MinnPost vs. The Daily Mole

Personally, I don’t think of it as much of a competition. But by virtue of both former Star Tribune editor and publisher Joel Kramer and former City Pages editor Steve Perry being inspired pretty much simultaneously by the collapse of print journalism in the Twin Cities and then deciding to bust sod for a credible alternative, the two men find themselves launching their much-anticipated websites within days of each other.

Kramer, who has received far more attention, recently announced that MinnPost.com will open for business on November 8. Perry, in a conversation this morning, believes there’s a chance the full public debut of The Daily Mole can match or beat that. Not that there is any direct head-to-head competition, you understand.

For those of you who have not been hanging on every cyber-whisper in this duel, if they were cars, MinnPost would be the Oldsmobile sedan with a box of Kleenex in the rear window to Perry’s tricked out ScionB, with the neon ground effect lighting and Borla exhaust. Plenty of style with not much horsepower. MinnPost has signed up something like four dozen local journalists, some stars, some solid veterans, some head-slappers and some unknowns. Perry, who says he has only recently begun to seriously work his network for money, will rely heavily on himself, his wife Cecily Marcus, and a handful of trusted wits like Jimmy Gaines and John Busey-Hunt, for the launch and (hopefully) build his cast of characters incrementally.

The Daily Mole has been in private, behind-password, beta mode for a couple weeks now, and, granting the common sensibility of those invited to look in, the reviews have been pretty good. If the real thing can deliver more of the same … with a boost in substance/value … it’ll be a must read, or must see, since Perry’s interest in original, funky, comic video is high.

Says Perry, “What I told Kramer at the outset when we had coffee, is that it is in our interests that both succeed.”

His point being that traditional advertisers can see as well as you and me that print newspapers are sorry, struggling beasts, shedding content and readability as fast as profit margins. What advertisers are waiting for is something credible to take their place. “With both of us out there trying to tell advertisers that online sites are for real we each get a boost. I think we’ll complement each other.”

Kramer, caught on the way to a luncheon speech of some sort, says MinnPost’s beta phase will begin very soon and run for about a week prior to launch. “We don’t expect things to be perfect at launch, but we hope readers understand and bear with us.”

The chattering class take on this duo is that Kramer must avoid recreating old school ink journalism on the web, adjust his “filter” properly to provide a genuine alternative to what is still being published in print and build a revenue stream rapidly enough — within the next six months — to take full advantage of his “staff” of freelancers before their severance checks from the Star Tribune and Pioneer Press have been lost to casinos, booze and mortgages. Perry’s challenge is to quickly develop a steady flow of bona fide content to match his video and audio cleverness … and find significant investors to keep him afloat for the year or more it’ll take to bring The Mole to some level of maturity.

As has been reported previously, Kramer’s freelance cast will be earning marginal compensation at best for their contributions. (The sliding scale for blog-type posts up to “featured” news pieces is a little confusing, but it is safe to say no one will be buying into a hedge fund with their MinnPost earnings.)

Kramer acknowledges the “ticking clock” of the severance checks on his Strib and PiPress staffers indirectly, saying, “What is a concern to us is the concern of trying to do daily journalism with a freelance staff.” Most of his writers are veteran and experienced enough to self-edit. But given their need to diversify their work loads with other endeavors, there’s no guarantee Kramer and MinnPost will have their full concentration when he needs it most.

Kramer hints that compensation may very well change over the first year as some of his contributors prove themselves to be more valuable than others.

MinnPost’s editing “filters” are another point of curiosity. Everything will be run through his full-time editors, with posts getting less of a work-over. His chosen filters are all experienced, meticulous and cautious. Maybe too cautious. It seems to me a vital quality of the new media is the willingness to take at least one step, (and probably a half dozen steps) further than a daily newspaper in terms of “reporters” offering what they believe to be true. (Along with clearly distinguishing what is “true” from what is bullshit “balance”.)

“Edgy” is a very tired word. But none of Kramer’s editors have ever been accused of “edginess”.

I asked Kramer if he worried about getting tagged with the “old school” label?

“No. Our primary goal is quality. We think we’ll have some elements that will be entertaining. But ‘edgy’ is not a priority. Quality comes first.” He adds that a lot of people think of the Internet in generalities — “edgy”, etc. — but that there are sites, he mentioned Salon and Slate, where solid journalism regularly trumps snark and cool. He wants a slice of that crowd.

Kramer did assure me that video and audio production will be a facet of MinnPost … at launch. And that this is not going to be the cheap version, with reporter/writers toting camcorders. “This will be professional video shot by professionals. I’m not saying on every story. But it will be there at the launch.”

The MinnPost vs. Daily Mole “battle” is not a zero sum game. There is no reason both can’t succeed … or fail. Kramer is carrying much more overhead, something close to $1 million a year, while Perry is playing a variation on the “low expectation game”, as in, “Hey, look what we did with squat and duct tape.”


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