Author: Brian Lambert

Brother. Everyone following the next great transition at the Star Tribune ought to read this posting on MnSpeak.

The high key vernacular — phrases like, “leaving in droves” and such — are standard with disgruntled, PO’d sales reps at every TV and radio station in town. So take that with a grain of salt. But the poster’s anger at the de-contenting of an influential public utility — the primary source of the broadest range of news in this market — is heartfelt. And what I always like to remind bystanders at this point in one of these outbursts over brutal cost-cutting is that the Star Tribune for all the ominous clouds on the horizon, is still turning profits your average widget factory would kill for.

One caller here to Slaughter Central reminds me that when the Avista deal went down in December, Moyer said he was staying on in part because he received assurances that his management team would remain in place, (except Anders Gyllenhaal, who had already bailed for south Florida). Does his change of mind now suggest he believes that promise is no longer operative?

As the note says at the top of the post, MnSpeak editor, Matt Bartel, a diligent fellow, has a high degree of confidence that the writer is in fact a Star Tribune employee.

Minnesota Republicans regard thousands of hours of Al Franken speeches and air-checks as manna from heaven. They are certain their decent, rigidly traditional, God-fearing, Bachmann-ite base will develop chronic, moral whiplash from the volleys of vulgar imagery Franken has thrown at poor Norm Coleman and Republicans in general over his career. But judging by the non-reaction reaction to Repoublican party chairman Ron Carey air-quoting Franken calling Normie a “buttboy”, they may have to dig a little deeper for something that truly offends modern adult Minnesotan sensibilities. Since most of us get a joke, have watched primetime sit-coms and lived through Jesse Ventura, our threshold for shock is higher than your average butt.

Political reporters with whom I spoke prior to Franken’s Valentine’s Day announcement were grumbling a bit. They weren’t so hot on being denied physical access to him in the studio at the moment he declared his candidacy, [there was a pool video feed, hosted by WCCO], and they didn’t much like his very Hollywood junket-style one-on-one interviews the following day. Not real upset. But some.

Their thinking being that like our last celebrity politician, the Honorable Mr. Ventura, the boys and girls who are going to cover Franken for a good chunk of the next 21 months — TWENTY ONE MONTHS! — wanted to see if he can take a hit. They wanted to see how low his flashpoint really is set, and whether the aggregate effect of so much professional impertinence in one room for a mass press conference would prompt an early, out-of-the-gate, persona-defining meltdown. (Think: Denny Green after blowing a game to the Chicago Bears.)

It didn’t work that way. By all accounts, Franken’s first few days reminded Minnesota’s political press corps that this is not going to be “Apocalypse II: Jesse Redux”. Beyond that though, I was curious if the local corps and their managers have examined their consciences in the years since Ventura left the stage and re-thought the gotcha-crazed pack mentality that had them following the big lunk everywhere short of the men’s room in hopes that — “Please, God!” — he would say or do something buffoonish enough for the top-of-the-10.

“Well, I know I’ve done some personal re-thinking since the Ventura era,” says Don Shelby, who more or less big-footed ‘CCO radio’s half hour with Franken. [Shelby says it was his aggressive producer, and not him.] “Ventura was a novelty who turned himself into a joke and the joke was on us. And any reporter who hasn’t looked at that and admitted that that is what happened is kidding himself.”

What Ventura never figured out was how to play the media’s catnip attraction to him for his benefit — beyond goosing his appearance fees for wrestling acts and whatever. As Shelby and WCCO-TV’s Pat Kessler and KSTP’S Tom Hauser and the Star Tribune’s Dane Smith all acknowledged, Franken is a much brighter bulb, a much savvier student of media than Ventura. Which means, doesn’t it? I asked, that the press corps’ radar will have to be set to “11” in order to avoid becoming a primary component in the Al Franken for Senate free media strategy?

“I don’t know. Franken isn’t coming out of blue on us,” says Hauser. “He’s a much more known quantity. And let’s not forget that none of us really paid Ventura any attention until the last month of the campaign. After the debates. Until then he was just a radio station publicity stunt. This will be different. And in terms of why we covered Ventura like we did, I don’t see Franken making the mistake of taking things as personally as Ventura, who really was a loose cannon when it came to how he responded to criticism.

“I’ve had him on ‘At Issue’ twice, I think. Once before 9-11, where he was very funny and got off a lot of good jokes, and then once after 9-11, when he was very serious and thoughtful. I think 9-11 changed a lot about how those of us in the media look at this stuff, too. I mean before it was all Monica Lewinsky. After, well, there are a lot more important things going on.”

What Hauser says he took away from his first date interview Thursday was that Franken understands the importance of, “separating his comedic past from his political future.” The (sad) irony being that Franken the jokester-satirist, the guy calling buttboys buttboys, is a far better guarantor of free media than any thoughtful analysis of U.S. Mideast policies.

“He’s going to have to walk a fine line between getting attention for being a serious candidate and getting attention for being Al Franken.”

The Strib’s Dane Smith came away from his 30 minutes with the impression that Franken is determined to be taken seriously. “There are some concerns here,” says Smith, referring to the Star Tribune, “in terms of fairness to other possible candidates who don’t have his name recognition. But you know how we do these things, when they announce every candidate gets a 1-B piece that is a pretty straight-forward opportunity to say who they are and why they’re running. The other stuff comes later.”

Smith cautions any celebrity candidate who assumes the local media will be a kind of inexhaustible ATM machine for profile-building to remember that, “Ventura left office a pretty unpopular figure.” Point being, the public is now appropriately suspicious about another self-serving, “Its All About Me” act.

“But I don’t mind telling you,” says Smith, “I was impressed by how knowledgeable and business-like Franken was in our interview. I mean, he is a Harvard grad, and that comes across.”

“That’s the biggest difference between Ventura and Franken,” says WCCO-TV’s Kessler. “All the butt boy jokes and whatever else he’s said, the guy really does know his stuff. I read his latest book, [“The Truth: With Jokes”], and its very thoughtful. You don’t get the impression talking to him that this is just another vanity candidate.
Wait. Did I just make that up? That’s pretty good!”

Shelby too was impressed. “I’ve known [Franken] for a long time and there has always been this serious side to him. You graduate summa cum laude from Harvard and there’s something going on there. So, again, the comparison to Ventura isn’t exactly appropriate.

“But, yes, it would be wrong if there weren’t a higher level of restraint on the part of the press this time because of the way the tail wagged the dog with Ventura. And let’s not forget this is a campaign. We covered Ventura as an elected official. For that reason I think the Franken news cycle will slow down quite a bit here after this first rush.”

Shelby and Kessler’s boss, WCCO-TV news director, Jeff Kiernan, wasn’t yet on the job when Ventura-mania struck in 1998, “So I don’t have the perspective Don and Pat have. So I’m trusting their judgment on these things as we begin here. But we understand the celebrity angle well enough to guarantee equal coverage. We certainly do not intend to give Franken any more or better coverage than say, Mike Ciresi, if he gets in the race.”

An example of Franken’s new, more modulated demeanor is him declaring that for the foreseeable future he will refrain from calling Norm Coleman George W. Bush’s butt boy. “Lapdog” will do for the time being.

Upon hearing this morning of the latest departure/replacement at the Star Tribune, this time publisher J. Keith Moyer — I placed a half dozen phone calls to what I consider the usual suspects … plus. I expected to listen to another wave of stunned dismay. Wrong.

Those Strib employees who weren’t either busy trying to make a deadline, or eager to avoid comment of any kind, essentially shrugged. “Moyer, too.” A bit like the announcement earlier this week of Nancy Barnes replacing Anders Gyllenhaal in the top editor’s job, the trenches-level employees at the place have significantly greater concerns than the shifting of chairs on the management deck.

It seems fair to say the level of anxiety is extraordinarily high in Strib land. Ownership of the paper will switch hands certainly within the month, a “movement” toward early retirement/buyouts has not been discouraged and, more critically, no one has any way to assess new owner Avista Capital Partners’ commitment to newspapering as opposed to rank profit-seeking and profit-taking. With all that on their minds, the sight of another well-compensated executive, parachutes packed, leaping from the forward hatch is of comparatively little concern.

But the appearance isn’t calming. As one reporter put it, “If you’re inclined to worry about what comes next, and a lot of us are, on some level you have to look at Moyer and ask yourself, ‘What does he know, really, that we don’t, but should?’ ” The underlying assumption being that as Gyllenhaal jumped to Miami he had some kind of heads-up to McClatchy dumping the Star Tribune eleven days later.

Not that knowing what either Gyllenhaal or Moyer know/knows is a hell of a lot of consolation to the salary men and women, who have far fewer career options.

Finally, give me credit for not using, “rats”, “sinking” and/or “poop deck” anywhere in this piece. That would be cheap.

This from a Stribber on today’s Barnes-for-Gyllenhaal announcement.

Barnes …

“1) is the first woman ever named to the executive editor post at the Star Tribune

2) leapfrogged over Gillespie — which is a big blow to Scott, a great guy — but in fact that follows a pattern around here of managing editors not following in their bosses’ footsteps.

3) some of us are just breathing a sigh of relief it wasn’t Monica “who cares about words? they only muck up design” Moses

4) Be careful what kind of “dragon lady” gossip you listen to about Nancy from Stribbers. A lot of it is the typical bullshit thrown around about strong women bosses. Unlike the muumuu brigade you remember at the PP, she is tough but no tsk-tsker. She plays well with the boys and gets things DONE, which I really admire.”

Okay. I hereby give Barnes 15 minutes worth of benefit of the doubt/presumption of innocence.

I suppose it’d be base and sexist of me to throw in at this point the crack made by another(Y-chromosome addled)Stribber, “Well, I’m willing to say she’s better looking than Tim McGuire.”

Cloddish bastard!

Nancy Barnes, currently the Star Tribune’s Deputy Managing Editor for Content, was named Anders Gyllenhaal’s replacement in a 2:30 announcement to the staff this afternoon.

Her in-house competition was assumed to have been Monica Moses, executive director of Product Innovation and, Scott Gillespie, managing editor. At least for the time being both remain in their current jobs.

Publisher Keith Moyer made the announcement and made a point of praising Gyllenhaal’s stewardship of the paper. Gyllenhaal is leaving to edit the Miami Herald. According to employees present for the announcement, Moyer had to prompt the staff to tepid applause for Gyllenhaal’s performance.

There was no Q&A, and several reporters with whom I spoke say the Barnes announcement, while interesting, doesn’t begin to provide the answers the staff is most interested in, namely, how many of them will survive the transition to new owner Avista Capital Partners, expected within the next two weeks.

In a related development, Star Tribune union employees were notified that the company will NOT extend a five day window, commencing on the date of Avista’s takeover, for current employees to file for a voluntary buy-out. There had been hope that the five-day process might be extended, and/or the new owners might sweeten the terms of the buy-out to attract more departures.

One veteran employee guesstimated that 15 colleagues might grab the current offer.

MPR’s Kerri Miller had NPR’s Ken Rudin, (a.k.a. “The Political Junkie”), on last Friday morning. Both are plenty hip to horse race politics so the conversation and calls, even with Pledge Week breaks, enhanced my drive up I-35 to Duluth.
They talked up Obama and the presidential slates. The obvious stuff. But it was the discussion of the Al Franken candidacy — to be announced Wednesday, reportedly, as he signs off his Air America show — that caught my interest most.
Miller and Rudin seemed in agreement that Franken’s quest was problematic as a consequence of the vast trove of broadcast “baggage” his primary rivals and Norm Coleman might/will throw at him. He has, after all, made endless outrageous assertions against conservatives, Republicans and Norm Coleman. Miller and Rudin seemed to be imagining Franken’s hyperbole playing endlessly as attack ads against him, pruning his credibility, diminishing his gravitas and keeping him permanently on the defensive.

Its an arguable point, because there’s no question Mike Ciresi would take that offensive if he needed to. Likewise Coleman in the general election, if Franken gets that far.

What was disappointing about the Miller-Rudin analysis — which in fairness to them was brief, what with Bill Kling Inc. pleading for your disposable dollars, (and did you know you can also sign over the deed to your home and your childrens’ college funds to MPR?) — was there was no recognition of an evolved definition of “baggage”.

I admit a certain appeal for Franken. Partly because he seems at least as viable as any other name the Democrats have tossed against the wall to date. But also BECAUSE of his baggage, or I should say, what his baggage is not.

When I think of “baggage” today, in 2007, in the aftermath of the gross manipulation of intelligence, (i.e. lying), that preceded the Iraq invasion, in the aftermath of the Tom DeLay-Jack Abramoff-Duke Cunningham-Dusty Foggo scandals, no-bid contracts, Dick Cheney’s secret energy task force — the one with “Kenny Boy” Lay offering sage counsel — and on and on … and on and on … hours of tapes of a professional satirist making, OK, occasionally sophomoric jokes at these culprits’ expense doesn’t even begin to register as “baggage”.

More to the point, is there a voter in Minnesota who doesn’t think of Franken as a comedian? Some may not think him funny. But they understand he’s in the business of making jokes. And if the jokes started as early as they did, back when Team Bush was riding high and so much of the rest of the pop infotainment/mainstream media illuminati were playing cheerleader, Franken’s jokes/baggage may very well qualify as courageous rather than intemperate.

As far as I know Franken’s “baggage” has nothing whatsoever to do with incidents of deceit, fraud, contempt for the Constitution or lack of “support for the troops”. (I’m sure he’s got tapes of his USO visits if anyone challenges him on that.) His baggage is that of a very well-known, well-understood pop culture icon saying pretty much what he has always said. In other words, stuff that needs very little defending.

I’m reminded of a joke I think Warren Beatty made about all his hedonistic womanizing baggage were he to run for high office. I’m paraphrasing here, but the joke has some reporter asking Beatty at a press conference, “Sir, will you confirm or deny you had sexual relations with [fill in the blank]?” To which Beatty was advised to respond, “I’ve done everything and everyone. Next question.”

Franken doesn’t need my campaign advice, but it seems obvious the trick he needs to pull off is convincing voters the two sides of his personality are not only compatible, but in fact a bona fide asset on the modern, post-Team Bush political stage. Namely, that he is both a guy with a fundamentally comic, satirical nature AND a thoughtful, honest, well-connected student of policy and government. (Everyone who thought his radio show insufficiently funny, was probably reacting to his wonkier moments with government officials and think tankers.)

Also, knowing the kind of flame that draws press moths, Franken’s “baggage”, that element of newsworthy unpredictability, is precisely the sort of thing that may draw significantly more free media than your garden variety political careerist.

This from this morning’s NY Times.

OK, a quick tale of serendipity.

One of the chores of covering TV and media for the St. Paul Pioneer Press was attending the bi-annual Television Critics Association press tours in Los Angeles. As routines go, Was it better than sitting in Minnesota writing giddy featurettes about, “Joe Millionare”? Yes. Were there hundreds of more interesting and amusing things I could think of doing with my clothes on? Definitely. But it had its moments. A lot of them, actually. Most involved cliches and cocktails, both served cold, and in chest-brushing proximity to someone famous for being on television.

That was the scheduled gig. But being a model employee, I supplemented the press tour’s faux intimate schmoozing with reality TV producers and their briefly famous girlfriends with other stories from elsewhere around LA … which meant a hell of a lot of driving around in a rental car.

So one day five years ago, over in Westwood by UCLA, if I remember right, I was listening to some self-consciously urbane rock critic on MPR’s Pasadena-based public station, KPCC. The guy was ga ga over the Red Hot Chili Peppers’ new CD, “By the Way”. “Mature”, “sophisticated”, “playful” and “adventuresome” were a few of the gush buttons he pushed.

“Cool,” I thought. “I’ll get me one.” Even though it was LA, where the quality of the rest of your week can depend on paying close attention to traffic radio and the consequences of the latest big rig flipped over and blocking some major artery, I decided I needed some fresh, quality tunes.

“By the Way” lived up to the hype. I played it constantly. Especially a cut titled, “Don’t Forget Me”, a kind of junkie’s lament, in which I could see, vividly, Flea and Anthony Kiedis writhing in full, imploded LA rock doper glory.

Unfortunately, when the press tour’s siege of the Ritz Carlton Huntington finally ended, the last cocktail was sipped, the last transcript tucked in my computer bag and the last starlet cleavage disappeared down the hotel driveway, I flew home and left, “By the Way”, in the dashboard of the rental unit.

Bummer. But, being a grossly overpaid union journalist, I had a friend of my kid’s burn me a new copy.

Flash forward to a couple Fridays ago. Tobie’s gas station, Hinckley, Minnesota. A regular pit stop on the road north to the Lambert Fortress of Solitude. Powdered lemon bismarks? Check. Duluth News Tribune? Check. USA Today? Um, Ok. Check. Weekly World News? Anything this week on Bat Boy schtupping Hillary Clinton? No? Forget it.

An hour later I’m sprawled out on the sofa, fire crackling, adult beverage poured and poised, leafing through USA Today. A lot of lame pre-Super Bowl “coverage”. Like there’s anything we don’t know and haven’t been told a million times about Peyton Manning. Why do they bother? So I turn to the Life section and … hmmm … a feature piece on the Red Hot Chili Peppers. Cool. Seems they’re touring with Gnarls Barkley. Cool. Seems the two bands sort of discovered kindred souls in each other. Cool.

The story goes on and eventually gets to some quotes from Danger Mouse, a.k.a. Brian Burton, one-half of the Barkleys.

At this point I quote from the USA Today story:

….. Burton, who was born in New York and schooled in Georgia, resides in Los Angeles in part because of the Peppers.

“I was living in London and came out to California to do some recording,” Burton recalls. “I rented a car and somebody had left their By the Way CD in the car. I put that CD in and had it in there for the whole week. When I got back to London, it was freezing and raining. I put that record in and knew it was time to move to California.”

The adult beverage remained on “poise” for a moment. I re-read the paragraph. And then I asked myself, “What are the odds?”

How many people left “By the Way” in a rental car in LA in 2002? Ten? Twenty? One?

Then, just for laughs, what are the odds Danger Mouse would recall that particular incident for the USA Today writer … who decided it was interesting enough to put in his story … and it survived editing … and I … who may possibly have once owned that particular CD … picked up a copy of USA Today … like I do maybe every two weeks, at the most … and on that night read an A&E feature instead of just the usual politics and football coverage?

The odds are what?

Pals I’ve told this story to invariably say, “Oh, you’ve got to write them! Gnarls Barkley! And tell them.” Tell them what? That I want my CD back?

I say, “Invariably”, because of one buddy whose reaction was, “Sue ’em!”

Huh? “Yeah. See, they’re playing together because of you. Demand a cut of the tour profits!”

Show biz. Brings the best out in everyone.

Following up on the recent, “New Rules for Journalists” post via Dan Froomkin and the Nieman Center, (see below), here’s an excellent set of questions newsroom managers ought to be asked relative to their performance prior to “Shock and Awe”.

By Gilbert Cranberg
cranberg@verizon.net

As the war in Iraq nears its fourth anniversary, and with no end in sight, Americans are owed explanations. The Senate Intelligence Committee has promised a report on whether the Bush administration misrepresented intelligence to justify the war against Iraq. An explanation is due also for how the U.S. press helped pave the way for war. An independent and thorough inquiry of pre-war press coverage would be a public service. Not least of the beneficiaries would be the press itself, which could be helped to understand its behavior and avoid a replay.

Better a study by outsiders than by insiders. Besides, journalism groups show no appetite for self-examination. Nor would a study by the press about the press have credibility. Now and then a news organization has published a mea culpa about its Iraq coverage, but isolated admissions of error are no substitute for comprehensive study.

The fundamental question: Why did the press as a whole fail to question sufficiently the administration’s case for war?

More specifically:

Q. Why did the Knight Ridder Washington Bureau’s “against-the grain reporting�? during the build-up to war receive such “disappointing play,�? in the words of its former bureau chief?

Q. Why did the press generally fail to pay more attention to the bureau’s ground-breaking coverage?

Q. Why, on the eve of war, did the Washington Post’s executive editor reject a story by Walter Pincus, its experienced and knowledgeable national security reporter, that questioned administration claims of hidden Iraqi weapons and why, when the editor reconsidered, the story ran on Page 17?

Q. Why did the Post, to the “dismay�? of the paper’s ombudsman, bury in the back pages or miss stories that challenged the administration’s version of events? Or, as Pincus complained, why did Post editors go “through a whole phase in which they didn’t put things on the front page that would make a difference�? while, from August 2002 to the start of the war in March 2003, did the Post, according to its press critic, Howard Kurtz, publish “more than 140 front-page stories that focused heavily on administration rhetoric against Iraq�??

Q. Why did Michael Massing’s critique of Iraq-war coverage, in the New York Review of Books, conclude that “The Post was not alone. The nearer the war drew, and the more determined the administration seemed to wage it, the less editors were willing to ask tough questions. The occasional critical stories that did appear were…tucked well out of sight.�?

Q. Why did the New York Times and others parrot administration claims about Iraq’s acquisition of aluminum tubes for nuclear weapons when independent experts were readily available to debunk the claims?

Q. Why did the Times’s Thomas E. Friedman and other foreign affairs specialists, who should have known better, join the “let’s-go-to-war�? chorus?

Q. Why was a report by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace accusing the administration of misusing intelligence by misrepresenting and distorting it given two paragraphs in the Times and 700 words in the Post (but deep inside), with neither story citing the report’s reference to distorted and misrepresented intelligence?

Q. Why did Colin Powell’s pivotal presentation to the United Nations receive immediate and overwhelming press approval despite its evident weaknesses and even fabrications?

Q. Why did the British press, unlike its American counterpart, critically dissect the speech and regard it with scorn?

Q. Why did the Associated Press wait six months, when the body count began to rise, to distribute a major piece by AP’s Charles Hanley challenging Powell’s evidence and why did Hanley say how frustrating it had been until then to break through the self-censorship imposed by his editors on negative news about Iraq?

With Congress jump starting long-overdue hearings on this disaster it would do the credibility of the mainstream media a world of good if it examined its’ work, or consented to an examination by informed critics … in an open and public way.

There is an illuminating little spat going on between Jeff Cohen, a former producer for MSNBC and one of the founders of Fairness and Accuracy In Reporting (FAIR), the lefty media site and Jonah Goldberg, the syndicated right-wing columnist. (Goldberg’s mother is Lucianne Goldberg, the arch-conservative who convinced Linda Tripp there was money to be made in doing her patriotic duty by taping her “its just us girls” chats with Monica Lewinsky. The Republic owes the Goldbergs an immense debt.)

There is no doubt that Goldberg bet $1000 that Iraq would not fall into a civil war, would have a viable constitution and that in two years time a majority of Iraqis and Americans would agree the war was worth it. There is also no doubt that Goldberg, like Bill Kristol of The Weekly Standard (and thousands of hours of cable news air time) and so many other pundit-hawks have been stunningly wrong about almost everything they’ve ever said about Iraq. But that never puts a dent in their standing with “balance”-driven mainstream media.

And, sadly, there is no doubt whatsoever that mainstream newspapers like our Star Tribune will continue running Goldberg’s stuff out of a misplaced sense of balance, I guess. You know, a little Molly Ivins (RIP), who was accurate on damned near everything she said, counterbalanced by the Jonah Goldbergs of the pundit-sphere, reliably wrong about everything that escapes their brain.

But all that withstanding, by refusing to pay on his bet, Goldberg looks about as no-class as that Chicago Bears player who stiffed the cable access schlub on the training camp promise to get the guy tickets if the Bears made the Super Bowl. The way the modern media game is SUPPOSED to go is: You shoot your mouth off and win, and your publicist gets to hype it all over the planet. You’re a hero for 15 seconds. But … if you shoot your mouth off and lose, you pay up, make a joke and insist you’ll get even tomorrow … but YOU PAY UP.

If you don’t pay up and admit defeat/error like a man, you get righteously hounded — “tortured” isn’t too cruel a word — in the shiny, bright accountability chamber of the world wide web.

Goldberg is of course a putz. The kind of guy who is probably always in the john when the check comes. But what’s the Tribune Syndicate’s excuse for not paying the $1000 for him? Cohen’s description of the Tribune vulture-culture is spot on. They’ve got huge credibility problems everywhere they look. $1000 to a charity could buy a few hundred bytes of good will.

But the larger question is, “What responsible purpose are you — mainstream media institution — serving by continuing to run alleged ‘think pieces’ by people whose thinking has been proven to be consistently flawed and erroneous? ‘Both sides of the debate’, is one weak excuse, and sure, everyone is wrong occasionally. But don’t you have a higher responsibility to the truth than continuing to run stuff that the judgment of time has rendered so conclusively foul?”