In a report yesterday about the rejection of two out of the three MMSD funding referenda up for voting yesterday, Dane101 examined the growing significance of School Information System. This is a group blog covering MMSD policies that has been publishing since 2004. As explained yesterday, since School Information System features the "'friendship' of two sitting board members and two recently defeated board challengers, regular posts from a third, and the antagonism of a fourth, the site it an underappreciated source of primary information about the MMSD, largely from the self-defined anti-status quo perspective."

The piece subsequently challenged local media to take notice of School Information System, as the website's emergence is an important story that needs telling for a better understanding of yesterday's vote, and the changing dynamics of Madison school board politics. This story was picked up by the Cap Times today, in a sidebar to the front page article about the referenda results by Lee Sensenbrenner. The companion particle (Web blog growing force in school policy) quoted the piece published here yesterday about School Information System, and explained the genesis and growing influence of the website.

This influence was illustrated in the lede to the article, which reported that school board members Ruth Robarts and Lawrie Kobza watched the referenda returns with Jim Zellmer, the creator of School Information Systems. Robarts and Kobza are the two leading critics of current MMSD policy and the board majority. Zellmer declined to comment on the referenda and the impact of School Information System, saying that his "only goal is to increase awareness of K-12 issues." In a piece about the referenda last week, he wrote that the debate was about "when we collectively reach the (tipping) point where piling more and more on the property taxpayer effectively erodes this essential support." It appears that Madison voters collectively reached this point yesterday.

While Robarts contributions to the blog were noted in an article in tomorrow's State Journal, the baton on this story was picked up this evening by local television news, beginning with WMSN (Fox47) on its nine p.m. broadcast. After leading off with a NewsCentral segment about Fox's American Idol finale, the station reported on the referenda. It framed the defeats as resulting at least in part due to the influence of School Information System, though it also slipped a bit into the overplayed 'blogs trump MSM!' storyline popular lately.

The segment quoted Don Severson of Active Citizens for Education and district parent Lucy Mathiak, both contributors to and friends of School info System, both of whom spoke about the depth of information available and amount of conversation occurring on the website.The segment also noted the contributions of school board members Ruth Robarts and Johnny Winston, Jr. on the blog, and reported that School Information System receives some "60,000 to 70,000 hits per month," or about 2,000 per day.

The same segment was rebroadcast on the WKOW 10 p.m. news, as this Madison ABC affiliate is also responsible for the local news production for the Sinclair-owned WMSN. A short piece about the segment on the WKOW website paraphrased Mathiak, who said "people are taking notice to the amount of information and discussion occurring on-line."

In an example of this, the WMSN segment (in 3.6 MB Quicktime video format) is already available for viewing on School Information System.