Tag: media

With all the attention on various executive fiascos and staff reductions at the Star Tribune, the situation at the Pioneer Press has received relatively little coverage lately. My apologies there. But last night saw a brief (one-hour) and reasonably cordial opening round of contract negotiations between the Newspaper Guild and new owner, MediaNews, headed by Denver tycoon, Dean Singleton.

In visits to St. Paul since buying the paper from McClatchy last year Singleton — when he wasn’t fielding questions about what Par Ridder did or didn’t steal as he jumped over to the Star Tribune — made no secret that he was going seriously impact if not wages, his employees’ benefit packages, starting with a freeze on pensions.

The Guild has a post up on its website laying out the specific issues to be fought over this summer. The post it includes an eloquent opening statement from Jim Ragsdale, a former reporter, for a long time at the capitol, and now the sole inhabitant of the Pioneer Press editorial department.

In the statement Ragsdale says this:

“The people before you, and the people we represent, are hardy survivors of these dramatic changes. We’ve been through waves of cutbacks. Decades of experience have been lost. A large part of our corporate personality is gone. We grieved those losses … and moved on. And we have chosen to stay and fight for a newspaper we believe in. Just like (MediaNews) is fighting for the newspaper we all believe in.

“We have already paid a price for our company’s decision to make itself smaller.

“Many of us are doing several jobs or have been moved to previously unfamiliar turf. That’s a challenge we’ve willingly taken on. I’m the lone editorial writer in an office that had five writers a few years ago. I’m doing the work of several people. I love my job and am proud of what we have done. I alone have helped the company save hundreds of thousands of dollars per year in salary and benefits. My salary and benefits have not improved.”

Ragsdale is right, of course. But it is hard to see where the Guild has any leverage at all with Singleton. With the very murky, deep background entanglements MediaNews and (Star Tribune owner) Avista have over the Par Ridder law suit, Avista’s short-term interest in newspaper ownership in Minnesota and the increasing likelihood of a merger of the two papers, (where Singleton could just as easily gain overall ownership as anyone else), every indication is that the Guild will have to take even further hits to its compensation package.

Caught on the way into work this morning and asked if the Guild was prepared to stand adamant on any specific issue, or if everything was up for negotiation, (I didn’t have the heart to use the word, “concession”), Ragsdale said, “Look, all we want is a fair and valid contract. We don’t pretend these are great times. And we see in some of their demands, [like removing a dozen or so “Team Leaders” from the Guild], things they’ve wanted to do for a long time. But at this point nobody has seen their finances. So its hard to say what their situation really is.”

The next negotiating session will probably come after the 4th of July holiday.

Oh, in case you haven’t got the time to click through to Ragsdale’s full statement. Here’s another choice bit, as Ragsdale began by commending MediaNews for its aggressive pursuit of young Ridder.

“We’d like to begin with the Par Ridder case,” said Ragsdale, “which was an important event for us. We thank you for standing up for the Pioneer Press after Par’s defection and thefts and lies. This legal battle could turn out to be one of our newspaper’s finest moments.”

To say Par Ridder left few friends and fewer admirers in St. Paul would be a significant understatement.

I’m just not betting that Singleton and MediaNews will leave town — whenever they do — with any more than Ridder.

In a memorable quote to City Pages’ Paul Demko, Star Tribune editor Nancy Barnes tried to explain the rationale behind mobilizing troops toward the suburbs, Bloomington in particular.

Demko wrote: “Editor Barnes concedes that ‘it’s been a difficult week,’ but says her mission remains the same: more online, more in-depth coverage like the paper’s 3M investigation, and more feet on the ground in communities outside Minneapolis. ‘Bloomington is the fifth-largest city in the state…we don’t cover Bloomington,’ Barnes says. ‘People who live outside of Minneapolis have to see coverage of their communities.’

On the face of it it’s hard to disagree. There are something like 85,000 people in Bloomington. There’s got to be a story or two worth telling. And obviously if you’re going to stand your diminished newsroom on its head conscripting reporters from all manner of other beats to send them to the leafy ‘burbs, the assumption is that you’re going to do it right and really provide constant, thorough coverage of … Minnesota’s fifth biggest city.

The one mistake you’re for sure not going to make is just talking the talk without walking the walk. I mean, since this is critical, we know there is going to be a battalion of reporters combing the streets and courts and offices of The Fifth Biggest City, showing those punk-ass Sun papers (and their small business advertisers) how the game is played in the big leagues.

Right?

Right?

Cut to: A short phone conversation with Star Tribune reporter, Mary Jane Smetanka, best known for the last 11 years she’s spent covering higher education.

Me: Mary Jane, Brian Lambert over at The Rake. I’ve been following the goings on over at your place.

Smetanka: I know.

Me: Yeah, and you know how it goes, one thing leads to another. I just want check something out.

Smetanka: OK.

Me: Is it true that you are the new Bloomington reporter?

Smtanka: Yes, it is.

Me: Is it also true that you are the new Edina reporter?

Smetanka: Yes, it is.

Me: Is it true that you are also the “Aging” reporter?

Smetanka: Yes, it is.

Me: And are you the only reporter so far assigned to Bloomington and Edina?

Smetanka: Yes, I am.

As with all these Strib items, I have sent Strib editors Nancy Barnes and Scott Gillespie e-mails asking for their response to the question of the moment.

Here is my e-mail on this one:

“Nancy, Scott:

“Today … I’m told that one reporter has been assigned to cover Bloomington, Edina and Aging. Is that accurate? Will more reporters be added soon, as in the next couple months? If not, doesn’t strike you as ironic considering your stated mission to better cover the larger suburbs?

“Also, will there be any change in CJ’s job description? Is the cast of columnists set? Will Coleman, Kersten and CJ continue doing what they have been doing?”

As always, if either Barnes or Gillespie chooses to respond, I’ll attach their comments here.

But until then we are left with the irony of one reporter — admittedly a veteran — assigned to not one, not two, but THREE beats of some significance. Smetanka is a 23-year Strib pro and will no doubt produce quality copy. But, come on, if you’re serious about people outside Minneapolis, (even a block outside Minneapolis), seeing coverage of their communities, are we really supposed to believe that one reporter can provide anything close to thorough coverage of two large first-ring suburbs with a combined population of 135,000 AND cover “Aging”, too?

In the interests of community journalism, I hereby promise to toss Smetanka every scoop I come across while prowling the dark, dangerous and scandal-ridden streets of Edina. Why just yesterday, while sipping a latte and reading the new film schedule in the window of the Edina Theater, I saw a vandal in a late model Saab enter the city from Minneapolis at speeds in excess of the posted limit and flick a cigarette on the pavement.

That’s gotta be worth 10″ of copy. The Edina cops may have security cam video.

Oh … that CJ stuff? I’m not sure. I’ve left a couple calls for the Twin Cities’ gossip maven, but oddly, our girl seems to be dodging me.

Commenting on my previous post about the Avista-Zygi Wilf real estate deal(s) and the importance of high transparency on the part of the Strib as it reports and comments on the story, “bart” asks the following:

“What’s the basis of the charge that Avista currently or will direct positive coverage of the potential stadium? Is that how it worked at the Pioneer Press when Xcel was a story? Or with your TV column? Just wondering. In my experience, journalists are interested in news, so a new stadium might be more interesting than no stadium. But I’ve never witnessed a publisher or owners directly influence non-editorial (news) coverage. You do play fast and loose here, don’t you, Brian?”

In response, the key element here — the unique element — is that Avista Capital Partners is NOT a newspaper or journalism company. It is a highly private investment group with a short term mission here in the Twin Cities. As stated by Avista’s top editor, Nancy Barnes, they are probably interested in only a half decade ownership at most.

I hope the speculative nature of the post was obvious enough for most readers. Mine may be a nutball “black helicopter” scenario. And yes, in a normal situation front line editors would react very negatively to orders/”suggestions” to hype up a project with so stark a set of conflicts of interest.

But these aren’t ordinary times. In addition to Avista having no experience (and demonstrable patience) with newspapers, the accelerating rate of revenue decline at the Star Tribune should lead reasonable people to ask what a “major daily” in the Twin Cities will look like in another three years, and what current owners and managers might do to insure the return promised to their investors?

Am I intensely skeptical that Avista is interested in the long-term health of Minnesota’s largest news outlet? Yes I am. But for the moment I’m urging equal skepticism on the Strib staff and the public more than I’m “charging” them with anything.

(UPDATED BELOW)

God knows the Star Tribune has faced conflict of issues before with stadium-related real estate deals. But the latest one, wherein Vikings owner and major — emphasis on “major” — real estate developer, Zygi Wilf has a deal in place to buy four of the five blocks owned by Strib owner Avista Capital Partners near the Metrodome, puts a spike on an ethics watch.

Count me among those who find the $45 million reportedly offered for the four blocks on the low side. I know, the city values the land at something around $25 million, so at first blush this looks like a respectable premium. But other real estate-watchers far hipper to value than me placed the true value of all five blocks at something much closer to $100 million. That figure represents the interest a new Vikings stadium might have to developers and speculators, even in a cratering condo market.

In this context, the question I’m asking is whether this might be a two stage agreement. In this scenario the last piece of property — the block on which the main Star Tribune building sits at 425 Portland — would deliver the remainder of the true value of the five-block parcel. In other words, based on certain conditions, Wilf would goose that $45 million up to a number my merry band of conspiratologists believe more appropriate for a project as grand as he envisions for the east side of downtown.

Specifically, the full theory goes something like this: Wilf privately agrees to “enhance” the dollars on the entire project, by buying the final, fifth block based on the state legislature kicking in one more taxpayer subsidy for the centerpiece stadium project and thereby picking up $150-$200 million (or more) of cost. In order to gain legislative support, Wilf’s tacit agreement with Avista Capital Partners is that they keep their newspaper, still the single biggest mouthpiece for news and commentary in this market, focused on the bright and shiny upside to a world class Vikings stadium and the transformative qualities of all that adjacent acreage.

A steady stream of more positive-than-negative coverage boosted by regular “objective” editorializing and the public eventually might come around to seeing the logic and value of “stepping up” to “first-class” city-ness with a stadium that will humble Seattle and Atlanta and almost everything short of that 100,000 seat monstrosity they’re throwing up in Dallas.

If the legislature caves and agrees to a subsidy deal, Avista, which is all about profits and not all that concerned with community service to the Twin Cities, gets the fat back-end pay-off commensurate with their property’s real value. If selling that final block means moving what’s left of the Star Tribune over by Stand Up Frank’s or out to Blaine, so be it. Once that last block of real estate is carved up Avista will dump what’s left of the paper just to cut their losses.

I have calls in to the usual Journalism ethics types. We’ll see what if anything they have to say about how the Strib should handle coverage of Wilf’s campaign for public money. In the past, with the Cowles and the Dome almost 30 years ago, criticisms of their boosterism for the Metrodome had validity. It was certainly fair to raise and sustain skeptical questioning.

But with the Cowles it wasn’t like the Dome was going to make or break their overall business plan. With Avista, the suspicion is that this real estate deal is no peripheral matter. This is the guaranteed equity they came to town to harvest, and $45 million isn’t anywhere near enough to counter-balance the losses they’re looking at on the newspaper side. So … maximizing Zygi and the stadium is essential to them, not just a nice bonus after generations of doing family business in town.

For what it is worth, I spent three weeks last winter kicking around the capital at the start of the session doing mini-interviews with roughly a third of current legislators. My excessively blonde and dismayingly Republican former radio combatant, Sarah Janecek, needed an extra hand to assemble her Politics in Minnesota Directory.

Along with asking about No Child Left Behind, gas taxes, property tax relief, school funding and every other issue on the table, I made a point of asking all 70 or so of the legislators I interviewed about ponying up money for a Vikings stadium.

There wasn’t one — not one — who expressed even a hint of interest, much less enthusiasm for the deal. Disgust among the usual lefties was instantaneous. More to the point, most saw/see the Vikings stadium as the mega development deal it is, (unlike the Twins stadium), and what’s even more, a mega-development deal with a motivated, fully-capitalized mega-developer in place and ready to do what he does. Bottom line, the legislature sees Zygi Wilf as a very big boy who doesn’t need Minnesota taxpayers’ training wheels to help him make a nice buck here in Minnesota.

From super developer Wilf’s point of view, it is always better to spend other people’s money. So, if — for a piddly $40-$50 million more — he can get a jittery investment group with no long term commitment to Minnesota to get its newspaper subsidiary to play cozy ball and provide “objective” cover for nervous legislators, the deal gets has the potential to get all the sweeter.

Maybe this is black helicopters stuff. But considering the direct check passing from Zygi Wilf’s hand to Avista Capital Partners, skeptical Strib readers should prepare an acid bath for every word the paper publishes on the deal.

(UPDATE) This from Prof. Jane Kirtley at the Silha Center for the Study of Media Ethics and Law:

“Of course the Star Tribune should disclose in news stories and any editorials what interest they have in the land sale/stadium deal. This is not rocket science. Clearly, there’s a potential conflict if they are out boosting an undertaking from which they stand to profit. Business is business, but the news business requires transparency and disclosure. Media Ethics 101.

“That said, this isn’t the first time something like this has come up. I recall a few years ago something similar involving the Asbury Park Press (NJ) and some land of theirs that was being sold for some kind of business development — I think a big shopping center, but I don’t recall the details, so don’t quote me on that. In any event, I know the paper both editorialized and covered the story as a straight news story, and there were some questions asked at the time about whether they were being as forthcoming as possible. I didn’t read all the APP’s coverage, but I know that they did include disclosures in at least some of the pieces. And that’s clearly the minimum that anyone would expect.

“I don’t know what position the Strib or Avista are taking here. My guess is that if they argue against disclosure, it would be something along the lines of the way governmental entities justify avoiding state open records/open meetings requirements when they are contemplating land purchases or sales — they argue that secrecy is essential in order to protect the interest of the taxpayer in getting the best deal (lowest or highest, as the case may be). That argument never washes with me at the government level. But one would hope that a news organization that constantly argues in favor of openness would be consistent, no matter what its financial stake might be.”

My colleague here in Rake-world, Colleen Kruse, (in the print version, she’s the better looking one on the opposite page), has signed on as a regular with FM 107’s 1-to-3 p.m. Andrew Zimmern show, now known officially as, “The Andrew Zimmern Show with Colleen Kruse”. The third part of the new ensemble is producer, Christopher Gabriel, who worked with Zimmern Saturday’s at KTLK and recently tunneled to safety at Hubbard Broadcasting.

The Zimmern-Kruse-Gabriel team is of course no threat to the KQRS Fleetwood Mac/Heart/Poison/Journey juggernaut. (Who can ever get enough of that?) But at a time when talk radio is mired in its version of Classic Rock, with the same white male gas bags repeating the same long since-discredited assertions of “class warfare” (in their world that’s the poor attacking the rich), denying climate change, still looking for weapons of mass destruction, the heroic and inspirational leadership of George W. Bush and the inferiority of the French, (better health care, higher standard of living, right about Iraq), the ZKG trio has an opportunity to play smarter, funnier and with more of a, shall we say, “reality base”.

Zimmern is smart operator, and has demonstrated a shrewd knack for professional show biz by sharing as much air time as he has with Kruse and Gabriel since turning on the mike two weeks ago.

FM 107, a.k.a. “The Chick Station”, to more manly competitors around town, is in need of some kind of an infusion. Ratings haven’t moved much in several years. The station’s signature act, “The Lori & Julia Show” will probably benefit from a stronger lead-in, (than the Satellite Sisters it replaces) and the usual in-house competition.

Full disclosure: I regard almost everyone mentioned here as friends. But that happens in a small town.

Kruse, a well known stand-up comic as well as columnist, is jazzed with the possibilities of producing video bits for the show’s web site.

News that the Pohlad family, son Jim in particular, was paying $28 million for B96, the hip-hop station with a transmission tower out on the fringes of the western suburbs fired the following synapses in my alleged brain …

$28 million!? Holy shit! If B96 is worth $28 million, the karaoke machine I picked up at Best Buy for that birthday party, (where everyone sang the drum solo to “In a Gadda da Vida”), has got be worth a half million. Twenty eight VERY LARGE strikes me as a serious over-payment for a signal that doesn’t quite make it to West St. Paul. (Someone will write and say they get it loud and clear in River Falls, just wait).

I think Judd Zulgad, who does a terrific job covering sports media and the Green Bay Puckers for the Strib, has his antennae aimed in the right direction when he asks aloud what many of us suspect. Namely, is the beginning of a move to take everything Twins-related in-a-Pohlad-house?

Obviously B96, as powered and located, can not act as the flagship for an entirely Pohlad/Twins-owned network. But as Zulgad notes, three years is an eternity in the radio biz. Everything can and will change. Some kind of simulcast shtick might be made practical. After all, long before 2010 the new owners of KQRS, 93X, etc. — Citadel — may very be looking to unload a few of their lower-powered properties (most likely the “Love 105” trio of low-power FMs). Hell, they won’t have to “look” to unload if there is a drunken sailor in town throwing $28 million at B96.

As we all remember, WCCO-AM’s parent company, CBS Radio, pretty much bailed on fat contracts for major league baseball in St. Louis, Pittsburgh and here in the Twin Cities. With CBs putting up a weak fight, the Hubbards agreed to the deal the Pohlads/Twins wanted, which has them forking over something like $1 million a year for four years plus giving up almost all the advertising inventory for the games, the production and upper midwest network of which is entirely controlled by the Twins. In other words, the only thing the Twins don’t currently own or control is the the team’s flagship station.

The Hubbards hope to reestablish AM 1500 (post-Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity and Jason Lewis) with help from the Twins games, (while the Twins’ absence diminishes WCCO). There may also be some, shall we say, “programming” issues to deal with there before AM 1500 is restored to the halcyon days of wall-to-wall Clinton-bashing. But the presence of the Twins is not going to hurt, other than that $1 million a year and loss of ad inventory to sell.)

More to the point, after four years of fat pay-outs, from the Hubbards to the Pohlads, (is that trickling down or up?), the Hubbards may very well decide the Twins have worked their magic and decline the opportunity to re-up. Don’t expect anyone involved to breathe such a notion today. But my real point is that nothing anyone says on the record today about this deal is worth any more than what you are paying to read this blog. And we both know that ain’t much.

After so many years of filing “official responses” from company executives on matters like this for a daily newspaper, I had to laugh at this quote, from Steve Woodbury, CEO of Northern Lights , (the Pohlad-owned radio company). Zulgad asks about an eventual Twins presence on B96.

Woodbury, who is not a bad guy, responds:

“The station doesn’t fit that, and it was never discussed or brought up,” Woodbury said of B-96 having baseball on its airwaves. “They [meaning the Pohlads] bought the station based on the format, the management team and the opportunity in the market.”

“The format and the management team … ” Riiight. The latter would of course be Woodbury and a couple others.

As for the format, I’m assured B-96 actually makes some dough, but the sellers weren’t shy about saying they were willing to give it up because the Twin Cities have a pretty small African-American audience.
Obviously, the main reason they were willing to give it up is because the Pohlads flashed $28 friggin’ million in their faces. Your average radio executive would give up their mother for a tenth of that.

But having spent sometime inside the sausage factory that is Clear Channel Twin Cities, I agree with those who say KOOL 108 could disappear tomorrow and be replaced instantly by the “active-urban-hip-hop-rollin’-homies” format or whatever you want to call it. It definitely is not brain surgery.

So if I were Woodbury and the Pohlads I’d keep a handy list of alternate formats. How about Doug Mientkiewicz in morning drive?

Have I ever mentioned how much I love Superior, Wisconsin? There’s something about sweating like a Ukrainian reaper in 85 degree heat, matted with dust, grass clippings and a half dozen ticks, then hauling ass down the hill to Menards for a fresh assortment of shears, brads and fasteners. Superior, where it is always a reliable 56 with a chilling airborne mist off the big lake.

Okay, not always. Sometimes it’s 5 degrees and gray as a gun barrel with horizontal sleet sealing up your radiator. But it’s still lovable. It is so anti-Galleria up there it’s like another civilization.

Anyway, much as I love Superior, we’re back home after four days of relaxation and brute labor. The list of questions possibly leading to stories relative to the Star Tribune was growing too long to stay disconnected.

(Oh, I had one of those strange, synchronous, sado-poetic moments during a cell-phone conversation with a Strib reporter. I came over me as I stood in a half weed-whacked patch of waist-high grass. The reporter was saying he had heard that the cash-strapped Star Tribune company was going to pick up the tab to re-locate publisher Par Ridder from Sunfish Lake to Paul Magers’ old joint on Lake of the Isles, and at the precise moment he said the word “Par” I realized I was crushing a wood tick between my fingernails. Eery, huh?)

Since I could wait a very long time for various editors and writers to respond to my e-mailed questions or return phone calls, let me just lay out a few of the questions I’m trying to get answered, now that I’m back in beautiful Edina. (If any of the people involved respond with answers to these questions I’ll update this post.)

1. What exactly is the deal with Buzz.Mn? The story goes that within an hour of Strib management posting an opening for editor of Buzz.Mn, the Strib’s community-neighborhood chat forum, ex-Quirk columnist James Lileks appeared on the site, blogging furiously and announcing that he was in fact the new editor. (The site has now had four editors in less than a year, and the Strib posting did mention a “preferred candidate”, which is inside-newspaperspeak for, “Don’t bother applying”).

That was about a week ago. So how come to date only one other Strib writer has contributed to Buzz.Mn? The thing is all-Lileks, and as we all know Lileks can produce a stupendous amount of copy. But how come it’s him and him alone? Is there, as one dime-dropper told me, “a de facto boycott” going on? And how did Lileks end up with an editing job officially described as requiring, “the consummate team player”?

Several people called to point this out and encourage me to rip … somebody. (I’m handling a lot of contract work these days. Kind of like the Italians Paulie Walnuts brought in for the bungled hit on Phil Leotardo.)

I’ve told just about everyone that I don’t want to get into a “thing” with Lileks, unless he wants to throw down over Iraq vis a vis the “war on terror” or the nauseating suckling he does off the starchy teats of fulminating half-wits like Hugh Hewitt. It isn’t like it’s a personal thing. Really. Well maybe a little. I’m not sure.

I haven’t paid a lot of attention to Buzz.Mn in the past months. But I and others never had the impression it was supposed to be a one-person rumpus room, yet another variation on “The Bleating Quirk”. Other voices were supposed to be heard. Right? So what gives? Have Nancy Barnes and Scott Gillespie, the Strib’s top editors, parked Lileks there just to goose up traffic with his “Bleat” readers? With the idea they’ll pay more attention to it once they’ve finished the very funky, and exceedingly gamey business of choosing who gets their vaunted “anyone who wants it gets it” buy-out … except for those who don’t? (More on that later.)

With the announcement of a major new news competitor imminent, Buzz.Mn was supposed to be an incubator for all that citizen journalism and interactive stuff next generation news services will supposedly provide. If Barnes and Gillespie see it that way, how does a site overwhelmed by one voice encourage that model?

2. Is it true that the Strib will soon begin reducing its weekly news hole by 30 pages, more or less as Par Ridder (now I’m getting flashes of tick imagery) warned back in one of his “Newspaper Business 101” slide shows? Thirty less pages of news is very significant, and I’m told most of the cutting will come out of the weekday editions in order to keep the life rafts fulling inflated around the Sunday version.

3. Is the fashion beat dead or alive? Is fashion writer Sarah Glassman leaving or staying? When we last spoke with Glassman she had a new job lined up at Mpls/St.Paul magazine. The Strib had told her they were dumping fashion and she could either apply for one of those sexy Bloomington Waste Facilities Commission reporting jobs, or take the buy-out (worth a month’s pay to her) and leave. But then the Strib changed its mind. One rumor — a RUMOR people — is that Macy’s, still a big print advertiser, (although they recently announced they were reallocating 20% of their ad budget to on-line entities), put pressure on the Strib to retain a fashion beat, maybe even specifying Glassman.
Really?

3. Since the Strib didn’t get 50 full-time newsroom employees to take the buy-out, and since they’ve dug in their heels and refused immediate, paid separation to four reporters who want it — on the grounds that “too many reporters” applied — can Timberwolves beat writer Steve Aschburner have his job back? He actually WANTS to work there, and as someone who read his stuff — through an astonishingly boring Wolves season — I’ll vouch that he delivers damn good copy.

Why not let everyone go who wants to go? And why not allow the one person who wants to return return and start over with what’s left? I mean, did anyone in the Strib power suites actually think they were going to be able to coordinate this mess?

These are questions I amassed while lolling on the Wisconsin Riviera. I stand sun burnt, bitten and ready to provide answers as they come available.

My lovely, extraordinarily long-suffering, high school English teacher wife wrapped another school year last Friday and we’ve been feeding the finches up north for the last few days. Still are, in fact. Internet connections are funky in rural Wisconsin, which is one excuse for so little blogging.

We did run around Superior and Duluth Sunday afternoon trying to find a bar or coffee shop to watch The Sopranos finale. (News flash, TVs in Superior bars are for watching NASCAR, not fat Italians.)

So we contented ourselves with smoked pork chops from Superior Meats (what a jewel of a joint) and counting fire flies back at the ranch.

Imagine my surprise when I checked in Monday for Sopranos reviews. Baby, that’s gotta hurt! The faithful are not pleased. Judging by the clips of the final scene and on-line reaction, I think David Chase is having it not just both ways, but every way. He seems to be establishing a new hyper-paranoid state of mind for Tony, which won’t help his mania and depression, (as Tony describes it), but he is also declining the opportunity to flood and shutter the gold mine. Movies. HBO special. Spin-offs. Anything can still go.

Alan Sepinwall of the Newark Star-Ledger has been every fan’s best conduit to Chase and Sopranos lore. Here’s an interview he did with Chase after Sunday’s black-out finale.

This is just a poll — another snapshot of today’s conventional wisdom — but it rings true to me. It reaffirms a point I have made before and believe media-watchers everywhere should keep in mind as they watch big city newspapers founder. Namely, that in very short order, local TV news is going to be worse off than newspapers are right now. And that is bad. Remember these numbers from last month?

Why? Without regurgitating a lot of familiar opinions, TV news slashed value out of its product years ago by reducing staff and has been making its high-profit margins off an extremely dated, formulaic editorial strategy, (mayhem, tragedy, cop and ambulance chasing, a dash of celebrity and superficial “personality”), very little of which means anything to news consumers looking for vital information.

If it weren’t for local TV’s parasitic attachment to newspaper reporting — (the papers report, TV news follows with cameras) — they’d be even less relevant, little more than slick-looking weather graphics and occasionally substantive, well-photographed feature pieces.

The way the Star Tribune and Pioneer Press are going, there’s no reason to believe they will invest and re-invent themselves as the local on-line news product that marries breadth, depth, substantive personality and video. Each may have to go through another change of ownership, or two, with further “right-sizing”, to quote Par Ridder, until their market value has been driven down within the range of responsible local investors. What remains of either, other than their name, is fodder for rank speculation. But I’m thinking, skin and bones.

The point I take from this survey is that the moribund qualities of TV news have become painfully evident. Meanwhile, public demand for a one-stop shopping center for local news, an entity more satisfying and engaging than either newspapers or TV are today, is presenting someone with an opportunity.

How ripe an opportunity profit-wise is a question for another poll.

(UPDATED) I can’t decide if I want this to be true or not, but by all indications on May 14 Star Tribune publisher, Par Ridder, currently busy hacking the livelihoods out from under 150 or so of his employees, closed a deal to buy former KARE anchor Paul Magers’ rather, shall we say, grand-to-ostentatious Lake of the Isles mansion for something just south of $3 million — $2.73 million to be exact. (For a time Magers tried to sell it for $3.9 million.)

The selling agent, Barry Berg, (an old high school classmate of mine — in case anyone ever wondered), has not returned calls confirming the deal, but several of his competitors have confirmed the purchase. (Being a very smart guy Barry has to know nothing good will ever come from disclosing anything — ever — to the likes of me.)

Magers, who lived the Hollywood high life long before moving to Beverly Hills, finally sold the sprawling 8000 sq. foot 1907 status statement in 2006 (after 818 days on the market) for something in the $2.55 million range. Young Par will part ways with a squalid $1.3 million Sunfish Lake pied-a-terre as he attempts to assume his position among the real money of old Minneapolis.

Needless to say, the place is ideal for entertaining. But the way Par’s been operating here in Minnesota, I have to wonder who among the “right people” will want to be seen accepting Par’s invitations? I mean, in a way isn’t it kind of like playing golf with OJ?

Taxes? Oh, yeah. Last year taxes on the Magers Manse were $41,648, or about one year’s salary for one of those sweet old gals Ridder canned from their switchboard jobs at the Strib.

As I say, maybe everyone feeding these numbers and confirming the purchase is flat-out dead wrong. Maybe Par, who is being sued for several variations of highly unethical, illegal business behavior by the new owners of the St. Paul Pioneer Press, has sufficient awareness of this particular moment in Twin Cities culture to avoid something this indiscreet. Maybe he is astute enough NOT to play the complete vulgarian by rubbing the noses of the laid-off, bought-out (for a song) and de-moralized in a grab of such shameless pretension. But that would surprise a lot of people who have met him since he arrived in Minnesota.

It reminds me of when his daddy, Tony, was preaching belt-tightening and “right-sizing” to all the Knight-Ridder papers he was cannibalizing for parts and nickels but didn’t have the good sense to decline Architectural Digest’s request to feature HIS home in their thick and glossy pages.

Also, I’m reminded that both in the law suit filed against him and again in one of his rare face-to-face meetings with his Star Tribune staff, Ridder is quoted saying something to the effect that, “I’ll never turn my back on St. Paul” … out of respect or his family’s long tradition over there in the east metro.

What’s that line about the acorn and the tree?