil said. “So, when I decided to switch careers, I looked for the most strategic way to invest my time and money to help improve political dialogue and to address rising polarization and toxicity in our current environment. Media stood out to me as the place where we need to focus on building audiences by bringing them news and information that is truthful and credible and actually relevant to their lives.”
Recipe for Voter Frustration
Weil, using his own money and some from investors, began buying small market radio stations, many of which were struggling to afford the level of staffing it takes to produce local content, especially local news. “Our structural assessment of the problems with the media ecosystem is that, with the death of local newspapers and local media, people’s attention has shifted by default to national news,” Weil said. “Their understanding of local realities then gets filtered by whatever national media platforms they’re consuming and that makes politics more dysfunctional. It’s a recipe for exacerbation of voter frustration and apathy and it creates a disconnect between what people perceive to be real and not real.
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“There is no longer any agreement on what is fact,” he continued. “What we found is that the markets where we are most successful are the smaller communities which have largely been abandoned by the newspaper industry and where there isn’t a lot of local news and information available.”
Weil says the mission of Civic Media is to restore local radio and their attendant digital platforms as trusted sources of information in those communities. “We want to refocus attention on state and local markets where people know the parties involved and better understand how the issues have a direct impact on our daily lives,” he said. “Our marginal political power is much greater when the issues tend to be less partisanly coded and less polarizing. It’s easier to build consensus when the conversations about them are more respectful and constructive. Everybody wants their local school to succeed, for example, and they want to know how a particular major policy consideration will affect people they know personally.”
Echo Chambers
As Civic Media arrived on the scene, many described it as simply being a left-wing version of right-wing media outlets which dominate the airwaves. It’s a characterization to which Weil bristles. “I don’t subscribe to that theory,” he said. “Those sorts of echo chambers just make it more difficult to talk to each other. We try to make our content inviting, conversational, engaging and as open minded as possible. There is certainly a leftward lean which comes through with most of our hosts but that’s hard not to have when our foundational motivating principles of our organization are pro-democracy and support of working people and communities. It’s a simple reality that many of the policies of the right are misaligned with that. But at the end of the day, we are not here to shill for Democrats.”
Chris Moreau, who is Civic Media’s statewide vice president of sales and also serves as general manager for the company’s news and talk station WAUK in Milwaukee and for WRJN in Racine, agrees with Weil. “We’re not hanging our hat on left, right, liberal or conservative. We hang ours on providing unbiased, truthful and straight-ahead news that tries to weed out misinformation which is exploitative. We’re based on reality and just giving the facts,” Moreau said.
“We shun the progressive label because that just turns off 50-percent of the potential audience,” said Kathryn Lake, who is station manager at the company’s flagship, WMDX in Madison. “Yes, we have hosts with progressive opinions, but their analysis is fair. But we also have Republican hosts, and we know how to reach out to people from across the political spectrum who will have fair and balanced discussions with us.”
Reversing the Trend
While Civic Media is itself a corporate entity, its size pales in comparison to the giants which now control much of the media environment. For larger media conglomerates, the bottom line and a return on shareholder investment is paramount and it has resulted in many radio stations turning to nationally syndicated programming which is less expensive to put on the air than paying salaries for local talent. Weil hopes to reverse the trend.
“You have some heritage stations in local markets that are still doing local news, but they tend to be run by independent owners who have a hard time competing in the digital age,” Weil said. “The reality is that they lack resources and sophistication, so they don’t have good websites, they don’t stream, and they don’t have a solid social media presence. It’s just very difficult at such a small scale to compete in that world. So, the niche we try to fit into is to combine the scale of a statewide network with leaning into a local content strategy across all of those platforms. We’re trying to fill the void that occurs when traditional local media collapses.”
Lake said there is always nervousness at independent local stations when a corporate owner takes over because it usually involves significant budget and staff cuts. She said it has been a different situation with Civic Media as the buyer, however. “Every station Sage has purchased has gotten better,” she said. “It’s a joy to be able to walk into a heritage local station and say, ‘No, we’re not firing everybody. In fact, you’re all getting raises and we just want to help.’”
Real Radio
Lake says the goal now is to employ a local morning show and local news reporters at each of the company’s stations. She says the company wants to reintroduce local audiences to what she calls “real” radio. “We want them to know that we’re here to bring them the truthful information that they need which has been well-sourced and researched and that we’re not just trying to tell them how they should feel. We’re not messing around trying to make you feel something that isn’t real. We’re trying to reconnect people to quality information that they can listen to, watch and read in a variety of ways.”
Moreau points to WRJN as one such heritage station which had mostly abandoned its full-service operational style until Civic Media revived it. “We took WRJN back to its 97-year-old roots as a locally programmed station where Racine County residents once again have a voice,” Moreau said. “Being sandwiched between Milwaukee and Chicago, that had disappeared. But people are protective of their own city. Racine is not just a suburb of a larger city nearby.” Moreau said listeners have responded to the changes, with listenership up 65-percent in just four months “and growing.”
“We now offer live and local music programming, news, discussion and information for 13 hours each weekday and part of the of the weekend,” he said. “That includes high school sports which many of our Civic stations pride themselves on. People really appreciate being able to tune in to find out when the orange barrels will be gone on Highway 20 or when the riptides are dangerous at North Beach or when a new animal is born at the local zoo. That speaks to the mission of Civic Media. It’s music, news, info and community involvement on a very local level.”
Statewide News
Civic Media’s statewide news and information content and links to its podcasts and individual station websites is available at www.civicmedia.us.
The company’s news and talk stations are WAUK (540 AM) in Milwaukee, WMDX (92.7 FM) in Madison, WGBW (97.9 FM and 1590 AM) in Green Bay, WXCO (98.9 FM and 1230 AM) in Wausau, WISS (98.3 FM and 1100 AM) in Oshkosh, WFHR (1320 AM) in Wisconsin Rapids, WRCE (107.7 FM) in Richland Center, WLAK (107.5 FM) in Amery, WZBH (96.9 FM and 910 AM) in Hayward, WLCX (1490 AM) in LaCrosse and WCFW (93.5 FM) in Eau Claire.
Civic Media also operates the full-service news, information and music station WRJN (99.9 FM and 1400 AM) in Racine. It has three adult hit stations which also offer local news, including WRPQ (99.7 FM) in Baraboo, WCFW (105.7 FM) in Chippewa Falls and WPFP (103.1 FM and 980 AM) in Park Falls. Its stations which offer country music and local news are WIRI (105.5 FM) in Nekoosa, WRCO (100.9 FM in Richland Center, WSCM (95.7 FM) in Baldwin, WCQM (98.3 FM) in Park Falls and WHSM (101.1 FM) in Hayward.
