Author: Brian Lambert

Eric Black, the Star Tribune’s Talmudic analyst of things political and media has already plotted his next move, announcing that he will begin an association with Minnesota Monitor a fledgling website with a strong progressive political attitude. Black has taken the recent buy-out, and expects to be fully separated from the Strib by June 15.

For the past year or so Black has been writing, “The Big Question”, easily the Strib’s most-visited blog. A few months back he brought in the paper’s erudite but libertarian political editor, Doug Tice, for a little counter-point. It wasn’t exactly, “Jane, you ignorant slut”, but it had potential – more in my opinion if each gentleman loosened the foundation garments a bit and applied a little showmanship. But that’s just me.

I caught Black on the way into the office this morning to clear up a few details of his arrangement with MnMonitor.

“It will be an independent blog,” he explained. “I control it. MnMonitor can use all or as little as they please. Ideally, material will flow back and forth freely. But is is my blog. I don’t have a name for it yet. [“The Big Question” apparently is the Strib’s “intellectual property”]. The Center [for Independent Media, MnMonitor’s parent organization] is helping me set it up.”

And the compensation, considering Black is an established name bringing valuable credibility to a young organization with sober ambitions? “Well, they are definitely paying me for it. I won’t disclose the terms. It is not a full-time job with benefits. But when you leave your old employer with a year’s pay, some things are possible.”

Black and I have discussed the evolution from newspapers to blogging, and he has confessed there are attitudinal and stylistic adjustments he will need to make.

“But,” he says, “it would be unfair and untrue to suggest the Star Tribune in any way restricted what I wrote on the blog. But as you and I have discussed, there are cultural aspects of the newspaper environment. There certainly are norms and limitations you buy in to. In that way I’ve already found [The Big Question”] very liberating. It may take years though to stop the kind of self-censoring all newspaper reporters do. I’ve said I have a lot of unlearning to do. But I think I’ll adapt.”

The relationship with Tice, one of the better conservative writers in town, is on indefinite hiatus. That’s too bad. As Black notes, one of the serious downsides to the web is the segregation of ideologies, with each camp having little-to-no interaction with the other, “except in derision,” as Black says.

“I’ve been doing a lot of brain-storming, and will continue to look into ways to create some kind of civil discourse.”

While the powers that be at the Star Tribune mull who among their employees to keep and who to kick on to “new opportunities”, I talked to my former competitor, Deborah Caulfield Rybak, about one of the stranger ironies of the Strib and so many newspapers’ “hyper-local” business stratagem. (I say “business” because it has everything to do with short-term business and almost nothing to do with relevant journalism, and “stratagem” because it is more contrivance than well-considered “strategy.”) Namely, the irony of desperate newspaper managers with a tin ear for what core readers are interested in reading.

This may sound more than a little self-serving, since both Rybak — who decided Friday to take the latest Star Tribune buy-out (after the paper eliminated the media reporting job) — and myself worked the media beat for daily newspapers. But I assert relevance in the context of “localism” and readership — factors that allegedly matter, even within the “right-sizing” template Par Ridder has now dropped on both papers here in the Twin Cities.

Our beef: Rybak and I were well aware (and proud) of the traffic our work generated for our papers’ website. According to the geeks in IT, traffic is good. To some extent it connotes readership, and readership is supposedly still important, even amid The Great Newspaper Revenue Collapse. Moreover, all those “hits” are the only regular, reliable accounting of traffic either of us, or management, could ever grab on to.

Nevertheless, both Rybak and I have now experienced the, uh, “sobering” experience of getting the word that contrary to all that “traffic” and “readership” numbers jibberish, local (and national) media coverage is all but entirely expendable when managers need to sling a few bodies overboard. What gives?

I know. Poor, poor pitiful us. If we ever get a real job you’ll cry for us.

A seasoned reporter long before coming to the Star Tribune — she worked at the LA Times and had a successful free-lance career for almost a decade before landing at the Strib — Rybak migrated into media reporting from the Strib’s business desk, and her business reporting sensibility was the hook to her coverage of the usual shenanigans of local TV and radio stations, i.e. Minnesota’s local “celebrities”.

Pre-Ridder and Avista her primary internal conflict was with gossip columnist Cheryl Johnson, a.k.a. CJ, whose beat is at least 40% dependent on telling tales out of local newsrooms. Rather than resolve the conflict in the overlap of the two beats sensibly — let CJ cover after hours hijinx and Rybak the on-the-job stuff — the Strib’s managers let it fester in CJ’s favor. CJ retained her columnist’s license, while Rybak was pointedly told there would be no column and no undue attitude in her stories.

It was not exactly an acute reading of where “celebrity”-oriented journalism was going. Sports is an entertainment business and no one would ever think of printing a paper without a sports columnist making merry with the hometown team.

Says Rybak, “That was Anders (Gyllenhaal, the Strib’s editor at the time until leaving his past February for the Miami Herald). Anders did not want any more columnists. Columnists meant opinions and opinions meant conflict for him, and Anders hated conflict.”

Conflict aversion has become my best explanation for why so many newspapers avoid local media reporting entirely. (In most newsrooms a TV critic — basically a movie reviewer for TV — suffices). Those papers that do cover local media keep a very tight rein on the amount of voice and analysis their reporters are allowed. Why? Clearly there is readership for the plucking in the aggressive pursuit of the locally famous.

Back in the Pleistocene Era Nick Coleman wrote a local media column for the Star Tribune. (That’s a joke.) It was great stuff, with Nick, never mistaken for being reverential to fame, goosing up solid reporting with frequently and hilariously acid wordplay describing the craven, anything-for-a-buck grandstanding of local TV “stars.” (It got worse/better when he’d go out to L.A. and slash up Michael Landon, aka “Jesus of Malibu”.)

“Yeah, but one reason I walked away from it,” he says today, “is because I could feel my editors pulling back their support for me. If you’re doing it the way it is supposed to be done, [reporting and analyzing editorial decision-making in radio and TV], quite often what you’re writing is also reflecting badly on them. Chickenshit is chickenshit. So what makes it worse is that at the same time this stuff is reflecting badly on them they’re also taking shit from the people they think of as peers. There’s a kind of class distinction issue involved.”

In other words, almost as a professional courtesy, media managers understand to keep their minions under control. Only “facts”, the drier the better, please. Never mind that a straight report of some station’s cratering ratings without informed analysis is arguably misinformative.

Among these obvious ironies — the steady supply of “local” coverage along with easily-proven reader appeal — the shame about the Strib whacking media reporting, (someone may yet get tossed the occasional ratings or anchor-hit-by-bus story), and losing Rybak, is that the Strib is shuffling out an extraordinarily well-networked and aggressive reporter, someone with deep memory of this market and plenty residual memory from her previous work covering Hollywood and straight business.

Of course, the same claim could be made for a dozen or more Stribbers getting pushed toward the door.

But my point here is that Rybak’s value in an a less-fettered, interactive on-line environment, toward which newspapers will evolve sooner or later, is immediately obvious. Put simply, she gets the electronic “thing”.

The value just isn’t obvious to current Strib management, which, as I’ve said before, seems to be pursuing the same uninspired reorganizational template that daddy Ridder applied across the country through the late Nineties, and young Par dropped on the PiPress during his brief stopever/training-wheels assignment there. It is a moribund template that offers no vision for enhancing brand value.

One argument, espoused by former Strib publisher Joel Kramer, is that the fundamental newspaper business model has already passed the tipping point and is plunging rapidly toward unsustainability. Interviewed on TPT’s “Almanac” Friday night, Kramer disclosed his interest in creating an on-line newspaper here in the Twin Cities, an all-electronic entity without the gruesome overhead of print media.

We’ll see what he decides after he finishes doing all the math. But if Kramer, or someone, is prepared to suck up a little editorial risk — and let established, well-sourced reporters write the kind of stories a public, (maybe not the Great Mass public) wants to read — they will probably find revenue following readership.

Anyone who tries will have an ample talent pool from which to choose and substantial readership prepared to take it for a test drive.

*Version 3.121* Copyright © 2001-2004 Six Apart. All Rights Reserved.

Without further comment … this from Pamela Miller, Star Tribune Guild officer and the paper’s Faith & Values reporter.

“Brian’s coverage of the misery at the Strib has been accurate and intelligent. I appreciate that.

“But I wonder if you, the blog- and media-reading public, really care what happens to a bunch of middle-class journalists who will probably land on their feet. The real tragedy is not for journalists, but for you citizen consumers of news, who now will find less of it, written more hurriedly by fewer people, in their local paper AND at that paper’s website.

“Like most of my counterparts, I wrack my brain day and night for a way to save my beloved craft, and hope that we’re all wrong and that this terrible time is just a dip in, not the death throes of, mainstream journalism. I believe journalism won’t die, but just evolve somehow. But how, in a way that preserves accurate, cool-headed reporting?

“Like Brandt, I am among the lucky ones at the Strib — the religion beat will survive, whether it’s covered by me or not. But I never forget that a few years ago, when the first symptoms of shrinkage appeared, an equally important beat, Science, was killed. And now I look around and see talented folks like Warren Wolfe scrambling for a gig after his growing-in-importance topical beat, Aging, is unplugged. And I look at Doug Grow, whose trademark hearty laugh sounds almost sad these days — here’s a guy who in the past would have had a retirement party that would have filled a stadium; now he tells me he’d rather we didn’t even have cheese, crackers and beer at Jax for the 50 departing folks “because it would feel too sad; no one will wanna come.” And I look at wonderful support staff folks like Patricia Grice and Brian Leehan, who contribute deeply to our paper’s intelligence and humanity, and feel angry that they may be forced to walk the plank so an oil-drilling company can have its big bucks.

“I have a teenage son who is co-editor of The Quill, the student newspaper at Robbinsdale Cooper High School, and for years he dreamed of being a journalist. Now he’s not so sure.

“We have a great union contract, but even the best contract can’t prevent layoffs and buyouts. We union officers feel like hospice workers, treating symptoms and holding hands. But in this grievous time, we also feel strong stirrings of solidarity and stubbornness in those of us left. Avista can expect to face a savvy, strong union when negotiations open next spring. We’re not rolling over — far from it. We’re going to have some things to talk about.

Pamela Miller
Faith & Values reporter
Minneapolis Star Tribune

Media reporter Deborah Rybak has decided to take the buy-out and leave the Star Tribune. She joins the likes of Eric Black, Doug Grow, Stormi Greener, Sharon Schmickle and 40-plus more Star Tribune newsroom employees who have/had until 5 pm today to officially notify the paper of their intentions. The paper has decided to deep six the media reporting beat.

Every departure has its elements of skullduggery and drama and Rybak’s certainly is no different. Working half time for the past six months as she dealt with family issues in California Rybak has been out of the newsroom maelstrom, but hardly immune to the effects of the tentacles of of misinformation, calculated or clueless, that have added to the anxiety dripping off the walls of the building these past few months — really ever since the day after Christmas when McClatchy announced it was selling out to Avista Capital Partners.

Rybak had no intention of leaving as of even a week ago. In fact, she has a May 14 e-mail from managing editor Scott Gillespie assuring her that, “Our agreement is airtight,” plainly meaning that he understood she intended to return to the media job and that he had agreed to that.

Still, to give you an idea of how screwy (and worse) these last couple weeks have been, Rybak, following the action from California, watched in a combination of puzzlement and horror as Gillespie nevertheless posted her job — meaning it was technically available for other reporters to choose — and then faded off into a veil of incommunicado-ness, sliding decision-making up and down the management pecking order. This left Rybak asking repeatedly, and long-distance, for clarification on what in the hell was going on — as in how she could declare her intentions to keep the job, based on the paper asking her to declare that she wanted it, then watching them first post the beat to all-comers, before eventually dumping the job entirely.

UPDATE: Some of you have asked when the full, final and official list of buy-outs will be released. Guild officer Pam Miller explains that Strib management has some kind of a June 6 deadline, “But I expect they’ll announce it before that.”

Complicating the situation is the paper’s stated (to the Guild) intention to get rid of “about” (says Miller) 10 of the 35 or so newsroom support staff, meaning news aides, librarians, etc. As Miller explains it the paper has said it will not accept more than 50 reporters, if it doesn’t get the minimum number of support staff. That could have the effect of some people who chose to take the buy-out being told their request has not been accepted.

Or, put another way, the situation really is miserable.

Miller, who writes for the Strib’s Faith and Valuyes section, described, “an eerily quiet scene” after today’s 5 p.m. deadline passed. Many had gone home early, perhaps seeing no purpose in ruining a perfectly good spring weekend with an extra hour of the spirit-sapping vibe of the Star Tribune building.

“You know,” says Miller, who by the way plans on staying, “I think of myself as a happy person. I’ve liked almost all the jobs I’ve ever had, and I like this one. I look forward to coming in in the morning. But I am very concerned about what this has done to this place. The way this has been handled has made everyone more suspicious of our managers, more suspicious of Par Ridder. It has become an unhealthy, toxic environment.”

Based on Ridder’s history and current ethical challenges I wonder if there is anyone who believes he and his current management team even have the skill set to restore their own credibility, much less a semblance of productive collegiality to the building?

Miller adds that it isn’t as though she and her colleagues don’t understand the profound problems of the newspaper business. Rather it’s that they detect no vision at all for moving their paper into something better.

I mentioned a memo from LA Times publisher, David Hiller, that was picked up on LAObserved yesterday.

The LA Times is beset by at least as many problems as the Star Tribune, and may or may not be better off with the smoke and mirrors purchase by Chicago tycoon Sam Zell. But the Times at least understands, and constantly reminds its staff that it intends to survive the transition to all digital news, and at the very least it isn’t going to go down without a fight.

Said Hiller, “We are adding technology and online product development resources. A little later today, we are announcing that Scott Sullivan has joined latimes.com as chief technology officer and will be building the teams to speed our development and rollout of new interactive products in the second half of 2007 and 2008. High on the priority list will be new local entertainment and listings products, building off the current calendarlive.com offering. We’ve also made initial investments in the camera and editing equipment necessary for our developing video strategy and continue to address our multimedia editorial training and staffing needs.”

The Avista owned, Par-operated Strib maybe be giving lip-service to such ideas, but there isn’t anyone in the Strib newsroom who thinks they’re going to take any serious risks to achieve anything like what the Times is attempting. And THAT is demoralizing.

Hiller added, “The recent [reduction] program was a difficult but important part of how we are changing – reducing expenses in the core and investing for growth. As part of this, we are both eliminating some positions and adding back some positions. We eliminated approximately 170 positions, mostly through the voluntary buyouts; we are planning to hire back approximately 50 positions in the core paper to strengthen talent in multi-media, local coverage, marketing and sales. In addition, we will be adding likely more than 30 additional staff in interactive before the end of the year. We are a living, changing organization and this all part of how we adapt.”

I’ve said it before, the current Avista “team”, and I say that sardonically, betrays far more interest in “harvesting” than “investing” in the Star Tribune. Cornball chatter about, “leaner and meaner” is, frankly, an insult to the intelligence of the average reporter. Money talks, and what Avista’s money is saying is, “Every man for himself.”

Conservatives have enjoyed great success pilloring Democrats and liberals with accusations of “flip-flopping”. Any lefty who everv changed their mind, voting against a flawed bill and then voting for a repaired bill was labeled a “flip-flopper”. It worked because the party’s base, the average Sean Hannity listener, wants glib judgments made for him, and made with instantaneous and unequivocal bias.

As we see today with Mitt Romney, that “flip-flopping” can cut both ways. But I’m more fascinated with the “pander factor”, where supposedly intelligent, worldly, sophisticated men (as all the Republican presidential candidates are … “men”, I mean) not only attempt to out-Sgt. Rock each other on the issue of who can be the most ruthless toward our “enemies”, (long, murky list there), waffle on their acceptance of evolution — EVOLUTION, for chrissakes! — and, in the case of John McCain the other night on “The O’Reilly Factor”, let pass with out comment, much less condemnation, one of the most naked assertions of gender and ethnic privilege I’ve ever heard.

Here is the YouTube link. The most interesting stuff begins at about the 1:40 mark. That is where we hear this exchange:

Bill O’Reilly: But do you understand what the New York Times wants, and the far-left want? They want to break down the white, Christian, male power structure, which you’re a part, and so am I, and they want to bring in millions of foreign nationals to basically break down the structure that we have. In that regard, Pat Buchanan is right. So I say you’ve got to cap with a number.

John McCain: In America today we’ve got a very strong economy and low unemployment, so we need addition farm workers, including by the way agriculture, but there may come a time where we have an economic downturn, and we don’t need so many.

O’Reilly: But in this bill, you guys have got to cap it. Because estimation is 12 million, there may be 20 [million]. You don’t know, I don’t know. We’ve got to cap it.

McCain: We do, we do. I agree with you.

In fairness, McCain is “agreeing” with O’Reilly’s notion of a cap on immigration. (Get back to me with those enforcement details, Bill.) He is not specifically “agreeing” with O’Reilly’s Berchtesgaden-like view that, “the white, male, Christian power structure” is some kind of inviolable, God and Constitution-ordained law in this country.

My point is that unless McCain’s earplug went dead at that precise moment he had an obligation, as a candidate for President of the United States, a country where over half the population is female and the percentages of the other-than-white and other-than-Christian citizenry has been substantial and growing for a century, to say something to the effect, “Well look, Bill. I’ve got to stop you there and tell you that I’m not on board with the idea that what you call the ‘white, male, Christian power structure’ is something so pure and faultless it isn’t long overdue for a little enlightened evolution.

“Sorry, bad choice of words, there. But even though this is Fox News and even though most of your audience is 68 year-old white guys sitting in their boxers in their trailers cleaning their guns, I’m just not comfortable with your assertion, or is it Pat Buchanan’s?, that white, male and Christian is the only way to run this country.

“Now, back to your point about making it tougher on the brown crowd to clip hedges in San Diego … .”

Let me ask you, has any politician with as much crossover appeal as McCain had even two years ever squandered as much so fast? It is astonishing.

Also, if you missed Jon Stewart’s “interview” with McCain about a month ago, here is that link.

It really is a shame. But I guess we knew all along that McCain’s biggest problem was going to be the GOP’s nutball factor. But, personally, I thought he’d blow his chances by doing the “straight talk” thing with Jerry Falwell, James Dobson , O’Reilly, Hannity and the rest of the court of fools and tell them how their combination of rigid sanctimony and crass, low-denominator marketing would sooner or later kill off their party.

Instead, McCain has shot his feet off by declining to play truth-speaker and pandering instead to their post-Weimar lunacies.

There’s a book in this one.

I gotta tell ya I’m damned near out of gas on flogging the Star Tribune (and the Pioneer Press, and WCCO TV and just about everybody other than KSTP’s Bob McNaney and Strib columnist, Nick Coleman) to look up from its new strategic focus on the Fridley Squirts Hockey league long enough to put a full-bodied squeeze on the US Attorneys/Heffelfinger/Paulose story. The thing is belching vaporous gas like an incipient volcano and they’re still taking “I don’t knows” from Heffelfinger (who most likely doesn’t know — so enough) and “no comments” from Paulose, who, at the very minimum, should be compelled to hold a full press conference on the matter.

Thankfully, other papers have recognized the pattern — particularly Karl Rove’s bogus voter fraud/vote suppression strategy — and are working more productive lines of inquiry.

Ex-Stribber, Tom Hamburger, filed this story for the LA Times. (Here is a good synopses via TPM Muckraker.

The Strib had the good sense to re-print the Times story — with minimal editing — but couldn’t find a spot for it on 1A.

Sharp eyed readers here at LTTS jumped on it and filed deliciously acid comments. To wit:

From “herbtheverb” —

“So, just to rub salt in the wound (like they care), who do you guess wrote the story? Why it would be L.A. Times staff writer Tom Hamburger of course! You know, the guy who was one of the top political reporters around these here parts, once employed by the Strib locally, then as Washington correspondent…..

Wait though! It gets even better since these were events that happened in 2004 and THAT’S THREE YEARS AGO FOLKS! So even now, our wonderfully competitive LOCAL papers can’t unearth potential voter discrimination by LOCAL officials against LOCAL citizens and needs ex-local reporters employed by a west-coast paper to inform their “customers”.

There are even more juicy tidbits there about Paulouse, about how they sought to keep it out of the papers of the time (no worrys, mate, just don’t talk about it in a Maple Grove zoning board meeting), and read carefully about the how/why the story was caught now (i.e. Monica Goodling angle).

Suburban H.S. sports coverage indeed: mission accomplished. The prosecution, uh….. rests…. “

Then, from “Not Pleased With Strib Cutbacks” —

“Tom Hamburger, a former Strib D.C. bureau reporter, finally does the digging his former paper has been incapable or unwilling of doing on the resignation of Tom Heffelfinger and how it fits into the overall picture of Karl Rove’s politicization of U.S. Attorneys.

This story is the reason why the Strib and the PiPress need strong and well-staffed Washington D.C. bureaus now more than ever.”

On that last note, the Strib did announce yesterday that it is bringing Kevin Diaz back to its DC bureau. Diaz was basically insulted with a salary cut when Avista took over from McClatchy, so he stayed with McClatchy — which has done excellent work on the US Attorneys scandal — SOME of which has been picked up by the Strib.

Nancy Barnes, editor and Sr VP for News had this to say in making the announcement, “As our chief correspondent, Kevin will be responsible for covering our delegation, as well as major state and regional issues before Congress, such as the farm bill. We expect him to be instrumental in covering the upcoming Senate race, and the Republican convention headed our way.

“Kevin will be joined in Washington by an intern: Jake Sherman, a senior from George Washington University and editor-in-chief of the campus newspaper. He has interned at the Washington Post, the Journal News in White Plains, NY, the office of Rep. Christopher Shay, CNN’s Crossfire, and the Stamford Advocate. He will intern with us from June 18-Aug. 31.

“They will report to Doug Tice. For those of you interested in the details: We have rented space in the Scripps Howard newsroom, effective June 18, since we lost our own bureau space in the McClatchy sale.”

Diaz and an intern. Well, considering the alternatives everywhere else in StribVille these days, how can I complain?

(Messages to Diaz’ voice and e-mail got the response that he is “away” until next Monday.)

The Star Tribune Guild convened a 10:30 meeting this morning to look at a pattern of age discrimination in the reassignments cooked up editors for the paper’s owner, Avista Capital Partners. Speaking on background one Guild officer said that by their count “only three or four” of the [30-40] reporters told they are being reassigned, “are under the age of 35”.

It is generally considered “paranoid” or “cynical” to read individualized, strategic intent in these reassignment frenzies. But when, as the same Guild source points out, the percentage of reassignees is so heavily skewed to older writers AND they are notified of their reassignment only days/hours before they have to decide to accept a buy-out and leave the paper, you really aren’t left with many credible explanations other than that this is the latest exercise in the tried-and-true corporate “right-sizing” template of — let’s describe it the way it smells — — insulting/threatening a veteran reporter with a switch to a beat usually covered by a summer intern, if at all.

There are specific examples all over the place, but when you get to Neal Gendler, a 60-something with a heart condition being reassigned to the OVERNIGHT copy-editing desk, you’re not even getting points for subtlety. (CORRECTION: I’ve since been told that Gendler’s reassignment is not as a copy desk editor, but as a general assignment reporter, from 10 pm to 7 am. In other words, police chase and flaming wreck with shoot out at 3 AM … Gendler’s your man.)

The Guild also has a problem with the peculiar sequencing of the reassignment/buy-out deadline process devised by the Star Tribune. As I asked wrote yesterday, how else can you explain managing editors spending so much time re-mapping their employee universe BEFORE knowing for certain who they will have to work with, other than as a not too subtle and yes, fairly cynical process for “encouraging” those they most want out of the building to pack up and go?

It may be technically legal, but it runs contrary to the spirit of journalism, where your agendas, if you have them, are supposed to be plainly disclosed.

Whether the Guild alone can get any traction on the age discrimination issue remains to be seen. I happen to believe they should pursue aggressive outside counsel if only to squeeze Avista for a fatter, longer-term health benefits package. But that’s me and it wouldn’t be my money.

With the clock counting down to Friday’s deadline for accepting Star Tribune management’s buy-out offer, Strib reporters will get a look at the big, new, glossy, reorganized reassignment chart top editors have been fussing over. Word is it will debut sometime today or tomorrow.

Actually, I don’t know about the “big” or “glossy” parts, but it has struck some as odd that the paper’s supposedly maniacally busy managers have enough disposable time to cook up a reorganization chart, with entirely new assignments for quite a few staffers … BEFORE they have any idea who is actually going to be on their staff after next week.

It doesn’t seem like an exactly efficient use of executive time.

Top editors Nancy Barnes and Scott Gillespie have been e-mailed questions about this, and I’ll dutifully plug them in when and if they respond.

Until then the suspicion further souring the anxious atmosphere of the place is that the pre-buy-out reassignment chart is another not too subtle tool for pushing “targeted” employees off the company dime.

For example, if Employee “A” has never been one of your favorites, but you’re getting the feeling he may linger, you re-assign him to the all-important Bloomington Planning Commission/graveyard of marginalized reporters. Employee “A” — who may be a career-long screw up or just someone you’ve never particularly cared for — sees the big, glossy chart getting pinned to the newsroom wall, trips over a half dozen corpse-like colleagues to search for his name, finds it inked in next to “Bloomington”, says, “Screw this” and signs up for the buy-out.

Mission accomplished, if you’re the diabolical manager.

This attrition technique has not exactly been invented by today’s Strib managers. And it always has the dark beauty of keeping your fingerprints off an old-fashion whacking without cause.

Presumably the official explanation is that today or tomorrow’s list is all for the service of the employees, offering them “guidance” and “clarity” as they make their decision.

Riight.

Whatever it is, another newer, bigger and glossier reassignment list will have to get whipped together after management gets a load of who actually takes the bait/hint and who doesn’t.

In an open letter to friends and colleagues, Kevyn Burger, mid-morning host at FM 107 and, as I’ve said for two decades, one of the great gals/babes of the Twin Cities, announced she has breast cancer and will undergo aggressive treatment beginning this weekend. A reporter at KSTP-TV and then WCCO-TV before settling into her present radio gig, Burger will return to the mic for an hour tomorrow morning, from 9 to 10 AM to discuss her situation, and then take an indefinite hiatus for surgery and chemo.

FM 107 GM Dan Seeman says his plan is to find a regular fill-in, instead of cobbling together a cast of rotating hosts. He hasn’t yet decided who that will be.

I don’t want to go all maudlin here, because Kevyn wouldn’t relate to it or approve. But a big part of her charm has always been her “player” attitude. (Which explains why she ranks high as a “guy gal”.) She understands the media game, has played it well with her own unique style and continues to survive with dignity intact. Not everyone can say that.

Hang tough, Kevyn.

(Her message is attached inside.)

Hello friends,
I am sorry to be contacting you as part of a group e mail. Trust me, I would prefer to tell each one of you the news that I am about to impart over a walk, or coffee, or a glass of wine. However, I simply can’t bring myself to dial each one of of you to deliver this news personally.
Those of you who worked with me in news know I was never one to bury a lede. So here is is:

I have been diagnosed with breast cancer.

I had a routine screening mammogram they day after I did the Walk for the Cure. I expected to get that ‘see ya next year’ postcard in the mail. Instead, a call, the need for another look, the need for an ultrasound, the need for a needle biopsy.
And the confirmation of the diagnosis: invasive ductal carcinoma. In two places.
The good news is that this cancer has not moved to my liver, bones or lungs.
The bad news is that I actually have two lumps and they are periolously near my lymph nodes.
So, I am scheduled for surgery at the soonest possible date. I will have a full mastectomy on June 2 at 9:30 a.m. This will be followed by immediate reconstruction. I will recover for a few days at Abbott Northwestern, then come home, recover some more, and begin preparing for chemotherapy and then radiation.
I am still stunned. My favorite band Atmosphere has a line in their song ‘That Night’ that goes ‘This sort of real doesn’t happen to you, right?’ and that may best describe my feelings.
It has been a long and crazily distorted time, as I have waited for the conclusive information to arrive. I’ve already seen an array of specialists and undergone a series of pokes and prods. Basically, I have now used up my share of the health care budget for the rest of my life…and about half of yours, as well.
Once again, the good news-bad news scenario. This will not kill me. (That’s the good news.) The bad news is the fear and misery that will be my companion in the coming months.That I have to say goodbye to my breast and my self-image as a person with an almost super-human immune system. That I am going to have to learn how to be vulnerable and how to ask for help.
All of these challenges frighten me very much. I am being pulled out of my comfort zone and may never be able to return.
I am blessed to have a gutsy and loyal husband, a loving family and dear and devoted friends. I will have to rely on each of you in ways we can’t now imagine.
Please do not call me right now. I need to keep my strength and focus. Please do not send large and extravagent arrangements of flowers to the hospital. They always remind me of funerals and that is the last thing I want to think of. Please pray for me and for my family and please be strong for all of us.
A hard lump of fear is wedged in my middle and nothing can make it dissolve until the surgery is complete. I know many of you feel it with me. Still I am optimistic. I know I have a lot of fight in me and I will give my all to this struggle. Since the diagnosis, I was riding my bike on a beautiful spring day, these words came to me:
“My fear is strong, but my faith is stronger.”
It is. It truly is. And the faith that you have in me is such a big part of that.
I will soon have a website to communicate with all of you and give you updates. In the meantime, a small request: actively think of me every time you cross the river. Don’t forget to admire how that ribbon of water is on a journey. Notice how the ricer shines; think of how the water seeks the sea. Think of how I’m working to heal…and send me your thoughts, prayers and best wishes as you cross between the banks. My body and soul feel somewhere floating in between right now, working hard to rejoin you on the solid ground of the banks. Wave to me. Beckon me back to the land of the fully alive. I’ll be there with you again…soon.

With love,
Kevyn

PS This news is not a secret. Feel free to share this information with anyone who needs it.

My son has helped me set up a blog.
http://kevynbaby.blogspot.com
It will also be available on the fm107 website. This may be the best way to communicate with me for the time being

(SEE IMPORTANT UPDATE BELOW)>

Is this bait and switch?

Star Tribune Guild officer Chris Serres notifying his colleagues this morning …

>>> Christopher Serres 5/29/2007 9:44 AM >>>

Dear Guild friends and colleagues,

The buyout package agreed to by the Guild was intended to reduce the need for involuntary layoffs. However, there is still a possibility that layoffs will occur, even if the company meets its targeted goal of 50 job reductions in the newsroom and editorial departments.

In a meeting with management on May 18, Guild members of the Star Tribune support staff were told that the company intended to eliminate 10 of their positions, including six news assistants. If that goal was not reached, layoffs might occur, Guild members were told.

It is the first indication that cuts to the newsroom could exceed the 50 originally sought by the company when it unveiled its cost-cutting plan earlier this month.

Guesstimates in recent days had at least 50 Stribbers accepting the paper’s buy-out plan. (Deadline to notify the paper is 5 p.m. June 1, this Friday.) Previously it had been assumed that 50 newsroom cuts (not all necessarily reporters) would satisfy new owners, Avista Capital Partners, at least for the time being. This latest news suggests otherwise.

Since a lay-off under current rules would garner less medical coverage than is being offered under the buy-out, this “news” could inspire even more to take the money and run.

UPDATE: Later Tuesday Strib Guild members received the following correction …

Dear Guild members,

In a note sent earlier today about possible layoffs, the following sentence was not accurate: “It is the first indication that cuts to the newsroom could exceed the 50 originally sought by the company when it unveiled its cost-cutting plan earlier this month.”

In fact, the company has assured us that it does not intend job cuts to exceed 50 positions. However, targeted layoffs may occur in job classifications in which there are too many people for the positions available.

But the total jobs cut, either through layoffs or buyouts, likely will not exceed 50.

Apologies for the error.

Your unit officers