Author: Brian Lambert

(UPDATED BELOW)

God knows the Star Tribune has faced conflict of issues before with stadium-related real estate deals. But the latest one, wherein Vikings owner and major — emphasis on “major” — real estate developer, Zygi Wilf has a deal in place to buy four of the five blocks owned by Strib owner Avista Capital Partners near the Metrodome, puts a spike on an ethics watch.

Count me among those who find the $45 million reportedly offered for the four blocks on the low side. I know, the city values the land at something around $25 million, so at first blush this looks like a respectable premium. But other real estate-watchers far hipper to value than me placed the true value of all five blocks at something much closer to $100 million. That figure represents the interest a new Vikings stadium might have to developers and speculators, even in a cratering condo market.

In this context, the question I’m asking is whether this might be a two stage agreement. In this scenario the last piece of property — the block on which the main Star Tribune building sits at 425 Portland — would deliver the remainder of the true value of the five-block parcel. In other words, based on certain conditions, Wilf would goose that $45 million up to a number my merry band of conspiratologists believe more appropriate for a project as grand as he envisions for the east side of downtown.

Specifically, the full theory goes something like this: Wilf privately agrees to “enhance” the dollars on the entire project, by buying the final, fifth block based on the state legislature kicking in one more taxpayer subsidy for the centerpiece stadium project and thereby picking up $150-$200 million (or more) of cost. In order to gain legislative support, Wilf’s tacit agreement with Avista Capital Partners is that they keep their newspaper, still the single biggest mouthpiece for news and commentary in this market, focused on the bright and shiny upside to a world class Vikings stadium and the transformative qualities of all that adjacent acreage.

A steady stream of more positive-than-negative coverage boosted by regular “objective” editorializing and the public eventually might come around to seeing the logic and value of “stepping up” to “first-class” city-ness with a stadium that will humble Seattle and Atlanta and almost everything short of that 100,000 seat monstrosity they’re throwing up in Dallas.

If the legislature caves and agrees to a subsidy deal, Avista, which is all about profits and not all that concerned with community service to the Twin Cities, gets the fat back-end pay-off commensurate with their property’s real value. If selling that final block means moving what’s left of the Star Tribune over by Stand Up Frank’s or out to Blaine, so be it. Once that last block of real estate is carved up Avista will dump what’s left of the paper just to cut their losses.

I have calls in to the usual Journalism ethics types. We’ll see what if anything they have to say about how the Strib should handle coverage of Wilf’s campaign for public money. In the past, with the Cowles and the Dome almost 30 years ago, criticisms of their boosterism for the Metrodome had validity. It was certainly fair to raise and sustain skeptical questioning.

But with the Cowles it wasn’t like the Dome was going to make or break their overall business plan. With Avista, the suspicion is that this real estate deal is no peripheral matter. This is the guaranteed equity they came to town to harvest, and $45 million isn’t anywhere near enough to counter-balance the losses they’re looking at on the newspaper side. So … maximizing Zygi and the stadium is essential to them, not just a nice bonus after generations of doing family business in town.

For what it is worth, I spent three weeks last winter kicking around the capital at the start of the session doing mini-interviews with roughly a third of current legislators. My excessively blonde and dismayingly Republican former radio combatant, Sarah Janecek, needed an extra hand to assemble her Politics in Minnesota Directory.

Along with asking about No Child Left Behind, gas taxes, property tax relief, school funding and every other issue on the table, I made a point of asking all 70 or so of the legislators I interviewed about ponying up money for a Vikings stadium.

There wasn’t one — not one — who expressed even a hint of interest, much less enthusiasm for the deal. Disgust among the usual lefties was instantaneous. More to the point, most saw/see the Vikings stadium as the mega development deal it is, (unlike the Twins stadium), and what’s even more, a mega-development deal with a motivated, fully-capitalized mega-developer in place and ready to do what he does. Bottom line, the legislature sees Zygi Wilf as a very big boy who doesn’t need Minnesota taxpayers’ training wheels to help him make a nice buck here in Minnesota.

From super developer Wilf’s point of view, it is always better to spend other people’s money. So, if — for a piddly $40-$50 million more — he can get a jittery investment group with no long term commitment to Minnesota to get its newspaper subsidiary to play cozy ball and provide “objective” cover for nervous legislators, the deal gets has the potential to get all the sweeter.

Maybe this is black helicopters stuff. But considering the direct check passing from Zygi Wilf’s hand to Avista Capital Partners, skeptical Strib readers should prepare an acid bath for every word the paper publishes on the deal.

(UPDATE) This from Prof. Jane Kirtley at the Silha Center for the Study of Media Ethics and Law:

“Of course the Star Tribune should disclose in news stories and any editorials what interest they have in the land sale/stadium deal. This is not rocket science. Clearly, there’s a potential conflict if they are out boosting an undertaking from which they stand to profit. Business is business, but the news business requires transparency and disclosure. Media Ethics 101.

“That said, this isn’t the first time something like this has come up. I recall a few years ago something similar involving the Asbury Park Press (NJ) and some land of theirs that was being sold for some kind of business development — I think a big shopping center, but I don’t recall the details, so don’t quote me on that. In any event, I know the paper both editorialized and covered the story as a straight news story, and there were some questions asked at the time about whether they were being as forthcoming as possible. I didn’t read all the APP’s coverage, but I know that they did include disclosures in at least some of the pieces. And that’s clearly the minimum that anyone would expect.

“I don’t know what position the Strib or Avista are taking here. My guess is that if they argue against disclosure, it would be something along the lines of the way governmental entities justify avoiding state open records/open meetings requirements when they are contemplating land purchases or sales — they argue that secrecy is essential in order to protect the interest of the taxpayer in getting the best deal (lowest or highest, as the case may be). That argument never washes with me at the government level. But one would hope that a news organization that constantly argues in favor of openness would be consistent, no matter what its financial stake might be.”

My colleague here in Rake-world, Colleen Kruse, (in the print version, she’s the better looking one on the opposite page), has signed on as a regular with FM 107’s 1-to-3 p.m. Andrew Zimmern show, now known officially as, “The Andrew Zimmern Show with Colleen Kruse”. The third part of the new ensemble is producer, Christopher Gabriel, who worked with Zimmern Saturday’s at KTLK and recently tunneled to safety at Hubbard Broadcasting.

The Zimmern-Kruse-Gabriel team is of course no threat to the KQRS Fleetwood Mac/Heart/Poison/Journey juggernaut. (Who can ever get enough of that?) But at a time when talk radio is mired in its version of Classic Rock, with the same white male gas bags repeating the same long since-discredited assertions of “class warfare” (in their world that’s the poor attacking the rich), denying climate change, still looking for weapons of mass destruction, the heroic and inspirational leadership of George W. Bush and the inferiority of the French, (better health care, higher standard of living, right about Iraq), the ZKG trio has an opportunity to play smarter, funnier and with more of a, shall we say, “reality base”.

Zimmern is smart operator, and has demonstrated a shrewd knack for professional show biz by sharing as much air time as he has with Kruse and Gabriel since turning on the mike two weeks ago.

FM 107, a.k.a. “The Chick Station”, to more manly competitors around town, is in need of some kind of an infusion. Ratings haven’t moved much in several years. The station’s signature act, “The Lori & Julia Show” will probably benefit from a stronger lead-in, (than the Satellite Sisters it replaces) and the usual in-house competition.

Full disclosure: I regard almost everyone mentioned here as friends. But that happens in a small town.

Kruse, a well known stand-up comic as well as columnist, is jazzed with the possibilities of producing video bits for the show’s web site.

News that the Pohlad family, son Jim in particular, was paying $28 million for B96, the hip-hop station with a transmission tower out on the fringes of the western suburbs fired the following synapses in my alleged brain …

$28 million!? Holy shit! If B96 is worth $28 million, the karaoke machine I picked up at Best Buy for that birthday party, (where everyone sang the drum solo to “In a Gadda da Vida”), has got be worth a half million. Twenty eight VERY LARGE strikes me as a serious over-payment for a signal that doesn’t quite make it to West St. Paul. (Someone will write and say they get it loud and clear in River Falls, just wait).

I think Judd Zulgad, who does a terrific job covering sports media and the Green Bay Puckers for the Strib, has his antennae aimed in the right direction when he asks aloud what many of us suspect. Namely, is the beginning of a move to take everything Twins-related in-a-Pohlad-house?

Obviously B96, as powered and located, can not act as the flagship for an entirely Pohlad/Twins-owned network. But as Zulgad notes, three years is an eternity in the radio biz. Everything can and will change. Some kind of simulcast shtick might be made practical. After all, long before 2010 the new owners of KQRS, 93X, etc. — Citadel — may very be looking to unload a few of their lower-powered properties (most likely the “Love 105” trio of low-power FMs). Hell, they won’t have to “look” to unload if there is a drunken sailor in town throwing $28 million at B96.

As we all remember, WCCO-AM’s parent company, CBS Radio, pretty much bailed on fat contracts for major league baseball in St. Louis, Pittsburgh and here in the Twin Cities. With CBs putting up a weak fight, the Hubbards agreed to the deal the Pohlads/Twins wanted, which has them forking over something like $1 million a year for four years plus giving up almost all the advertising inventory for the games, the production and upper midwest network of which is entirely controlled by the Twins. In other words, the only thing the Twins don’t currently own or control is the the team’s flagship station.

The Hubbards hope to reestablish AM 1500 (post-Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity and Jason Lewis) with help from the Twins games, (while the Twins’ absence diminishes WCCO). There may also be some, shall we say, “programming” issues to deal with there before AM 1500 is restored to the halcyon days of wall-to-wall Clinton-bashing. But the presence of the Twins is not going to hurt, other than that $1 million a year and loss of ad inventory to sell.)

More to the point, after four years of fat pay-outs, from the Hubbards to the Pohlads, (is that trickling down or up?), the Hubbards may very well decide the Twins have worked their magic and decline the opportunity to re-up. Don’t expect anyone involved to breathe such a notion today. But my real point is that nothing anyone says on the record today about this deal is worth any more than what you are paying to read this blog. And we both know that ain’t much.

After so many years of filing “official responses” from company executives on matters like this for a daily newspaper, I had to laugh at this quote, from Steve Woodbury, CEO of Northern Lights , (the Pohlad-owned radio company). Zulgad asks about an eventual Twins presence on B96.

Woodbury, who is not a bad guy, responds:

“The station doesn’t fit that, and it was never discussed or brought up,” Woodbury said of B-96 having baseball on its airwaves. “They [meaning the Pohlads] bought the station based on the format, the management team and the opportunity in the market.”

“The format and the management team … ” Riiight. The latter would of course be Woodbury and a couple others.

As for the format, I’m assured B-96 actually makes some dough, but the sellers weren’t shy about saying they were willing to give it up because the Twin Cities have a pretty small African-American audience.
Obviously, the main reason they were willing to give it up is because the Pohlads flashed $28 friggin’ million in their faces. Your average radio executive would give up their mother for a tenth of that.

But having spent sometime inside the sausage factory that is Clear Channel Twin Cities, I agree with those who say KOOL 108 could disappear tomorrow and be replaced instantly by the “active-urban-hip-hop-rollin’-homies” format or whatever you want to call it. It definitely is not brain surgery.

So if I were Woodbury and the Pohlads I’d keep a handy list of alternate formats. How about Doug Mientkiewicz in morning drive?

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.

My lovely, extraordinarily long-suffering, high school English teacher wife wrapped another school year last Friday and we’ve been feeding the finches up north for the last few days. Still are, in fact. Internet connections are funky in rural Wisconsin, which is one excuse for so little blogging.

We did run around Superior and Duluth Sunday afternoon trying to find a bar or coffee shop to watch The Sopranos finale. (News flash, TVs in Superior bars are for watching NASCAR, not fat Italians.)

So we contented ourselves with smoked pork chops from Superior Meats (what a jewel of a joint) and counting fire flies back at the ranch.

Imagine my surprise when I checked in Monday for Sopranos reviews. Baby, that’s gotta hurt! The faithful are not pleased. Judging by the clips of the final scene and on-line reaction, I think David Chase is having it not just both ways, but every way. He seems to be establishing a new hyper-paranoid state of mind for Tony, which won’t help his mania and depression, (as Tony describes it), but he is also declining the opportunity to flood and shutter the gold mine. Movies. HBO special. Spin-offs. Anything can still go.

Alan Sepinwall of the Newark Star-Ledger has been every fan’s best conduit to Chase and Sopranos lore. Here’s an interview he did with Chase after Sunday’s black-out finale.

This is just a poll — another snapshot of today’s conventional wisdom — but it rings true to me. It reaffirms a point I have made before and believe media-watchers everywhere should keep in mind as they watch big city newspapers founder. Namely, that in very short order, local TV news is going to be worse off than newspapers are right now. And that is bad. Remember these numbers from last month?

Why? Without regurgitating a lot of familiar opinions, TV news slashed value out of its product years ago by reducing staff and has been making its high-profit margins off an extremely dated, formulaic editorial strategy, (mayhem, tragedy, cop and ambulance chasing, a dash of celebrity and superficial “personality”), very little of which means anything to news consumers looking for vital information.

If it weren’t for local TV’s parasitic attachment to newspaper reporting — (the papers report, TV news follows with cameras) — they’d be even less relevant, little more than slick-looking weather graphics and occasionally substantive, well-photographed feature pieces.

The way the Star Tribune and Pioneer Press are going, there’s no reason to believe they will invest and re-invent themselves as the local on-line news product that marries breadth, depth, substantive personality and video. Each may have to go through another change of ownership, or two, with further “right-sizing”, to quote Par Ridder, until their market value has been driven down within the range of responsible local investors. What remains of either, other than their name, is fodder for rank speculation. But I’m thinking, skin and bones.

The point I take from this survey is that the moribund qualities of TV news have become painfully evident. Meanwhile, public demand for a one-stop shopping center for local news, an entity more satisfying and engaging than either newspapers or TV are today, is presenting someone with an opportunity.

How ripe an opportunity profit-wise is a question for another poll.

(UPDATED) I can’t decide if I want this to be true or not, but by all indications on May 14 Star Tribune publisher, Par Ridder, currently busy hacking the livelihoods out from under 150 or so of his employees, closed a deal to buy former KARE anchor Paul Magers’ rather, shall we say, grand-to-ostentatious Lake of the Isles mansion for something just south of $3 million — $2.73 million to be exact. (For a time Magers tried to sell it for $3.9 million.)

The selling agent, Barry Berg, (an old high school classmate of mine — in case anyone ever wondered), has not returned calls confirming the deal, but several of his competitors have confirmed the purchase. (Being a very smart guy Barry has to know nothing good will ever come from disclosing anything — ever — to the likes of me.)

Magers, who lived the Hollywood high life long before moving to Beverly Hills, finally sold the sprawling 8000 sq. foot 1907 status statement in 2006 (after 818 days on the market) for something in the $2.55 million range. Young Par will part ways with a squalid $1.3 million Sunfish Lake pied-a-terre as he attempts to assume his position among the real money of old Minneapolis.

Needless to say, the place is ideal for entertaining. But the way Par’s been operating here in Minnesota, I have to wonder who among the “right people” will want to be seen accepting Par’s invitations? I mean, in a way isn’t it kind of like playing golf with OJ?

Taxes? Oh, yeah. Last year taxes on the Magers Manse were $41,648, or about one year’s salary for one of those sweet old gals Ridder canned from their switchboard jobs at the Strib.

As I say, maybe everyone feeding these numbers and confirming the purchase is flat-out dead wrong. Maybe Par, who is being sued for several variations of highly unethical, illegal business behavior by the new owners of the St. Paul Pioneer Press, has sufficient awareness of this particular moment in Twin Cities culture to avoid something this indiscreet. Maybe he is astute enough NOT to play the complete vulgarian by rubbing the noses of the laid-off, bought-out (for a song) and de-moralized in a grab of such shameless pretension. But that would surprise a lot of people who have met him since he arrived in Minnesota.

It reminds me of when his daddy, Tony, was preaching belt-tightening and “right-sizing” to all the Knight-Ridder papers he was cannibalizing for parts and nickels but didn’t have the good sense to decline Architectural Digest’s request to feature HIS home in their thick and glossy pages.

Also, I’m reminded that both in the law suit filed against him and again in one of his rare face-to-face meetings with his Star Tribune staff, Ridder is quoted saying something to the effect that, “I’ll never turn my back on St. Paul” … out of respect or his family’s long tradition over there in the east metro.

What’s that line about the acorn and the tree?

I love a good rip job, and commenter “lttl” gets off a terrific stream of rips while responding to Strib Guild officer Pam Miller’s post lamenting the loss of so much talent from her newsroom. Clearly “lttl” places far less value on the Twin Cities’ primary news source.

Here’s a sample:

“Ford, NWA, local govt, countless others, all gave good paying jobs to folks trying to make a better life for their kids — pull them up the ladder. Lots of those jobs are gone thanks to the “invisible hand” and I pray for them every night.

“Very few of the Strib refugees fall into that bucket. Other than the fabled Phone Ladies of Lileks’ fame and lore, aren’t the displaced all (a) educated, (b) degreed, and (c) skilled people? In other words, why should I give a crap about some overeducated dilettante who went into journalism viewing him(her)self as some ascetic purveyor of The Truth?

“It’s a load of CRAP. Sid Hartman, Kate Parry, Kersten, Coleman, Lileks, CJ, Lambert — good luck to you all and I’ll give you a buck when I see you under the 94 viaduct. You chose your Craft (hence the ‘Guild’). Your product lacked quality and could be found in abundance at higher quality and less (in most instances, no) cost. I can hear Sid’s babbling about Close Personal Friends for free every morning on the Good Geriatric Neighbor. Anything Kersten has to say is available from a variety of pablum packers online or over the air and the same with Coleman. I can get Lileks from bubble gum wrappers, fortune cookies, online and from my fillings if I’m too close to an old AM radio. And CJ? When I get so addled that I (a) give a crap about local spray-ons or (b) need her to tell me about them, I’ll just stick my withered gonads into a bag of rabid weasels and go out on a high note.

“At least she didn’t get run off by a second-rate backwater newspaper and a Clear Channel intern project. Not that there’s anything wrong with that.”

I shouldn’t laugh. But, come on, there’s some pretty funny stuff in there. Except for that last crack. What a mongrel bastard!

I draw attention to “lttl’s” comments because his attitude is palpable around town, and not just from talk radio chowderheads who see “liberal bias” behind every sports score and think Glenn Beck is the last honest man standing. I suspect “lttl” has a personal issue or two with some or all of us mentioned. Maybe we dismissed him in a story somewhere back in time, or maybe CJ DIDN’T quote him at a Vikings Celebrity Dinner. In my experience it doesn’t take much to make glib, cranky people wish most of us a wet cardboard box and a week at the Dorothy Day Center.

But while there is something to his shots at the implausibly lofty regard some of us have for our “craft” — so high we expect other middle-class workers, people who have been jacked around for years by what we’ll broadly call “market pressures” to take special pity on the spectre of us … US! … losing our cult-ish standing and being forced to face life as Wal-Mart greeters, or worse, Bloomington zoning commission reporters — “lttl” makes a big leap and a fundamental mistake in asserting that a breadth and depth of information-gathering equal to newspapers is already up and readily available on the web.

Hey “lttl”! Here’s a news flash for your rabid weasels. It isn’t. Not yet anyway. Maybe in a couple years. But not now. Almost all those links on The Huffington Post and The Drudge Report come from journalists somewhere, and every day there are fewer and fewer of them … and fewer still who are doing reporting of any “linkable” relevance. Sure, you can dial up looney tunes wing-nut stuff like NewsMax and call it “journalism” or “facts” without that arrogant “higher calling” crap. But that sort of thing really is the difference between a deep-fried Snickers bar and regular helpings of peas and carrots.

Before the nutjobs on either end of the spectrum do their spin thing, somebody has to make a few phone calls, visit a few people in person, check out the lay of the land and write a more or less straight report about what just happen. As newspapers wither — and they are withering, I’m not being hysterical about that, less will not be more — there are far fewer people with far less resources to make those calls, visit the sites of the incident and suss out what most likely went down.

(By the way, with all the attention on the Strib in recent days, we haven’t paid much attention to the St. Paul Pioneer Press, a.k.a that “second-rate backwater newspaper” across the river. Before anyone goes all delusional about MediaNews’ more-enlightened-than-Avista commitment to community service, do yourself a favor and read this piece chronicling the skeletal coverage MediaNews is offering the San Francisco Bay Area.

In it, one veteran MediaNews editor who recently bailed says this about his “craft”:

“The newspaper business I got involved in, some say it’s dying. I say it’s dead. The last 10 years of my career has been hospice care.”

Newspapers are fair game for a lot of ripping. There is plenty of arrogance to spare in the average newsroom. A lot of it of the, “How dare you criticize me!” sort. The average second, third and fourth-rate papers are grossly over-mediated and god-awfully dull, not to mention baffling in their love of redundancy. But stale as they have allowed themselves to become, they are still the only people doing the dusty grunt work of talking to strangers, victims, witnesses and objective experts .

In some ways those who remain at daily newspapers are like the “illegal immigrants” so much in the news these days. They’re doing the work nobody else wants to do. If you look at it that way, that arrogance of special-ness and reproach-proof “craft” loses a lot of its luster.

A little good news for a change.

My erstwhile radio partner/combatant, Sarah Janecek, editor of Politics in Minnesota and close pal of Kevyn Burger says word direct from the treating physicians is that Burger’s cancer is Stage 2 and therefore completely treatable. She will undergo the usual draining chemotherapy but prospects for a full recovery, says Janecek, are “excellent.”

This is just released by Nancy Barnes, Star Tribune editor …

>>> Nancy Barnes 6/5/2007 5:24 PM >>>

Dear Staff:
Since Monday, we have accepted 40 people into the voluntary buyout program, for a total of 44 approved buyouts to date. We have also had one resignation in the last month, which brings us very close to the company’s target of reducing combined news and editorial staffs by 50 jobs. We are still evaluating the remaining buyout applications to determine if others will be approved. We are also working hard on the newsroom reorganization and we hope to get the remaining assignments out before the end of the week.
It is an understatement to say that these have been extremely stressful weeks for everyone. We want to thank you again for your patience and dedication to journalism as we work through this difficult period. We are lucky to have such a terrific staff to lean on. Soon, we will be saying goodbye to a lot of talented people, many of whom have dedicated their careers to this paper. The list includes a few who have been here for almost 48 years. We simply cannot thank people enough for their work for the Star Tribune and for journalism.
The last day of work for most of those accepted into the buyout program will be Friday, June 15, and we are working on a plan to recognize their contributions. All suggestions for how to do so are welcome. Meanwhile, here is the list of people who have been accepted so far. It is important to note that this list is tentative: people have 15 days to rescind their buyout application and it is possible that a few people may decide to stay.

Nancy Entwistle
Doug Grow
Ron Nies
Stephen Berg
Catherine Stanley
Larry Hanson
Carol Hartman
Stormi Greener
Jay Weiner
Conrad deFiebre
Kay Miller
Dan Wascoe
Sharon Schmickle
Linda Mack
Michael Anthony
Susan E. Peterson
Eric Black
Paul Gustafson
Joseph Kimball
Charles Haga
Linda Scheimann
Jim Phillips
Pat Norton
Heather Munro
Jim Boyd
Maury Hobbs
Susie Hopper
John Addington
Patricia Pheifer
Randy Miranda
Beth Thibodeau
Julie Rosckes
Delma Francis
Greg Patterson
Barb Glander
Jeff Rush
Christine Norman
Nancy Olsen
Susan Barbieri
David Peters
Already in the buyout program
Rob Daves
Larry Werner
Denise Brownfield
Bob Jansen