The good news: Less bad news

Candace Doyle Editor

The Daily Reporter each Wednesday reports what companies were cited by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration and why.

The paper also reports about accidents on construction job sites throughout the state that lead to injury or death. In the last month, we reported that a 38-year-old man died while working on an asphalt crusher in the Rohner Asphalt and Grading Contractors yard in Sturtevant. And, of course, we also covered the deaths of three ironworkers at Miller Park and the ensuing wrongful death trial.

Both the OSHA reports and articles on serious construction accidents are hard news items, the staples of any newspaper, and stories that give a paper its credibility.

However, it's been a common complaint about newspapers in general - and a complaint that grows louder all the time - that they neglect to cover good news. That complaint has some validity, although most reporters will say that by its very nature, good news is not news.

We'll leave that to the journalism schools to debate. In the meantime, we'd like to break from our news reporting tradition and present you with some very good news.

In this special section on safety, we relate that, based on a report by the Center for Disease Control's National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, construction deaths have been on the decline.

We also list the winners of safety awards presented by the Associated General Contractors of Greater Milwaukee, the AGC of Wisconsin, the Associated Builders and Contractors of Wisconsin and the Wisconsin Underground Contractors Association. The many firms honored point to just how much good news is out there.

And while the listings from the trade associations - and the CDD's report - point to improvements in and concern about industry safety, we also offer a few tips on how to make the field safer still.

This section includes a story by Sean Ryan on the AGC's Rent-a-Safety-Director program, and there are tips from the Milwaukee/National Association of Remodelers Industry and the Wisconsin State AFL-CIO on resources available to those in the industry to make safety Job No. 1.

Want to see more good news? Read on, and learn how to avoid hard news.