Constant Commenter

When Kate Parry became the Star Tribune’s “reader’s representative” in December 2004, she told readers she was their “advocate in the room. My job … is to take [your] concerns and make sure the newsroom understands them … It’s a good thing when someone wants to call, even if they’re angry. It’s a good connection.” Unless the reader in question is a very frequent complainer like Dan Cohen, and the issue is making Star Tribune staffers pay for something that they used to get for free—their own newspaper. Then you may find that the “good connection” gets disconnected.

Cohen, who successfully took the Star Tribune all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court for outing him as an anonymous source, takes great glee in continuing to torment the paper. After Parry got her gig, Cohen, according to Parry, began emailing her almost daily. Cohen, who admits as much, says that he was simply exercising his rights as a reader to complain. Parry, however, counters that she did not sign up to be a “punching bag” for Cohen’s “abusive emails.”

So, when the newspaper got egg on its face for first requiring its staffers to pay for newspapers and then threatening to hunt down the ones who stiffed the company newspaper rack (former Twin Citian David Carr wrote a hilarious New York Times story about it), Cohen got really busy. He wrote several emails chiding the paper for failing to respond to the Times story, while at the same time taunting Parry with her own promise to provide “a window … on how the newspaper makes decisions.”

On April 24, Cohen received the following email from Managing Editor Scott Gillespie. “I don’t want you communicating with Kate Parry again. That means writing her messages directly or copying her on messages.” Then Gillespie went one step further and said, “you should message me directly: not Kate, not Anders [Gyllenhaal, Star Tribune editor in chief] … if you’ve got a legitimate question about the content of the paper … send it my way.”

Cohen gave me the emails regarding the paying-for-papers brouhaha. (Kate Parry would not give me the copies of his other emails and Cohen said he would only “if pushed.”) The emails I did see simply questioned why the paper failed to report on a story covered in the New York Times, Politics in Minnesota, and even City Pages. The paper’s responses that I saw sidestepped this question and did not make any comments about Cohen harassing Parry or being abusive.

Even Stevie Wonder can see that Cohen has a thinly veiled agenda of wreaking havoc with the paper whenever possible; still I think he correctly calls out the Star Tribune on its own hypocrisy here. Having gone a round or two with the paper myself—I used to write a column for them and we parted on less-than-pleasant terms—I personally know that this paper does not always practice what is preaches. Complaining to the Star Tribune is OK—if it is the right complaint, on the right issue and one does not complain too often.

Fortunately, Gyllenhaal wisely saw the dangers of Gillespie’s attempt to bully Cohen. After hearing from Cohen directly, Gyllenhaal wrote that another frequent Cohen target, Katherine Kersten, was “very much up for the criticism as well as compliments.” Cohen told me he took Gyllenhaal’s response as a “pass” to write as often as he chooses to anyone at the paper without being admonished like a bad little boy. Parry, however, responded that Cohen’s interpretation was all wrong and that he remained no longer “welcome to write to her.”

Gillespie has since told me that Cohen simply needs to take a “time out” and that no one is banned from writing “substantive emails” to the paper “four times a day every day” if he wants to, as long as he does not make “personal attacks on the character of the person [he is] writing to.” Gillespie further concedes that deciding when an obnoxious reader needs a “time out” is currently a subjective “judgment call” and that maybe the paper should “kick around” establishing clear guidelines.

I think Gillespie is starting to understand what this whole ruckus is really all about. If the Star Tribune is going to have a true “reader’s representative,” then she and her newspaper must have the cojones to take on all comers—from the meek and mild to the Dan Cohens—or clearly state that some complainers can wear out their welcome of certain editors and columnists of the Star Tribune.