Steve Walters, the Journal Sentinel reporter who decided that providing health care to everyone in Wisconsin was a "radical" plan, has backed off a bit.

In Tuesday's story on the state budget, he writes:

It's a stunningly ambitious plan

"Stunningly ambitious" is a step in the right direction. But he still couldn't stop himself from writing that

Republicans say its $15.2 billion annual cost would make Wisconsin the highest taxed state.

while failing to note that Democrats, backed by an independent study, say it will save more than $1-billion a year compared to current health insurance costs.

Every now and then, someone just takes the words right out of your mouth.

In this case, it's the Brew City Brawler, who notes how the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel allows its Capitol reporter to characterize the health care plan passed by State Senate Democrats.  He expresses my sentiments exactly.   

The Brawler asks, as many have in the past, whether "reporter" Steve Walters is paid by the Republicans to propagandize on their behalf.

Others have speculated in the past about whether he was hoping the GOP would hire him. But why would they put him on the payroll, when he's already doing their PR for free?

It makes you wonder, assuming someone reads his copy before it goes to print, whether the editors agree with his assessment. They clearly made no effort to make his story objective.  (Or would it turn out that the editing process added the word "radical"?)

Three decades out of the newspaper business, it's still hard sometimes not to second guess decisions on coverage. This weekend's coverage of the Wisconsin Democratic Party's convention is a case in point. This weekend's non-coverage would be a more apt description. The event drew 700-plus delegates, but virtually no media attention, even in Milwaukee, where it was held. The state's largest newspaper, once the Wisconsin paper of record, almost ignored it entirely.

The Associated Press did file a complete story Friday night, carried in abbreviated form in most outlets which used it, headlined, "Gov. hints at re-election bid as state Dems rail on Iraq war" The most complete version, ironically, seems to be in the Winona Daily News, on the Minnesota side of the Mississippi. But the papers and TV stations which used it mostly cut it to about five paragraphs.

Meanwhile, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, whose newsroom is about five blocks from the convention site, carried nothing in Saturday's paper and very little on Sunday.

Here is almost the complete JS print coverage of the two-day event: