Author: Brian Lambert

  • Guild May Want to See Avista's Books

    Par Ridder’s barnstorming slide show, “Business Literacy”, (given first to the Pioneer Press staff before “right-sizing” them to virtual irrelevancy, and now yesterday to his new staff at the Star Tribune), is essentially a plea to the troops to have pity on the paper’s executive and investor class, which is facing the same severe economic…

  • There are Bigger Issues than Lileks.

    If they gave awards for networking and self-promotion, Star Tribune columnist James Lileks would long ago have been handed a gold-plated trophy for Lifetime Achievement. It has not passed without notice that amid the wholesale turmoil of the latest round of staff cuts at the Star Tribune that Lileks somehow made himself a centerpiece of…

  • Early Indications: Strib to Lose 50 from Newsroom

    Word from the still on-going meeting Star Tribune publisher Par Ridder is holding in the paper’s jam-packed assembly room-cafeteria is that Avista Capital Partners will cut approximately 50 more newsroom jobs within the next two weeks through an enhanced buy-out plan. The plan will compensate employees two weeks for every year of service up to…

  • Lileks the Reporter? Hard to Imagine.

    As previously mentioned, James Lileks, was one of five Star Tribune columnists summoned into meetings last week and, uh, “offered” the opportunity to volunteer to give up their columnizing for straight reporting gigs. As Lileks himself writes here, it seems he was given something firmer than an offer, and his mini-column, “The Daily Quirk”, will…

  • Stribbers Await Monday Meeting

    Just to give you an idea of the anxiety hanging over their weekend, Star Tribune employees left the building Friday hoping for the best, but expecting the worst from announcements scheduled for 3 pm Monday, (tomorrow). Operating as per usual with little to no information, rumors were that new owners Avista Capital Partners, via their…

  • Strib Bloodletting Begins Anew. Ridder Still Secure as Publisher.

    Thursday afternoon at the Star Tribune saw the paper’s four metro columnists, Doug Grow, Nick Coleman, Katherine Kersten and Cheryl “CJ” Johnson called in to separate meetings with editors Nancy Barnes and Scott Gillespie and told, in so many words, that the paper was looking to scale back the number of columnists and would any…