There are Bigger Issues than Lileks.

If they gave awards for networking and self-promotion, Star Tribune columnist James Lileks would long ago have been handed a gold-plated trophy for Lifetime Achievement. It has not passed without notice that amid the wholesale turmoil of the latest round of staff cuts at the Star Tribune that Lileks somehow made himself a centerpiece of the purge, the Sydney Carton if you will of the current terror.

Remarkably well connected … hell, “enviably” well connected to prominent national columnists, bloggers and right-wing radio jockeys, Lileks’ reassignment/demotion from columnist to whatever comes next brought out waves of protest. (No one expects him to stay on.)

Bemoaning Lileks’ fate on his show yesterday, Hugh Hewitt, a kind of clueless, insulated, fat cat banker version of Sean Hannity, declared Lileks, “the most beloved columnist in the Twin Cities.”

Huh? (And who do you think fed him that line?)

I confess to never being a big fan of Lileks’ work. The relevance of what appeared in the Star Tribune utterly escaped me. I just didn’t care. That also pretty much describes my attitude toward his far better-attended blog. What was of occasional interest were his florid musings on politics and the war in Iraq. While I always thought Lileks jumped on the wing-nut bandwagon in the early ’90s because it looked like a sure ticket to a radio career, and then stayed after cultivating a following, when writing on politics he at least was dealing in topics that mattered to someone other than himself, his wife, his daughter and any pets they had around the house.

But “most beloved”? Please.

As I have said before, the purpose of “The Daily Quirk” escaped me, (especially for the rumored $92k the Strib was paying him for it). It read like someone applying the Word of the Day to the retelling of the previous night’s not-too interesting dream. But subjective tastes withstanding, the guy has obvious talent. So my question for Strib managers (long before the current crowd) was … why not make him apply his talent to topics of actual relevance?

One of his defenders makes the point that a fundamental mistake being made by newspapers is insisting that the highest calling of any newspaper writer is the ability to cover a housefire or a suburban public utilities commission. As though that sort of copy is what inspires eagerness in life long readers as they grab the paper off their lawn every morning.

That kind of thinking is manifestly dull-witted. It’s what you get from casts of career managers, as opposed to career journalists. But it is the sort of homogenized thinking you get in a panicked environment, which pretty well describes most newspapers these days.

One of the many ironies of the current newspaper business climate is that investor pressure for guaranteed short-term profit-taking is working with a management ethos that devalues precisely the sort of unique voices and points of view that are at the heart of big city newspapers and are what affix unique value to their product.

Whether Lileks refused to give the Strib the kind of topical, relevant copy he wrote for himself and others, (he has recently dropped his Newhouse syndication gig), or whether the Strib never asked for it, I can’t say. But as pointlessly indulgent as “The Daily Quirk” was, pressuring the guy out the door is even more counter-effective.

But “most beloved”?

Jesus.