Author: Brian Lambert

The Star Tribune’s Minnesota Poll, now out-sourced to New Jersey, has been in heavy play this past week. For decades a valuable snapshot of Minnesota attitudes, the Poll, as many of you know, was seriously down-sized under McClatchy ownership and “right-sized” into oblivion by Avista Capital Partners. The Poll’s most recent director, Rob Daves, was dismissed this year, the office shuttered and all institutional memory pretty well vacated.

With interim publisher, Chris Harte, cautioning his editorial section to avoid wild-hair liberal notions like calling for sufficient revenue to actually maintain the infrastructure we’ve got, I was intrigued to see that the question, “Would you be willing to pay more in gasoline taxes in order to pay for increased inspection and repair of bridges”, produced a 46%/50% yes/no verdict from the public. Though reporter Pat Doyle noted that that breakout falls within the 4% plus-or-minus margin of error, meaning you could if you wanted see a split decision, the usual suspects jumped on the “no vote” to affirm their campaigns to keep Minnesota’s finances just the way they are … or at the very worst shift some cash from all those lavish public schools and over-paid teachers to freeway construction.

Proper allocation and all that, you know.

Every poll depends on who you ask and how you phrase the question. In this case, the “Minnesota Poll”, contracted out to New Jersey-based Princeton Survey Research Associates, emphasized the hot-button word “bridge”, whereas polls conducted in 2004 and 2005 and at various times through the late ’80s and ’90s emphasized either “road improvements” or “road maintenance”.

Anti-tax crusaders and other status quo tub-thumpers will remain gleeful with the verdict because they can continue to make the argument that even after “goosing” the question with the word “bridge”, the pro-tax crowd “only” registered 46%, give or take 4%.

But if you dial back through the history of Minnesota Polls asking residents/voters about gas tax increases, it is interesting how thinking has changed, or not, over the last two decades. For example, in 1987 the yes/no split was 46%/48%. In 1990 it was 52%/45%. In 1993, 66%/32%. By 2005 it had drifted back to 41%/55%.

While 2007’s 46%/50% can be read as public sentiment against a gas tax increase, you could just as easily have said, “Public shows small increase in acceptance of gas tax hike,” based on approval moving up from 41% to 46% in the past two years.

Or … if you really wanted to stick a wrench in the spokes of the “non-partisan” Taxpayers’ League you could could point to the 2004 Minnesota Poll, which was conducted while Gov. Pawlenty and his transportation guru, Carol Molnau, were floating the idea of leasing out Twin Cities’ freeways to private contractors and charging tolls. In that context only 23% of Minnesotans favored increasing the gas tax.

With that in mind you could have had a headline on Sunday’s poll saying something like, “Support for gas tax increase doubles since ’04”, and been correct, technically.

I called Rob Daves, still here in Minnesota and busy assembling soon-to-launch Daves & Associates Research. He had only positive things to say about Princeton Survey. “Great firm. They do excellent work.”

He had been out of town this past weekend and hadn’t seen the gas tax poll. I read him the question as asked.

He offered that readers might have gotten a truer historical comparison had the gas tax question been asked the same way it always has, or at the very least, been subjected to a “split-ballot sample”, where half the 800-1200 respondents were asked the “road improvements” questions and the other half the “bridge” question.

That didn’t happen. So what we’re left with is a more or less an even split on the question of raising the gas tax, which is sufficiently fertile turf for legislation this winter. I mean, anytime you can get half the voters saying they’ll pay more you’ve got more than adequate
political cover.

I admit I had a few, fleeting concerns that my new partner, Ms. Rybak, might need a while to find her swing here in blogland. The daily newspaper grind is a pretty confining habit to break on a moment’s notice. In Capital “J” journalism one is expected to treat all subjects with equal respect, as in … “Ms. Rigoberta Menchu Tum and Mr. Charles Manson today released differing statements on the value of human life”. To vilify … “psycho scum Charlie Manson said today … ” is to betray a lack of self-discipline and gravitas.

To my great relief Ms. Rybak has proven herself fully-equipped and well-prepared to vilify as need be. Nicely done, my dear.

We are hearing from regular readers that we are close to obsessing over all things Star Tribune. To some extent this is a valid criticism. We will be paying more attention to other local and national media as news warrants and as we work out a few technical nits here at Slaughter Central. But come on you carpers, since January 1 has any local media story topped the gutting of the Star Tribune and the Par Ridder follies? I don’t think so. Has the paper ever actually been covered consistently? No. Does it matter? For the time being, yes.

We could follow old school, mainstream thinking and obsess about the ratings and skin rashes of our favorite news anchors, but we’re both kinda bored with that shtick, as is everyone whose opinion we respect.

Anyway, I take the always pleasant red eye in from Vegas and grab the first Strib I’ve seen in eight days — having already spoken with a few of the usual suspects about the latest editorial page purge, the push for still more “local, local” and the, uh, reassigning of “Readers’ Representative”, Kate Parry — and my eyes fall to a fresh editorial titled, “For Vikings, patience is a necessary virtue.”

Oh … my … God.

In my mind, the explanation for most of the on-going de-contenting of Minnesota’s largest news source can be reduced to this: It is a straight business deal being staged for sale, much like, as one
suspect said, painting every wall bland, neutral white so as not to provoke any negative thoughts or opinions in prospective buyers.

Others see an ideological game afoot, with interim publisher, Chris Harte, following private equity boilerplate and reducing the “liberal bias” of the Strib editorial page. I’m not ruling that out, but I suspect any reduction of liberal bite — anti-Bush, anti-Iraq, anti-government-on-the-cheap, anti-Pawlenty slipperiness– is more a consequence of the general blanding-down of the editorial page than an overt push to muzzle screaming “liberals”. (And again, if the Strib’s Powerline-style critics think the editorial writers, even the departed Jim Boyd, are screamers, they really need to get out more.)

But isn’t that usually the way it goes? Any time any media outlet or organization pushes toward a more cautious, status quo perspective, the first voices muzzled are those demanding change and progress and pointing out the flaws in status quo thinking.

So this pro-Vikings stadium editorial is precisely the kind of clubby, oily boosterism that I think of when I hear some corporate functionary selling, “local, local” or its mongrel cousin, “hyper-local.” When a paper like the Strib touts “hyper-local” and assigns one reporter to three large suburbs AND another “concept” beat you have every right to mutter, “bullshit.” And when a reliable functionary like Scott Gillespie is moved from the newsroom to the editorial pages with accompanying fanfare about “localism,” we have every reason to jack the antennae up to hi-gain for the kind of empty-to-predictably-fawning corporate comaraderie demonstrated in this “local local” testimonial.

You gotta love some of the phrasing of the Zygi Wilf editorial — which couldn’t have played better toward Wilf’s interests if HIS internal communications people had polished it for the Strib.

Referring to Wilf’s sales job at the U of M McNamara Center, the “hyper-local” Strib gushes, ” … he couldn’t have spoken words better attuned to Minnesota sensibilities than the ones he uttered … ” .

“Wilf avowed [“avowed”? What is this, a Jane Austen novel?] that his family thinks of itself not as the owners, but as the ‘stewards of this great franchise,’ the Minnesota Vikings.” (Note the assertion of Wilf’s “family” interests. I’m sure he’s thinking about the wife and kids — in New Jersey — every time he lobbies for that $700 million hand-out from Minnesota taxpayers.)

“He described the world-class stadium he wants Minnesota to build for that team as just deserts [sic] and a point of pride for worthy fans.” (Again with the “world class”! And I’m happy for the “worthy” fans. But isn’t the real question whether Wilf is “worthy” of BOTH the fans’ tax money AND $100 a ticket? And let’s not get into how far from “world class” the Vikings are.)

“Give Wilf credit for striking just the right tone … .”

Plainly agreeing with Wilf, the piece adds, “A people can be defined by the quality of things they hold in common … [like schools and bridges … oh, sorry] — and in modern America, and NFL stadium is one such thing.”

And just in case you missed the gooey respect the Strib has for the Wilf “family” position, the very next paragraph begins, “His message is valid.” It concludes with a linkage of the words “popular” and “Gov. Tim Pawlenty” in case you missed the “balance” the piece was trying to demonstrate.

I suppose an editorial praising the harvest of Zestar apples in Washington County would be lamer, but not by much.

The great sad irony in the Avista Capital Partners, Par Ridder and now Chris Harte “right-sizing”/blanding of the Strib editorial page, (a process begun by McClatchy), is that the Strib’s very vocal positions against the invasion of Iraq and various other highly controversial events with deep and profound relevancy to all Minnesotans should have been a source of pride.

If Powerline, etc. and the usual 29%ers want to scream about rampant “liberalism,” let them bray. That’s their game, braying. On Bush and Iraq the now mostly departed Strib edit page was right. Make that flat-out, dead right, and right earlier than just about every other paper in the country. In a world of brave journalism a publisher would give you a hearty pat on the back for that kind of intellectual clarity and courage. But in a world of risk-averse, neutral bland newspapering for quick sale … not so much.

On the matter of the Strib no longer having a Readers’ Rep … give me a minute, here.

Damn, it’s good to be back.

A commenter asks Ms. Rybak and me to say something about the sorry state — make that “the perpetually sorry state” of Twin Cities radio, since people have been complaining about how dull, dim-witted, choked-with-advertising and uninspired local radio is since I started paying attention to it back in 1989.

It’s not like it has gotten any better, generally speaking, but where would we begin?

First though, just to catch up, two stations parted ways with their program directors last week. First, Doug Westerman, briefly my boss, at KTLK-FM, was shown the door, then Erin Rasmussen at FM-107. There had been some gossip that Westerman’s departure might signal the much-anticipated format switch at KTLk, away from conservative talk to … God knows what. But by replacing Westerman with a talk radio program director from Memphis, Steve Versnick — via WLW in Cincinnati, the signal would seem to be that Clear Channel will stick with, delusional 29%-er talk at least through next year’s election, which has been my bet for a while.

The move at FM-107, a.k.a. “The Chick Station”, home of Kevyn Burger, Lori & Julia and more recently, Andrew Zimmern and Colleen Kruse, is more like looking for fresh ideas.

The next quarterly Arbitron ratings won’t be out until later next month, but trends since the “spring book” show very little change other than an overall bump upwards for KSTP-AM, very likely due to Twins baseball — which provides the station with virtually no revenue.

What the commenter wants I think is a grand overview, a station-by-station analysis, which might be an interesting project. But it’ll take a while to gather the deepest of my/our deep thoughts.

Until then here’s a blurb a friend sent my way. It comes from Tom Taylor a veteran radio analyst/information trader, who has a successful independent until he sold and joined forces with … (cue Darth Vader theme) … Clear Channel.

Taylor’s headline is: After Clear Channel goes private — will there be an exodus of management talent?

He writes: One observer e-mails me to predict that “many folks at the management level are just waiting for their payday from the stock buyout. Watch and see. Fueling that is the feedback from the recent managers meeting. Market managers were told that they will be given their revenue goals from above, and then they’re expected to hit them. So much for bottom-up budgeting. The subtle hint was that ‘You’ll hit them, or we won’t be seeing you at this meeting next year.’” He goes on to say that managers feel particularly helpless because “in reality, local markets have discretion on less than 20% of the expense line items in the budget” and that “a large percentage of promotion and research decisions are made in San Antonio,” leading to what he calls “micromanagement.”

I include this only because the “Clear Channelization” of the seven stations the company owns in the Twin Cities and as well as the extent to which competitors acquire Clear Channel-like attitudes toward programming, salary levels and ad clutter is arguably the underlying malaise effecting this market and many others.

Clear Channel is going back to private status some time in the next few months, a move that will — you guessed it — re-line the pockets of the company’s major investors, some of whom joined the Gilded Age when it went public several years ago.

Finally, after nine straight months of blogging, I’m taking a brief break. I couldn’t leave town until the Par Ridder follies reached some kind of conclusion. The Slaughter will be in Ms. Rybak’s more than capable hands until I get back on Oct. 5, although she too will be away soon for a few days.

Proving once again that if God himself arrived on Earth X% of the chattering classes would complain that his luminous vestments were not luminous enough, his beard had split ends, his diction was stilted and (for balance) Satan thought him intellectually lacking, the niggling over Ken Burns’ “The War” has begun.

OK, so we’re off to a shaky start comparing Burns to God, (some of his recent interviewers have come close), but come on, is anyone out there doing better stuff on this scale anywhere in this country? The answer to that is, “No”. Personally, I locked in from the first frame last night and see no purpose in niggling, other than to bait/engender an argument. I’m a fan of Burns’ “style”, the pace, the panning, the narration, the “fiddles”. Not only doesn’t it bother me, I regard the time in frame and hours spent overall as a valuable antidote to the ADHD-pacing and “money shot” structure of way too many feature films and network documentaries. (In my opinion, Burns’ “Lewis & Clark”, which he described as a “visual valentine to the American West” is the apex of this style. Gorgeous. Hypnotic. Plug it into a plasma set.)

I have not seen all of “The War”. (I am still trying to convince PBS that I am worthy of press screeners, even though my last name is no longer the prestigious “St. Paul Pioneer Press”). Burns has said that last night’s opener was essentially a full-length scene-setter, designed to establish the characters from the four towns he chose to build his story upon. But the nigglers are already complaining that Burns’ is treading on overly-familiar ground, hasn’t revealed anything new about WWII, or why humans fight, and is already resorting to visual cliches of repeated stock footage.

Among the less-than-thrilled … my new co-blogger, Ms. Rybak. She of course is so much younger than me she can be forgiven for not remembering WWII. Hell, she’s such a pup she barely remembers Duran Duran.

Since I haven’t seen the next 12 hours I’ll reserve judgment on whether Burns goes anywhere new, anywhere no filmmaker before him has ever gone, and whether he creates an epiphanic moment whereby the human affinity for war is laid bare, Dick Cheney is dragged out behind the barn and peace petals blanket the planet.

But the Burns’ “style”, even the 14 and a half hours, he commits to these epics has the effect of a deep immersion class from the best professor on campus. You absorb his films. You LIVE in them, and the hours you spend with the rhythms and characters, especially the ground level characters he’s chosen here instead of generals and historians, provide insights and qualities “ordinary” documentarians struggle to capture, condense, condense again and and contextualize in an hour, or even more laughably, a 12-minute, “20/20” piece.

What amuses me first is the insistence on … speed … even from middle-aged book readers, who you’d think would know better and appreciate comprehensiveness. The vibe is: WE already know about Guadalcanal, the battle of Midway and MacArthur’s screw-ups. So come on! Chop chop. Let’s get to something new or at least get to the end … faster.

Burns has told every interviewer that he was inspired to make “The War” after reading a poll that showed a shockingly high percentage of American school children so ignorant of who fought who and why in WWII they believed the United States and Germany were allies against the Russians. (Holy shit.)

Knowing that those people soon become voting age adults capable of being swayed by cheap demagoguery, you may, if you’re Ken Burns, decide to devote a year and a half to re-telling an oft-told tale in a different way, (going light on the politicians and admirals). But the nigglers are arguing that this is exactly what the Burns “style” is failing to engage — the imagination and attention of teenagers and twenty-somethings who have no interest in the background noise about wars of their own generation, much less their grandparents’.

Burns has hinted he may take on the Vietnam War somewhere down the line. If the nigglers are upset that “The War” isn’t ideologically-driven enough, THAT adventure may be more provocative.

Alessandra Stanley’s review in The New York Times hits on the notion that the film is too tightly focused on America. Really? I mean, I understand the need to find something to niggle about under deadline pressure, but this is clearly a film about the American experience of WWII. (I’d love to see a similar film from a Russian or Japanese filmmaker with access to their archives.)

Even in the scene-setter opening I sense that Burns’ decision to speak from the perspective of GIs, flyers, sailors, nurses and relatives at home offers valuable illumination about how little the average soldier then (and probably now) cared about or followed (or even had access to) world events that drew him into the maw of war. Only the Jewish guy from Waterbury, CT. recalled having followed the ravings and fascism of Hitler with any particular interest before enlisting. Most other young men, as Minnesotan (and soon to be folk hero) Sam Hynes, says, were simply swept up into the current, often with a cartoonish notion of war and the promise of instant adulthood and an adventure far more interesting than anything they’d find at home.

If all the “war” nigglers are really complaining about the lack of direct relation to the disaster in Iraq, I think they might be guilty of being too short-sighted and literal-minded. I’m guessing that by the time “The War” wraps next weekend, viewers who don’t demand some kind of Michael Bay-meets-Michael Moore hybrid, will have had a remarkably fulfilling experience, even without learning anything new about naval strategies at Midway.

As mentioned here a couple days ago, Deborah Rybak, most recently media reporter at the Star Tribune, has consented to join forces with me here at Slaughter Central. To be very clear, this is not Ms. Rybak joining The Rake. (The mind boggles at the bloody, bruised-knuckle negotiating it would take to make that happen.) This is simply a couple old pros, neighbors and inveterate gossip-mongers getting together for a little fun. Her presence here also adds much overdue journalistic sobriety, insight and dignity to my vacuity and adolescent raging.

Somewhere back last winter I recalled my former employers at the Pioneer Press swatting me across the back of the head and slamming the latest edition of the Strib in my face every time Rybak scooped me — usually as a result of something she dragged back from her regular round of power lunches. I still wonder, Why do the famous and fatuous want to be seen in public with her and recoil in horror at the thought of lunching with me? Did I answer my own question?

Anyway, the inference of the head-swatting was that, “THIS” –whatever Rybak had covered — “is what you are supposed to be doing. Our readers don’t care about Bill O’Reilly? Get over it!”

I never learned.

In addition to the types of coverage I’ve been doing here since January 1, together we hope to build in some dialogues and more of the media basics; hirings and whackings, with or without further comment.

Separately, our experience has been that daily newspapers see very little value in covering the media universe and none at all in analyzing and commenting on it. Media, to “right-sizing” newspapers is primarily a celebrity gossip beat, with extraordinary emphasis on the comings, goings and ratings of local TV anchors. Deborah and I believe that view is almost completely backwards. Readers, i.e. people who read to acquire knowledge, want more media information, not less, and regard empty-headed gossip “coverage” as valueless.

We both see a literate, critical audience for coverage that uh, declines, to play press agent to the stars and anchors and, like good sports columnists, sees fun to be had in throwing back the curtain on the machinations of what is, let’s face it, a weird, woolly, often silly, vast and omnipresent facet of modern American life.

We plan to devote X-number of hours and posts talking to and about those who control, create and populate Minnesota media–sometimes farther afield than that. We’ll talk about who is schtupping who, figuratively speaking, (or maybe sometimes in actuality). And we will be covering TV, cable and Internet programming, movies and whatever else flickers and interests us.

There is interesting stuff on television, and we have different tastes. She may be bored to tears by “Ice Road Truckers”, and I may not agree that “Californication” perfectly captures Hollywood’s moral malaise. But we see opportunities to gas on about, for example, what in the hell drugs David Milch was using when he wrote, “John from Cincinnati”.

Everyone of course invited to join in, commend us, vilify us and test our vast knowledge of all things media-related … which when you get Alan Greenspan on Jon Stewart’s show is damned near everything under the sun. And yes, we will both rant from time to time. I wouldn’t want to disappoint my Fox News Kool-aid drinkers.

So, by way of introduction …

LAMBERT: Deborah, I’d welcome you, but really this is more of a salvage project, a reclamation effort on your part. You are the cavalry riding to the rescue. But the news late yesterday is that, as was heavily rumored, Par Ridder will NOT be returning as publisher. How shocked were you by this news?

RYBAK: Do I need to drag out that old “Casablanca” line? Since we more or less predicted it Wednesday, I would venture to say, not breath-intake shocked, nor even eyes-slightly-widened shocked. I guess when you called me yesterday evening my shock was of the “It’s almost cocktail hour, what are you bugging me for?” variety.

Here’s the phrase that interested me most in the Strib story, “Par is ‘likely’ not to return to the paper.” That tells me that lawyers are talking and I’m sure that exit pay is a major topic.

So how much more is Par going to take home from this misadventure in addition to the “relocation” money we hear he received to move about 5 miles from Sunfish Lake to Kenwood? I wonder if his lawyers want extra because he was so successful in whacking the staff down to size and saving Avista so much money, (well,until those legal fees started piling up).

I wonder if the “national search” for a publisher that interim publisher/Avista concierge Chris Harte mentioned to his staff will also include scanning for bodies to fill the other empty management positions that have turned the formerly executive-stocked fourth floor suites into a ghost town?

Or will everything–including the website–continue to be overlorded from New York?

LAMBERT: So the paper currently has no CFO, no director of high technology. What else am I missing?

RYBAK: Don’t forget there’s no Mike LaBonia, aka “Mikey Bones,” who just bailed on his sales and strategic planning gig to go to the San Francisco Chronicle. Oh yeah, and no director of niche publications, although Jennifer Parratt is getting paid to sit at home and wait for her non-compete to run out. Wonder if she’ll ever come back, now that the guy who hired her is out. Sorry, “likely” to be out.

Plus, during his staff meeting, Harte also clarified that it would be Avista money used to pay everyone’s legal bills …not Strib dough. Does it really matter?

LAMBERT: I’m sorry, Chris Harte telling the staff it’ll be Avista, not the Strib budget paying the $10 million-plus in Par Ridder-related legal fees is not something that would quiet my concerns were I employed there. The overriding issue is that the parent company — Avista — is bleeding out its eyeballs with this Minnesota newspaper deal and the twit they hired to staunch all that has turned out to be a very expensive pain in the ass.

Just as you heard from your sources, the word I heard Thursday morning was that Ridder would not be back. My first question upon hearing the court decision putting him on the beach was, “What is the upside to this guy hanging like a dark cloud over the paper for a year? He has no credibility with his staff. Anecdotally, he’s a joke around town. Who continues to love him, and why?”

I still say, and I’ll take bets, that there is Ridder family money in Avista somewhere, somehow.

I confess of course that I’ll miss Par. I think of him as my Nixon.

RYBAK: You have the weirdest crushes. First Mick Anselmo, now Par. I confess that I’m obsessed right now with Billy Dean Singleton. When he rode into town, the Star Tribune was almost arrogant in its rejection of Singleton’s favorite pasttime–creating joint operating agreements between former newspaper rivals (see Denver Post v. Rocky Mt. News).

Now I wonder if JOA might be the settlement that will satisfy Singleton in his lawsuit. Look at his remarks to the Pioneer Press’s John Welbes: “There are many things that the two newspapers could do together without crossing legal barriers, but that would depend on who we’re working with.”

Now that Par’s gone, and Avista’s investment needs some serious shoring up, what’s standing in the way?

LAMBERT: A JOA would have to be seen as an interim step to a full merger. Until now a merger has been viewed as unlikely because of anti-trust issues. But given the precipitous collapse of newspaper revenue, what DC regulator would oppose the argument that a two-paper universe here in the Twin Cities is no longer sustainable, and that the only possibility for continuing full-scale community “service” is to merge and seriously reduce overhead.

It may be a largely bullshit argument, but I’m thinking it is one that plays better with each passing quarter.

But welcome aboard, dear.

RYBAK: Thanks doll, nice to be here…

We interrupt the latest episode of L’affaire Par, (note the corrected, improved gender-appropriate French), for a comment on Dan Rather bringing a $70 million lawsuit against his old bosses at CBS over their shabby treatment of him in the wake of the infamous “60 Minutes II” National Guard story.

The early consensus among marquee pundits is bewilderment at why Rather would do this now, 15 months after getting the axe, (and there is no doubt he got the axe, velvet-sheathed or otherwise), and that it demonstrates a degree of muddled, misguided thinking on his part.

In my limited interactions with Rather — barnstorming through Minnesota, press tours, a brief chat in NY — he always struck me as an odd duck. A little too tightly wound for a high-profile job like his and very old school with his almost jingoistic respect for the hierarchy of journalism, where he was very near the top. Which isn’t to say he was arrogant. In person, he was almost overly self-effacing. But he was stiff even when trying to be casual, and self-consciously aware of his place on the landscape.

There was never any comparison to say, Tom Brokaw, who remains my idea of the gold standard for network anchor unflappability and gravitas. Brokaw, who has a memory for names and details worthy of Hubert Humphrey, is a listener — an absolutely vital quality to any journalist — constantly absorbing clues and cues which translates into a remarkably deft touch for both individual and group interaction. Rather … not so much.

Anyway, as I follow the legal assessments in this latest twist, it appears Rather may be able to make some head-way on the issue of whether CBS was contractually obligated to return him to the Sunday night version of “60 Minutes” after departing the anchor desk, and feature his work at least as prominently as Lesley Stahl, Steve Kroft and Morley Safer, etc.

But no one thinks Rather is in this for the money. (His lawyer says he’ll donate any awards.) This is about his legend, and odd duck though he might be, Rather is a big time student of history and has to know that that George W. Bush draft deferment/Alabama Air National Guard story will be in the second paragraph of his obituary if not on his tombstone. For a guy who did everything any big company could ask of a major player — running around Afghanistan with U.S. armed Taliban-types firing rockets at Russian tanks and strapping himself to a street lamp for every hurricane that hit the Gulf Coast — Rather has a right to be … real … pissed off at the way CBS buckled and how he was led out the door.

But the whole case will turn on Bush’s service record, and whether the story was as screwed up as is popularly believed. Or whether CBS, which had been taking big-time anti-Rather fire for years, simply didn’t want to deal with him/it anymore — what with Viacom CEO Sumner Redstone’s eye on good relations with the freshly reelected Bush White House — and instead of defending him concocted a clubby, wallpapering investigation to get themselves off the hook and Rather out of the building.

Rather says that based on some kind of new evidence his own private investigators have dug up he is now eager to force CBS in to court and get them under oath over who knew what when and what was said to whom? Personally, I think that would be real interesting.

Three things have always stood out with regard to what I’ll call the Bush AWOL story.

1: Even the so-called independent investigation ordered up by CBS held back from saying that the essential story, that Bush got preferential treatment to avoid Vietnam and then never showed up in Alabama, was false. The investigation’s much narrower focus was on the validity of type-written 30-some year-old letters and the reliability of Bill Burkett, the very funky guy who delivered the letters to Rather’s production team.

On one fundamentally relevant level — whether CBS accurately represented the opinions of professionals who examined the letters — Rather and his (very) veteran producer, Mary Mapes, will have to convince everyone watching that they did indeed seek out and accurately reflect the best opinions of the best professionals available. If they can’t do that, they risk sinking even deeper than they already are, just for the chutzpah of bringing a suit with so large an unpatched flaw in it.

But … if they’ve come up with some kind of exculpatory evidence that makes their explanations to date credible and returns the focus to the essentials of the story — and, who knows, CBS-Viacom’s discomfort with running it weeks before an election — we’re off and running again.

2. I was never comfortable with the speed at which the response/backlash to CBS’s Bush AWOL story erupted in the blogosphere. This astonishingly rapid response was led by Atlanta lawyer, Harry MacDougald, a.k.a. “Buckhead”, a very well connected Republican partisan.

And by “rapid”, we are talking almost instantly, and not only that very night but already with a laser-like focus on the bogus letters and the era of the typewriter involved. Even allowing for the intensity of animosity constantly pressing on Rather, and on CBS for having Rather around, that combination of speed and specificity always seemed much too convenient for my tastes.

The conspiracy theory that has floated on this one suggests the bogus letters were planted, via Burkett, by pro-Bush partisans aware of the avidity of CBS’s interest and investigation. Moreover the plan was linked to a tactical hair-trigger set among conservative bloggers to scream “foul” in a highly specific way the second Mapes and Rather bungled so badly they actually used the fake letters. (If that is true the fact Mapes and Rather used them at all once again consigns the two gullible old pros to the scrap heap.)

3. On the validity of the essential charge and the heart of the story — that Bush got preferential treatment to avoid service in Vietnam and then never even bothered to honor his Alabama Air National Guard commitment, while other guys his age were dying for what rock-ribbed conservatives like Ronald Reagan called, “a noble cause”, I found always found it remarkable that no one ever stepped forward and provided evidence of Bush’s presence in Alabama to pick up the $10,000 “prize” offered by “Doonesbury” cartoonist Garry Trudeau.

New Yorker writer and CNN legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin was on Terry Gross yesterday talking about his new book about the US Supreme Court, “The Nine”. The most provocative chapters concern the starkly partisan division within the court over Bush v. Gore, the 2000 re-count fiasco. Toobin’s point was that the Justices hated the specter of their fundamental partisan beliefs being betrayed so publicly and in such an epochal decision. They prefer to think they are bigger than that, different from mere mortals and other people of influence.

The same, I strongly suspect, is true down deeper in this Rather-CBS story.

CBS News and Viacom live and succeed or perish in nothing close to a vaccum. Most of the time they have the finesse and connections and mouthpiece to deny partisan influences. But when the heat really comes down, when access to and political favor from a freshly reelected administration with enormous power over the growth strategies of the corporate parent are hanging in the balance, “objective” players give service to who and what butters their bread.

Not really knowing anything more about legal issues than what I see on Law & Order, I confess to being among those who focused too tightly on the injunction handed down today against Par Ridder, tossing him out of the Star Tribune for one year. Obviously, the injunction was designed to remove Ridder from a situation where he could continue doing “irreparable harm” to the Pioneer Press. Now … things could get really interesting.

Or not.

My esteemed former competitor/arch rival, Deborah Rybak, recently separated from the Star Tribune and soon to join me here in a bigger, far better, far hipper Slaughter, sought out attorney Ron Rosenbaum, KSTP-TV’s legal expert.

Her report:

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Here’s what everyone missed yesterday in their rush to tell Par Ridder, “Hey, don’t let the door hit your butt on the way out”: Injunction aside, this case is HARDLY over.

The injunction is just one step (albeit a big one) in the process, confirms our legally fluent buddy Ron Rosenbaum. Singleton’s legal team originally asked for the injunction because, it claimed, Par and pals couldn’t be allowed to stay in their jobs and keep harming the PiPress until the case meandered to trial.

“It was a huge victory, but it doesn’t end the case,” said Rosenbaum.

“The finding of harm [that Ridder misappropriated and distributed PiPress confidential documents] also means that–more likely than not–the plaintiffs would prevail at trial. But with a finding like this, I doubt this case will ever go to trial.”

In other words, gentlemen at Avista, open your checkbooks and let the settlement talks begin!

Settlement overtures were allegedly made more than once by Avista during the run-up to the Ridder hearing in June, but Dean Singleton, out for blood, wasn’t interested. So has he proved his point now? Singleton told Editor and Publisher Tuesday that he was, “happy with the ruling but didn’t want to see it play out in a courtroom.”

Still, in trying to reach a settlement, Rosenbaum thinks putting a price tag on the damage caused by Par’s PiPress spreadsheet heist and distribution may be tough. “It’s not easy to know what the access to that information is worth and how it benefited the Strib.”

So it’s possible that settlement talks could break down and nudge Singleton back into court. Early chatter had the MediaNews titan dedicated to ensuring that Ridder never ran the Strib again. In light of the judge’s ruling, will Avista now balk at that demand? Who knows? Nobody can quite figure out why these guys have backed him for this long. Newsroom sources and others speculate that Ridder may resign from the paper in the days to come. At least, that would seem to be the classy thing to do…

Other newsroom gossip has former publisher Keith Moyer coming back to run what’s left of the paper. After all, it was Moyer who called some Strib reporters to compliment them on their reporting in the aftermath of the I-35W bridge collapse. Ridder never bothered.

In the meantime, Judge Higgs has ordered Avista to fork over Singleton’s legal fees and other costs for his efforts to date, which he told E&P totaled about $5 million.

Rosenbaum said back in June that he never understood the Strib’s defense. With Tuesday’s decision, “the chickens have come home to roost. Par tried to play fast and loose with the facts and the law, and the Court did what it’s supposed to — make the aggrieved party whole. So good riddance to Par Ridder, he got what he deserved.”‘

Rosenbaum was openly contemptuous of Avista honcho-turned-interim publisher Chris Harte’s company-wide statement that Avista found the judge’s decision “unexpected.”

“I doubt very seriously he was surprised. I doubt that any lawyer who advised him to be surprised ever went to law school.” Rosenbaum’s derision excluded Avista’s local hired gun Bob Weinstine: “He’s a first-class lawyer and litigator. I doubt very seriously that Bob was surprised; he’s too smart for that.”

Rosenbaum also opined that Ridder’s mini-reign of terror might never have happened had Randy Lebedoff — the Strib’s recently reinstalled in-house counsel — been in place at the time of his hiring. Now, Rosenbaum says, “I assume that she will bring good counsel to a case that is nothing more than a huge black eye and an embarrassment to what used to be a venerable institution.”
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(Thank you, partner. Back to Lambert.)

My question is this:

Dean Singleton would appear to be holding a very good hand — make that “extraordinarily good.” Judge Higgs’ decision essentially confirms that Singleton’s case is rock solid. (He wouldn’t have granted an injunction if it wasn’t.) Conversely, Avista is stuck with squat. A pair of twos, at best.

So why, looking at the millionaire gimps across the table, wouldn’t Singleton press on for punitive damages?

As I understand it, a push for punitive damages would grant Singleton access to something Avista’s close-mouthed, close-to-the-vest partnership would never ever want … namely, full disclosure of their worth. The mere thought of having to lay out who Avista actually is and what is in their tax returns would be enough — you’d think — for them to approach Singleton on bleeding knees — pleading for a settlement that puts a bullet through the head of this beast.

Dan Oberdorfer, one of Singleton’s attorneys from Leonard, Street and Deinard, was tight-lipped this afternoon about where his client might go next. “Let’s just say we are pleased with today’s decision.” If I were Oberdorfer I wouldn’t screw up a good deal trending bigger and better by the minute by making any irrationally (or rationally) exuberant comments to the press either.

So here’s my speculative analysis, based on following this tawdry, but outrageously expensive saga for the past few months. (One inside-Strib source, not a check-to-check reporter, puts Avista’s legal bill well north of Singleton’s. So, get out your calculators, Avista could very likely be looking at a legal bill of, at minimum, $10 million or more … to date. And for purposes of perspective, I am advised that $3 million buys 40 reporters per year at $65k plus $10k in benefits.)

As much as Singleton may have been annoyed by Ridder’s cavalier disregard for professional ethics, I’m still not buying that what he wanted most is to see the little rich kid slapped down in open court, or even to be proven right in his interpretation of ethical publishing. All that strikes me as too small potatoes for an operator like Singleton. This is a guy who sees himself as the only real newspaper man in what is very quickly devolving to a one-newspaper universe here in Minneapolis-St.Paul.

My guess is that Singleton, someone who understands the meaning of the word “ruthless,” sees Par Ridder’s almost adolescent bungling as a gift … which he can exploit to create very serious suffering for a group of dilettante publishers (Avista) who were hoping to make a quick killing and blow out of town without scuffing their tassled loafers.

The end game to this scenario has a battered Avista, already watching every Star Tribune revenue indicator fall into the toilet, becoming receptive to a fire-sale buy-out offer — from Singleton — years before they originally planned.

Here is an excellent Editor & Publisher story on the current state of Twin Cities newspaper finances.

With OJ Simpson all over the news again, reminding everyone how subtleties like evidence, logic and common sense occasionally have no bearing at all on the American legal system, I was prepared to hear that after reviewing the evidence in the matter of Par Ridder’s multiple, uh, indiscretions, Ramsey County Judge David Higgs had decided that all being fair in love and private equity, this was a case of no harm no foul.

On the other hand … since Ridder conceded virtually every point in Dean Singleton’s complaint you’d have to be a blind horse in a deep forest on a moonless night not to see the guy was guilty as hell. So the ruling is … he sits for a year …

Then this morning, in what has to be regarded as a textbook example of generically obtuse
executive “communication”, Chris Harte, Strib owner Avista Capital Partners’ “face of journalism” and now interim publisher, issued a memo stating “this was clearly not the result we EXPECTED” (my emphasis).

Now, “hoped for” I could accept. But “expected”? Did it occur to Harte that he was communicating to a group of several hundred professional skeptics? Not what you “expected”? As in. “It never occurred to us … .” Now that’s a reassuring display of critical judgment.

To say you “expected” something different in this decision, is kind of like Britney Spears’ (former) managers saying, “Despite the fact she showed up 20 pounds overweight, five margaritas and god knows what else to the wind, refused both a corset rehearsal, we fully expected a brilliant performance.”

Harte also had the bad sense to drag out the rusted, toothless saw about how “recent events [that would be the mendacity and ham-fisted lack of ethics displayed by your hand-picked publisher] will only make us stronger.” As I have said before, if there is one reporter, editor, sweet old lady at the call center or delivery driver so stupid they believe that anything in the past five months has made them “stronger”, they deserve to be fired — or worse, sit on a beach for a year with Par Ridder.

I will continue to gather comments throughout the day, but I have to note a curious line in an early version of Matt McKinney’s official Star Tribune story. It read, “Officials for the Star Tribune and its owner, Avista Capital Partners, could not be immediately reached for comment.”

Really? Granted, Higgs’ decision came out first thing this morning, but we’ve all been on alert since last Friday, awaiting the decision. Neither Harte or editor Nancy Barnes had given McKinney a cell-phone contact for the perfunctory comment? (A later version by McKinney included a bland quote from Barnes asserting the need to continue putting out “a great paper.” I’m not ripping McKinney here, rather the lack of basic coordination on what was going to be a major story.

As the legal battle continues — despite the judgment and the significant cost to Avista of defending Ridder, (very likely more than the $3 million the paper’s former owners put into the Star Tribune Foundation) — the question over the next few months will be, “Why ever let this guy back in the building?”

One prominent Strib writer, requesting anonymity out of an on-going need to support a family, remarked, “The guy has already been overwhelmingly publicly rejected by the journalists he is supposed to lead, and now his tenuous claims to legal legitimacy have been stripped away by the court.

“So now he has a year to rearrange the mirrors in the Magers’ mansion to better advantage, important if you’re a fellow his size. But why bother waiting for him? These guys,” referring to Avista’s stated short term interest in the Star Tribune, “aren’t going to be here that long.

“Ridder got what? $600,000 from Knight-Ridder for promising to stay in St. Paul? Well, that was a contingency for any inconvenience he might suffer. So he’s been paid. This is the inconvenience. Take the money and take a hike.”

More to follow.

There was a brief flurry of activity yesterday as a rumor blew around town that Ramsey County Judge David Higgs was ready to announce his decision in what we here at Slaughter Central like to refer to as Le Affair Par. It proved a false alarm.

But the mere thought of another round of Par Ridder/Avista follies, (and it is not beyond the realm of possibility that Higgs will dismiss Dean Singleton’s complaint as much ado about nothing), reminded me of a point worth reiterating in the matter of the closing of the Star Tribune Foundation.

As I reported last month, despite a recent letter to subscribers touting the on-going philanthropy of the Star Tribune Foundation, the Star Tribune Foundation no longer exists and the current Avista Capital Partners-owned Star Tribune has no foundation of its own and as far as any fund-raiser in town is aware Avista Capital Partners aren’t donating so much as a dull nickel to Twin Cities’ community and arts organizations. Zero.

Looking for a perspective on this sudden evaporation of contributions from a company that used to play a significant role in enhancing the vitality of life here in the Twin Cities — as opposed to simply sucking as much cash as possible out of it — I called around to people well aware of the now defunct Star Tribune Foundation’s role.

First was Colin Hamilton, executive director of The Friends of the Minneapolis Public Library. Hamilton emphasized that the Star Tribune Foundation was a small-ish player in comparison to something like the McKnight Foundation, making modest four-digit contributions routinely for years. But the Foundation stepped up big time when the library launched its capital campaign for the new building, donating $500,000, and just as importantly, donating first and thereby setting a precedent for other major contributors. (Cargill was another early donor.)

“First gifts are always very significant,” said Hamilton. “Often times you are not credible to other potential donors until someone else has demonstrated their confidence in you, which the Star Tribune Foundation did. We were extraordinarily grateful. Sam[antha] Fleitman has always been a very good friend to the library.”

Fleitman’s job managing the Star Tribune Foundation was axed as the McClatchy Corporation shut down operations here, took whatever was left in the Foundation accounts with them back to California and the new owners Avista, uh, DECLINED to establish a Foundation of its own. Fleitman now works for Andersen Windows’ foundation.

Among Twin Cities non-profit fund-raisers Andy Currie qualifies as something of a dean. He has personally been in the fund-raising game for 40 years, the last 32 in the Twin Cities. His recent work includes capital campaigns for Regions Hospital, Sister Kenny, the Minneapolis Planetarium and the Tubman Family Alliance.

I asked if he was aware of any kind of charitable funding coming out of the Avista-owned Star Tribune?

“I’m not aware,” he said, “of anything charitable being done right now at the Star Tribune. I certainly have not heard of anything. They seem to be having enough other problems, but I don’t know what’s going on there.”

The issue obviously is one of basic community quid pro quo. The guy running the corner sandwich shop knows enough to give a little get a little goodwill and customer favor. Unfortunately that game breaks down pretty fast when the company’s owners leave town — or in Avista’s case — never even bother to move here. No one expects Exxon/Mobil to dole out money to the Minneapolis Library or The Jungle Theater, although God knows they could. But a monopoly local daily newspaper, pitching itself as “The Newspaper of the Twin Cities” is playing a much different game, especially at a time when it is trying to sell “right-sizing” as a facet of a “hyper-local” or “local, local” uber-commitment to every neighborhood and suburb in the area.

In my mind a “hyper-local” editorial strategy gains credibility when it is accompanied by a return investment in the institutions that vitalize and sustain the neighborhoods a newspaper claims to be so earnestly committed to covering.

But I live here. Avista doesn’t. Although I have to assume that after tallying up their return-on-investment from all of their various businesses Avista Capital Partners, or Avista Capital Holding LP, should have at least $3 million a year left to sprinkle around/re-invest in Minnesota. You’d think they’d be hip to doing it if only as a gesture of goodwill and ingratiation by a faceless company that more Minnesotans every day regard as just another dispassionate siphoning operation, depleting us for the greater good of a few hedge fund types far, far away.

And if Avista’s argument is that they don’t have $3 million, I’m thinking that mortgage meltdown has crept higher than I ever imagined.

Obviously, GIVING MONEY BACK to one of the dozens of communities where it has investment interests is not even on the Avista radar. The sole point is to extract money.

Andy Currie notes that under ownership by the Cowles family, the Star Tribune was a founding member of The Keystone Club, the group of corporations who committed to the 5% of profits rule for local contributions, a standard that was the envy of other large metropolitan areas and contributed significantly to the Twin Cities much-touted quality of life.

“More community-minded people you could not find,” says Currie of the Cowles. “They were heroes to me.”

Currie also reminded me that that hefty library check withstanding, the Star Tribune Foundation normally eschewed gifts to capital campaigns, preferring instead to underwrite individual productions at Jeune Leune and The Jungle and other arts venues.

“When Honeywell was sold to that company in, where is it? New Jersey?” he said, “that knocked $11 to $15 million out of the local contribution market. And now the Star Tribune. You’re talking a pretty serious impact.”

Over at The Jungle, executive director, Margo Gisselman, explained the cruel irony that, “It takes a while to qualify for funding from the Star Tribune Foundation, and after years we had finally gotten in. They gave us $5000, and now it’s gone. It is such a bummer to us.” Individually, she says, the Cowles family continues to support The Jungle.

Avista? Not so much. “No, they are not donors.”

Currie says Best Buy, Minnesota’s 21st century empire, “is gaining momentum as a corporate contributor”. He commends the Hubbard family (of KSTP-TV and radio) for being “very generous” to various causes, notes that KARE-TV occasionally provides grants through parent company, Gannett, Inc., that other stations, like WCCO-TV are good about donating anchor time for charitable events. But that Clear Channel, which owns seven radio stations in the Twin Cities and over 1200 nationwide, “is not on any [contributor] lists that I look at.”

Clear Channel’s various stations do do heavily-branded events with percentages going to various causes. But Texas-based Clear Channel, with over $5 billion in net media revenue in 2006 (according to Ad Age), is not making any great philanthropic effort in Minnesota.

The old joke of course is that Clear Channel is the operational model for media investors like Avista.

Charles Ferguson, director of, No End in Sight, currently playing at the Edina Theater, has produced what, for The New York Times at least, is the first video letter to the editor, responding to Iraq boss Paul Bremer’s recent assertion [in Times Select] that numerous military officials were aware of and agreed to his decision to disband the Iraqi army in May of 2003.

Here is Ferguson’s video letter.

Ferguson’s film is terrific, but the concept of a video letter to the editor for on-line newspapers is another very intriguing evolutionary moment that bodes well for the transition away from print.

Note the enthusiasm of NY Times edit page boss Andrew Rosenthal in this this Editor & Publisher interview.