Have I ever mentioned how much I love Superior, Wisconsin? There’s something about sweating like a Ukrainian reaper in 85 degree heat, matted with dust, grass clippings and a half dozen ticks, then hauling ass down the hill to Menards for a fresh assortment of shears, brads and fasteners. Superior, where it is always a reliable 56 with a chilling airborne mist off the big lake.
Okay, not always. Sometimes it’s 5 degrees and gray as a gun barrel with horizontal sleet sealing up your radiator. But it’s still lovable. It is so anti-Galleria up there it’s like another civilization.
Anyway, much as I love Superior, we’re back home after four days of relaxation and brute labor. The list of questions possibly leading to stories relative to the Star Tribune was growing too long to stay disconnected.
(Oh, I had one of those strange, synchronous, sado-poetic moments during a cell-phone conversation with a Strib reporter. I came over me as I stood in a half weed-whacked patch of waist-high grass. The reporter was saying he had heard that the cash-strapped Star Tribune company was going to pick up the tab to re-locate publisher Par Ridder from Sunfish Lake to Paul Magers’ old joint on Lake of the Isles, and at the precise moment he said the word “Par” I realized I was crushing a wood tick between my fingernails. Eery, huh?)
Since I could wait a very long time for various editors and writers to respond to my e-mailed questions or return phone calls, let me just lay out a few of the questions I’m trying to get answered, now that I’m back in beautiful Edina. (If any of the people involved respond with answers to these questions I’ll update this post.)
1. What exactly is the deal with Buzz.Mn? The story goes that within an hour of Strib management posting an opening for editor of Buzz.Mn, the Strib’s community-neighborhood chat forum, ex-Quirk columnist James Lileks appeared on the site, blogging furiously and announcing that he was in fact the new editor. (The site has now had four editors in less than a year, and the Strib posting did mention a “preferred candidate”, which is inside-newspaperspeak for, “Don’t bother applying”).
That was about a week ago. So how come to date only one other Strib writer has contributed to Buzz.Mn? The thing is all-Lileks, and as we all know Lileks can produce a stupendous amount of copy. But how come it’s him and him alone? Is there, as one dime-dropper told me, “a de facto boycott” going on? And how did Lileks end up with an editing job officially described as requiring, “the consummate team player”?
Several people called to point this out and encourage me to rip … somebody. (I’m handling a lot of contract work these days. Kind of like the Italians Paulie Walnuts brought in for the bungled hit on Phil Leotardo.)
I’ve told just about everyone that I don’t want to get into a “thing” with Lileks, unless he wants to throw down over Iraq vis a vis the “war on terror” or the nauseating suckling he does off the starchy teats of fulminating half-wits like Hugh Hewitt. It isn’t like it’s a personal thing. Really. Well maybe a little. I’m not sure.
I haven’t paid a lot of attention to Buzz.Mn in the past months. But I and others never had the impression it was supposed to be a one-person rumpus room, yet another variation on “The Bleating Quirk”. Other voices were supposed to be heard. Right? So what gives? Have Nancy Barnes and Scott Gillespie, the Strib’s top editors, parked Lileks there just to goose up traffic with his “Bleat” readers? With the idea they’ll pay more attention to it once they’ve finished the very funky, and exceedingly gamey business of choosing who gets their vaunted “anyone who wants it gets it” buy-out … except for those who don’t? (More on that later.)
With the announcement of a major new news competitor imminent, Buzz.Mn was supposed to be an incubator for all that citizen journalism and interactive stuff next generation news services will supposedly provide. If Barnes and Gillespie see it that way, how does a site overwhelmed by one voice encourage that model?
2. Is it true that the Strib will soon begin reducing its weekly news hole by 30 pages, more or less as Par Ridder (now I’m getting flashes of tick imagery) warned back in one of his “Newspaper Business 101” slide shows? Thirty less pages of news is very significant, and I’m told most of the cutting will come out of the weekday editions in order to keep the life rafts fulling inflated around the Sunday version.
3. Is the fashion beat dead or alive? Is fashion writer Sarah Glassman leaving or staying? When we last spoke with Glassman she had a new job lined up at Mpls/St.Paul magazine. The Strib had told her they were dumping fashion and she could either apply for one of those sexy Bloomington Waste Facilities Commission reporting jobs, or take the buy-out (worth a month’s pay to her) and leave. But then the Strib changed its mind. One rumor — a RUMOR people — is that Macy’s, still a big print advertiser, (although they recently announced they were reallocating 20% of their ad budget to on-line entities), put pressure on the Strib to retain a fashion beat, maybe even specifying Glassman.
Really?
3. Since the Strib didn’t get 50 full-time newsroom employees to take the buy-out, and since they’ve dug in their heels and refused immediate, paid separation to four reporters who want it — on the grounds that “too many reporters” applied — can Timberwolves beat writer Steve Aschburner have his job back? He actually WANTS to work there, and as someone who read his stuff — through an astonishingly boring Wolves season — I’ll vouch that he delivers damn good copy.
Why not let everyone go who wants to go? And why not allow the one person who wants to return return and start over with what’s left? I mean, did anyone in the Strib power suites actually think they were going to be able to coordinate this mess?
These are questions I amassed while lolling on the Wisconsin Riviera. I stand sun burnt, bitten and ready to provide answers as they come available.
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