Author: Brian Lambert

By now the question, “What’s going on with Eric Eskola?” has been pretty well answered among media insiders. The question remaining is, “How do we explain it to the general public, if we do at all?” The position taken by WCCO-AM is to say simply that Eskola, the station’s heretofore indefatigable government and politics reporter,…

It says something about the quality and value of TV news, local TV news in particular, when a guy suggests a big city newspaper like the Star Tribune demonstrate a hipness to the coming convergence of internet and television and smart people react like he’s suggesting polluting Perrier with dioxin. In the previous post I…

As foul as the air is over the Star Tribune these days, (and it isn’t any better across the river), the soon-to-be-“right-sized” staff might feel the slightest bit better if they were being given any reason — ANY REASON — to believe the end result of all the slashing, cutting, out-sourcing, etc. was going to…

The sight of Roger Parkinson, the sharp-edged former publisher of the Star Tribune, strolling through the newsroom yesterday inspired dozens of tongues to cluck the same two words, “interim publisher.” The innocent explanation for Parkinson’s appearance is that he was in town from Toronto as part of his duties with the local Humphrey Institute and…

While I wait for McClatchy muckety-mucks to respond to my questions I’ll slide along these interesting numbers from the company’s “10Q” report — breaking out the first quarter performance of the Star Tribune this year compared to 2006. It ain’t pretty. God help you if you ever rely on me for advice on your investments,…

I don’t envy Strib writer, Matt McKinney, who has the job of walking the razor’s edge describing the convulsions at the Strib to the satisfaction of both his employers and the general public. But in his May 8 story on the latest round of cuts, there were these graphs … . . . “The Star…