http://journaltimes.com/articles/2005/06/30/opinion/iq_3581569.txt Kohl and the Bucks' story you haven't heard When the general manager of a professional basketball team fires a popular, hometown coach six weeks after announcing publicly he's going to keep that coach, it doesn't mean the general manager is indecisive. It simply means that someone with more power has taken the decision away from the general manager. And when that team is the Milwaukee Bucks, the only man with more power than the general manager - heck, the only man with any power at all - is team owner and U.S. Sen. Herb Kohl. That's what made all those stories about General Manager Larry Harris' sudden reversal to fire Coach Terry Porter the week before the Bucks drafted the No. 1 player in the country professionally embarrassing. The stories were written with barely any mention of the owner who had made the decision. Herb Kohl is the invisible man. Kohl may be the state's senior senator and the owner of a multi-million-dollar sports franchise poised to seek the same huge public subsidies every other sports franchise tries to extort out of taxpayers, but the press never writes about him unless he wants them to. It would be a remarkable for any local sports owner to be protected by such a shield of invisibility, but it is nothing short of astounding when the owner also happens to be one of the state's top elected officials. It's not as if the press doesn't know where to find the guy. He has a public office in Washington, D.C. And when he's in Milwaukee, he eats breakfast almost every morning at Ma Fischer's restaurant. It has to be a conscious decision on the part of reporters not to ask Kohl questions about anything he'd rather not talk about. It's the opposite of Deep Throat's movie advice on journalism to Woodward and Bernstein in "All the President's Men." It's no longer "Follow the money." The new rule is: "Don't bother millionaires who control everything." Why Kohl decided to dump Terry Porter is mostly of interest to fans of the shabbily treated Porter. The answer may become clear when the new coach Kohl wants is hired. But the press has been sitting on another huge story involving Kohl and the Bucks that is a potential blockbuster. A couple of months ago, rumors began circulating around Milwaukee that basketball superstar Michael Jordan was back as a bidder to buy the Bucks. But that isn't even the most eye-opening part. Also said to be involved are international investors from China. This was in the background when Milwaukee business leaders publicly expressed concern that Mayor Tom Barrett, because of a scheduling conflict, wasn't going along on a trade mission to China in September organized by the Metropolitan Milwaukee Association of Commerce. Barrett quickly organized his own trade mission to China to take place in October a few weeks after the MMAC trip. That was interesting. Even more interesting was a separate announcement at the same time as the story about Barrett's trade mission. The China Council, a Milwaukee business group helping to organize both trips, announced it was working to create a partnership between the Milwaukee Bucks and the Beijing Ducks, one of China's top professional basketball franchises. Under an agreement, the Bucks could set up an exchange program with the Ducks that would include basketball clinics in Milwaukee for visiting Chinese players. The NBA has been seeking closer ties with the Chinese Basketball Association, which produced Houston Rockets center Yao Ming. Ready for one more topper? The co-chairman of the China Council in Milwaukee is Ulice Payne Jr., former president of the Milwaukee Brewers and chairman of the Bradley Center, home of the Bucks. Perhaps not incidentally, Payne also sits on the board of Journal Communications. Could that be why you haven't you read a word about the possibility of such an unprecedented deal involving the Bucks, a sale that could make international history? The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel has a habit of missing major local stories. But in this case I happen to know they're aware of the rumors. I told them. Well, I didn't ring them up directly. But around the end of April, I laid it all out publicly as a "hot tip" on the television show, "Belling and Company." We know from Milwaukee Magazine senior editor Bruce Murphy's story, "In the Belly of the Beast," about his three years at the Journal Sentinel that the editors pay close attention to what's reported on the shows of right-wingers Mark Belling and Charlie Sykes. So why haven't reporters asked Kohl about this story and all its fascinating connections? It's a story whether he's ready to announce it yet or not. People involved in the news, especially public officials, don't usually get to decide when news gets reported. The job of journalism is to report the news, not manage it. Joel McNally is former editor of the Milwaukee alternative weekly Shepherd Express and appears weekly on the WMVS-TV public television show "Interchange." His e-mail address is jmcnally@wi.rr.com
