I spent a good chunk of the day tending various hooks in the water, hoping to catch word of the names of reporters on the voluntary buy-out list at the Star Tribune. But it was dead quiet. Not even a nibble. Even though there was word of a 10 AM meeting of Strib brain wizards to review said list.
As we waited we chuckled over the letter published in the Pioneer Press from its’ former editor-in-chief, Walker Lundy, who is now happily retired in North Carolina, and I suspect wakes up every day delighted to no longer be playing pitiable henchman for Knight-Ridder executives. (Lundy left the PiPress for the Philadelphia Inquirer and a short, very bumpy ride.)
Lundy took young Par Ridder to task for disloyalty to his former paper by hopping across town to “The Enemy Paper” literally over a weekend.
The joke now is that Lundy, who was once considered a bit of an odd bird, an old school Southerner afoot on the passive-aggressive tundra, is now viewed as a kind of hokey savant. Lundy at least thought of himself as a journalist … and a character … and he liked characters in return. (God help him he loved mixing it up with Jesse Ventura.) Mostly though, Lundy achieves his new pedestal relative to everything that followed him into the Pioneer Press and what is now going down at the Star Tribune; a funeral march led by the bland and blander.
Frankly, the loyalty “thing” in the context of rival newspapers was always a little suspect, even back in the fat and happy days of the late ’90s.
In his letter Lundy reminded his readers of the various PiPressers who jumped ship for the Strib during his reign. Treasonous curs! To his credit he acknowledges that during his reign most PiPressers were earning significantly less than their Strib colleagues and the Strib had nearly double the circulation. (Add to that the fact the PiPress was and is essentially invisible west of the river.) Reminding some way too much of old Gophers football coach, Jim Wacker, Lundy always loved a good rah-rah about how, “Forget all that other stuff. We’re better, damn it!”
The problem then and now is that money talks.
I called Brian Bonner, a PiPress veteran and a member of the paper’s Guild pension committee. Sometime in May, at the latest, the PiPress will commence contract negotiations with the new management group, headed by Dean Singleton of Denver-based MediaNews, a man and a company with a reputation for getting what they want at the expense of their employees.
“Yes,” said Bonner, “there was feeling of disloyalty [in the Ridder leap]. An audible gasp went up when it was announced. His move severed the last connection this place had to a long family tradition. Some of us really were stunned by it. I mean, these sorts of things aren’t supposed to happen. Brezhnev never jumped from the Soviet Union to America.” (Bonner spent a chunk of time in Russia). “No one expected [Ridder] to stay long. But I thought at the very least he’d launder himself through some other paper before coming back here.”
“But, I never had the feeling [Ridder] was really emotionally involved in the place. The two pillars of his term here were our new geographic focus, [toward booming east metro suburbs, mainly] and cost containment.” If you don’t hear anything in there about producing a better, fuller, more complete and appealing newspaper, there’s a reason for that.
Bonner credits Ridder for keeping his staff in the loop on the paper’s business situation … vis a vis the Star Tribune, in large part. But then, that is essentially all of what Ridder knows … and, sadly, pretty much all modern editors-in-chief and managing editors need to know. (God help those who remain at the Star Tribune though if Par Ridder starts making the calls on who best fits into the next marketing strategy over there.)
Bonner also gives Ridder thanks for bringing in the paper’s current editor, Thom Fladung. “A huge improvement over what came before him, wouldn’t you say?” (A not even thinly veiled shot at Vicki Gowler, who Knight-Ridder promoted up to the 63,000 circulation Idaho Statesman.)
Singleton has already asserted that a freeze on pension contributions is his primary/sole objective in the forthcoming contract negotiations. The Guild has said it will not agree to a freeze as proposed by Singleton, particularly since Singleton has sent out orders that no facet of the contract other than a pension freeze will be considered for negotiation. In other words, forget about trying to make up the money anyway or anywhere else. Nice.
For the record though, when Singleton stopped by the paper the day Ridder’s departure was announced, he declared himself, “Not anti-union.” Why any professional skeptic would take him at his word, I don’t know, but some PiPressers seemed charmed.
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