Tag: media

With the clock counting down to Friday’s deadline for accepting Star Tribune management’s buy-out offer, Strib reporters will get a look at the big, new, glossy, reorganized reassignment chart top editors have been fussing over. Word is it will debut sometime today or tomorrow.

Actually, I don’t know about the “big” or “glossy” parts, but it has struck some as odd that the paper’s supposedly maniacally busy managers have enough disposable time to cook up a reorganization chart, with entirely new assignments for quite a few staffers … BEFORE they have any idea who is actually going to be on their staff after next week.

It doesn’t seem like an exactly efficient use of executive time.

Top editors Nancy Barnes and Scott Gillespie have been e-mailed questions about this, and I’ll dutifully plug them in when and if they respond.

Until then the suspicion further souring the anxious atmosphere of the place is that the pre-buy-out reassignment chart is another not too subtle tool for pushing “targeted” employees off the company dime.

For example, if Employee “A” has never been one of your favorites, but you’re getting the feeling he may linger, you re-assign him to the all-important Bloomington Planning Commission/graveyard of marginalized reporters. Employee “A” — who may be a career-long screw up or just someone you’ve never particularly cared for — sees the big, glossy chart getting pinned to the newsroom wall, trips over a half dozen corpse-like colleagues to search for his name, finds it inked in next to “Bloomington”, says, “Screw this” and signs up for the buy-out.

Mission accomplished, if you’re the diabolical manager.

This attrition technique has not exactly been invented by today’s Strib managers. And it always has the dark beauty of keeping your fingerprints off an old-fashion whacking without cause.

Presumably the official explanation is that today or tomorrow’s list is all for the service of the employees, offering them “guidance” and “clarity” as they make their decision.

Riight.

Whatever it is, another newer, bigger and glossier reassignment list will have to get whipped together after management gets a load of who actually takes the bait/hint and who doesn’t.

In an open letter to friends and colleagues, Kevyn Burger, mid-morning host at FM 107 and, as I’ve said for two decades, one of the great gals/babes of the Twin Cities, announced she has breast cancer and will undergo aggressive treatment beginning this weekend. A reporter at KSTP-TV and then WCCO-TV before settling into her present radio gig, Burger will return to the mic for an hour tomorrow morning, from 9 to 10 AM to discuss her situation, and then take an indefinite hiatus for surgery and chemo.

FM 107 GM Dan Seeman says his plan is to find a regular fill-in, instead of cobbling together a cast of rotating hosts. He hasn’t yet decided who that will be.

I don’t want to go all maudlin here, because Kevyn wouldn’t relate to it or approve. But a big part of her charm has always been her “player” attitude. (Which explains why she ranks high as a “guy gal”.) She understands the media game, has played it well with her own unique style and continues to survive with dignity intact. Not everyone can say that.

Hang tough, Kevyn.

(Her message is attached inside.)

Hello friends,
I am sorry to be contacting you as part of a group e mail. Trust me, I would prefer to tell each one of you the news that I am about to impart over a walk, or coffee, or a glass of wine. However, I simply can’t bring myself to dial each one of of you to deliver this news personally.
Those of you who worked with me in news know I was never one to bury a lede. So here is is:

I have been diagnosed with breast cancer.

I had a routine screening mammogram they day after I did the Walk for the Cure. I expected to get that ‘see ya next year’ postcard in the mail. Instead, a call, the need for another look, the need for an ultrasound, the need for a needle biopsy.
And the confirmation of the diagnosis: invasive ductal carcinoma. In two places.
The good news is that this cancer has not moved to my liver, bones or lungs.
The bad news is that I actually have two lumps and they are periolously near my lymph nodes.
So, I am scheduled for surgery at the soonest possible date. I will have a full mastectomy on June 2 at 9:30 a.m. This will be followed by immediate reconstruction. I will recover for a few days at Abbott Northwestern, then come home, recover some more, and begin preparing for chemotherapy and then radiation.
I am still stunned. My favorite band Atmosphere has a line in their song ‘That Night’ that goes ‘This sort of real doesn’t happen to you, right?’ and that may best describe my feelings.
It has been a long and crazily distorted time, as I have waited for the conclusive information to arrive. I’ve already seen an array of specialists and undergone a series of pokes and prods. Basically, I have now used up my share of the health care budget for the rest of my life…and about half of yours, as well.
Once again, the good news-bad news scenario. This will not kill me. (That’s the good news.) The bad news is the fear and misery that will be my companion in the coming months.That I have to say goodbye to my breast and my self-image as a person with an almost super-human immune system. That I am going to have to learn how to be vulnerable and how to ask for help.
All of these challenges frighten me very much. I am being pulled out of my comfort zone and may never be able to return.
I am blessed to have a gutsy and loyal husband, a loving family and dear and devoted friends. I will have to rely on each of you in ways we can’t now imagine.
Please do not call me right now. I need to keep my strength and focus. Please do not send large and extravagent arrangements of flowers to the hospital. They always remind me of funerals and that is the last thing I want to think of. Please pray for me and for my family and please be strong for all of us.
A hard lump of fear is wedged in my middle and nothing can make it dissolve until the surgery is complete. I know many of you feel it with me. Still I am optimistic. I know I have a lot of fight in me and I will give my all to this struggle. Since the diagnosis, I was riding my bike on a beautiful spring day, these words came to me:
“My fear is strong, but my faith is stronger.”
It is. It truly is. And the faith that you have in me is such a big part of that.
I will soon have a website to communicate with all of you and give you updates. In the meantime, a small request: actively think of me every time you cross the river. Don’t forget to admire how that ribbon of water is on a journey. Notice how the ricer shines; think of how the water seeks the sea. Think of how I’m working to heal…and send me your thoughts, prayers and best wishes as you cross between the banks. My body and soul feel somewhere floating in between right now, working hard to rejoin you on the solid ground of the banks. Wave to me. Beckon me back to the land of the fully alive. I’ll be there with you again…soon.

With love,
Kevyn

PS This news is not a secret. Feel free to share this information with anyone who needs it.

My son has helped me set up a blog.
http://kevynbaby.blogspot.com
It will also be available on the fm107 website. This may be the best way to communicate with me for the time being

(SEE IMPORTANT UPDATE BELOW)>

Is this bait and switch?

Star Tribune Guild officer Chris Serres notifying his colleagues this morning …

>>> Christopher Serres 5/29/2007 9:44 AM >>>

Dear Guild friends and colleagues,

The buyout package agreed to by the Guild was intended to reduce the need for involuntary layoffs. However, there is still a possibility that layoffs will occur, even if the company meets its targeted goal of 50 job reductions in the newsroom and editorial departments.

In a meeting with management on May 18, Guild members of the Star Tribune support staff were told that the company intended to eliminate 10 of their positions, including six news assistants. If that goal was not reached, layoffs might occur, Guild members were told.

It is the first indication that cuts to the newsroom could exceed the 50 originally sought by the company when it unveiled its cost-cutting plan earlier this month.

Guesstimates in recent days had at least 50 Stribbers accepting the paper’s buy-out plan. (Deadline to notify the paper is 5 p.m. June 1, this Friday.) Previously it had been assumed that 50 newsroom cuts (not all necessarily reporters) would satisfy new owners, Avista Capital Partners, at least for the time being. This latest news suggests otherwise.

Since a lay-off under current rules would garner less medical coverage than is being offered under the buy-out, this “news” could inspire even more to take the money and run.

UPDATE: Later Tuesday Strib Guild members received the following correction …

Dear Guild members,

In a note sent earlier today about possible layoffs, the following sentence was not accurate: “It is the first indication that cuts to the newsroom could exceed the 50 originally sought by the company when it unveiled its cost-cutting plan earlier this month.”

In fact, the company has assured us that it does not intend job cuts to exceed 50 positions. However, targeted layoffs may occur in job classifications in which there are too many people for the positions available.

But the total jobs cut, either through layoffs or buyouts, likely will not exceed 50.

Apologies for the error.

Your unit officers

I’ve never been able to pull off the infallibility thing. I’m genetically inclined to screwing up.

In his comment on my non-news news post on the absence of WCCO radio reporter, Eric Eskola, Britt Robson cuts me a new one:

“I’m late to the party here, but the big problem with this post is in the first paragraph. All the “media insiders” have pretty well been apprised of the reason(s) why Eskola is absent from the scene. Well, how were they apprised? Did Eskola tell each and every one of these “insiders”? Or did some of the media insiders decide it was okay and appropriate to gossip amongst themselves and are now trying to figure out “how do we explain it to the general public, if we do at all?”

That double standard is patently arrogant. Whether the reason(s) behind Eskola’s hiatus are sordid or sympathetic, what purpose does it serve to essentially say, “Us media insiders have probed enough to know what’s going on but now we’ve decided that for the sake of his privacy we shouldn’t tell you.” It sets you up as clubby and elitist. Because in this case, you are.

If you really wanted to protect Eskola’s privacy, you wouldn’t have printed a word about him. And if you REALLY wanted to protect his privacy, you would resist the temptation for behind-the-scenes sleuthing into a matter he obviously doesn’t want to publicly divulge at the current time.

Like almost everyone in the media, I have a tremendous amount of respect for Eskola’s work. I have no idea why he left his post in the front row of Capitol press conferences, but I assume it was for a good reason. If I were a media columnist, I’d like to think I wouldn’t broach the subject until I could divulge the whole story. Of course Brian has provided me with the 20/20 hindsight on how not to proceed. Because now Eskola has less privacy than before the post, with the public rabble free to speculate and appropriately believing that the media has chosen to protect one of its own.”

I probably should go into high defensive dudgeon, railing on with a lot of, “Who the f**k do you think you are calling me … “arrogant”, “clubby” and “elitist”? But Robson makes too many good points.

I think I was clear enough that I was applying The Golden Rule to what I said — and the way I said what I said — about Eskola. Yes, all (okay, “many”) of us clubby media insiders had heard the story about Eric’s situation, complete with many of the details. In most circumstances I keep a distance from the strictly personal problems of local media types. Divorces, DUIs, coke habits, seen sneaking out of Sinners on Tuesday nights … I don’t care. Call me back when it effects their work.

What got me about this story was that the clubby insider wall had been breached when I — a long ways from Eric’s inner circle — started getting asked, or rather “told” that “word was …” Eskola had screwed up professionally and was being disciplined by WCCO or someone.

Golden Rule-wise, I wouldn’t want that happening to me. As I said, in most cases sensitive personal problems are not only forgiven by the public — if it’s an addiction or something — but most often are treated quite sympathetically, especially in the case of someone like Eskola who enjoys a solid reputation for reliability and work ethic.

Did I think twice about saying anything at all. Yes, I did. So why did I write anything?

Because, A. It kind of is my beat. Even in blog world. I’m a reporter. Eskola is a high-profile media person. The last days of the legislative session are like the World Series to a sports writer, with Eskola usually playing our Roger Angell. Therefore his absence is a story. B. WCCO radio wasn’t doing anything to address/suppress the “disciplinary” rumors. C. I actually believed that saying what I said — as much and as little — would stabilize the tongue-wagging a bit to Eric’s benefit.

When he returns he may not see it that way at all. But he isn’t available for comment at the moment, and that was the call I made.

Was there a, “have your cake and eat it too” facet to my “report”? Yeah. I can see that. I walked the line on the one hand claiming to respect his privacy while on the other getting my name in the information pipeline. It’s kind of cheesy. But that’s the game some times, and I’ll apologize for it up to a point.

And that point is that on balance my concern for Eric’s well-being outweighed my desire/need to tell a juicy “celebrity” story. If I wanted to I could have.

But am I clubby elitist? You’re damn right I am. And I’m paid accordingly.

An essential part of my posts on “StribTV” is that the disintegration of the basic business model for newspapers is a harbinger of a similar breakdown of TV news. Once any source of news is available on the same screen via the same clicker as KARE and WCCO whatever “exclusiveness” those business can claim starts to melt off pretty quickly.

And it has begun.

Witness the ratings just released for the May sweeps — Nielsen’s “all important” ratings period — since the May numbers have an out-sized effect on setting ad rates for next fall’s Christmas buying season.

Every station in the Twin Cities market, with the exception of Fox 9’s 10 pm news, saw erosion in audience share (the percentage of viewers out of all local TVs in use) compared with May of 2006. KARE lost 14%, WCCO lost 15%. KSTP stayed even in share, but its ratings (percentage of viewers from all possible TVs) declined 6% over the past year.

The same trend is seen nationally, with steep dips in viewing not only of network news, but also for previously monolithic entertainment programming like “American Idol”, “CSI” and “Lost” (which, in my opinion, rallied quite nicely in dramatic terms). The Hollywood Reporter provides an analysis here.

For those of you not quite interested enough to click through, the gist is that we have arrived at that moment in the future when time-shifting by TiVo and other digital video recorders has met the video explosion on the internet with the result being a serious erosion in the way Americans’ make “appointments” with network and cable television.

Put another way, the great shift has already begun and TV is losing viewers at least as fast as newspapers are losing readers.

Jeanine Socha is a reliable TV audience analyst having tracked ratings for WCCO-TV for years before shifting across town to Comcast cable.

Her look into how what I’ll sloppily refer to as the “TiVo revolution” (the TiVo company would kill to be able to corner the market on digital recording), effects local news tells her that, “most network programming, shows like “American Idol”, “CSI”, are watched within one hour of when they were recorded, 75% within one day and 90% within two days.”

The “within one hour” part hits late local news particularly hard, and, if I’m following her correctly, there is no indication of any significant interest in TiVo-ing the local news.

Net effect? Significantly fewer viewers for KARE, WCCO, KSTP, etc.

There is some migration going on, with more viewers shifting over to cable programming (“The Daily Show” increased slightly from a 1.4 to a 1.6 share), but far more significantly, viewers have begun to use technology to rearrange their TV watching schedules to their convenience and appear to be making a value judgment on creating “special time” for the local news.

Here are the actual numbers for May ’07 vs. May ’06

WCCO…………..11.5/22…………14.3/26
KARE…………..9.5/18………….11.5/21
KSTP…………..6.4/12…………..6.8/12
KMSP…………..2.8/8……………2.8/5

Another interesting bit, also from the Hollywood Reporter, is this list of ratings for every primetime show the networks ran during the just wrapped ’06-’07 season.

In what may have been a first for a Minnesota public official soliciting media attendance at a press conference in a public building, US Attorney Rachel Paulose’s staff announced prior to the start of her Monday press conference that Ms. Paulose would NOT be taking questions off the topic of her indictment of 25 people in a prostitution ring.

Say what? No other questions? Did we just move to Uzbekistan? Not even George W. Bush has been so clueless as to dare admonish the press corps to avoid questions he might find uncomfortable. (Of course until his approval ratings cratered the boys and girls on the White House bus were thoroughly self-admonishing.)

Obviously Paulose, stepping out of her double secret probationary sanctum for the first time since it was confirmed that yes indeed her predecessor, Tom Heffelfinger, was on a list of US Attorneys considered for firing, and only two days before her friend, the equally fresh-faced and unworldly Monica Goodling, was scheduled to testify before the House Judiciary Committee didn’t want her photo op ruined. She collared some pimps and she was orchestrating credit for herself. Control was being exerted to prevent some no doubt Democrat-voting media twit from jostling her tiara with a biased question about, you know, how in the hell did she get her job?

And if it weren’t for KARE-11’s Scott Goldberg, followed by MPR’s Elizabeth Stawicki and KSTP’s Dana Benson, she might have pulled it off.

Goldberg ran back the clock on his tape of the press conference and clocked 27 minutes before the gathered media shifted from dutiful inquiries into the prostitution bust and he jabbed at what he refers to as “the elephant in the room”, namely the details of Ms. Paulose’s
ascension and her connection to the gross politicization of the nation’s US Attorney system by stunningly inexperienced, fresh-faced ideologues operating on orders from … ? (Read Goldberg’s account of the experience on his blog. And do note the role and retrograde constitutional thinking of attorney and Powerline blogger, Scott Johnson.)

Goldberg writes:

“I apologize for breaking decorum,” I said. “But Monica Goodling is testifying Wednesday in front of the House Judiciary Committee. Is there anything you’re willing to share? Any thoughts you have about her testimony — whether your name will come up, and if so, whether we’ll learn anything about your appointment to this office?”

She declined to answer, which, certainly, is her right.

Just like it was a reporter’s duty to ask.”

Not to go all grand and macro on you, but in a well-functioning democracy with a courageous press, public officials don’t get away with red-lining embarrassing questions. Hollywood stars pull that stuff, and get away with it until they jump Oprah’s couch. But US Attorneys are not supposed to be accorded pampered, protected Hollywood star treatment by the press, even if they are so delusional they think they deserve it.

The elephant in the room should have been the local press’s first question to Paulose.

In fairness to Goldberg, before poking Paulose’s elephant he asked her what was up with her making a point of noting that the perps running the prostitution ring were illegal aliens? Last time he checked it was a crime to run a flock of hookers whether you had a green card or not. (As it was explained to me, this question threw Ms. Paulose off-script enough that she at first denied making a point of their immigration status … until it was pointed out to her that it was right there in the info packet her people handed out to the press.)

I asked Goldberg if Paulose and her team hung around for a few minutes after the official event wrapped and, you know, maybe did a little informal press mingling, something that is fairly natural with law enforcement types.

“Not really. In fact the way the room was set up there was a door right behind here. She entered from there and left through it pretty much as soon as she was finished.” Dick Cheney would be proud.

Goldberg did a few of these pressers with Tom Heffelfinger, all of which he describes as, “more in line with what you’d expect.” With Heffelfinger there was also none of the over-the-top security with the press being met for Paulose’s news conference at street level and escorted both up to the audience with her and then back down and out again when it was all over. (I gotta check this out, but I thought the Federal Court House was a PUBLIC building, not some princess’s private castle.)

There was, says Goldberg, “an overall weirdness” to the event.

“What’s the difference in working with Heffelfinger and Paulose? Well, for starters, one was accessible and the other isn’t,” he says. “Heffelfinger’s relations with the press were fairly cordial. But then he was seasoned. He was a professional.”

KSTP’s Bob McNaney, who with the Strib’s Nick Coleman, has been the glowing exception to the generally lax rule of coverage of Ms. Paulose couldn’t break off from another assignment to attend the prostitution
ring ceremony. And he regrets that.

“Its like throwing blood in the water man,” he said a few days later. “Blood in the water and the sharks are circling.”

McNaney and KSTP’s attorneys filed an FOIA request for all of Paulose’s e-mails and were initially denied. But they have persisted.

By now the question, “What’s going on with Eric Eskola?” has been pretty well answered among media insiders. The question remaining is, “How do we explain it to the general public, if we do at all?”

The position taken by WCCO-AM is to say simply that Eskola, the station’s heretofore indefatigable government and politics reporter, “Is taking a well deserved rest, we wish him only the best, we love him and we expect him to be back.”

My first inclination has been to let that stand. But, if I were to apply The Golden Rule to this situation, where Eskola suddenly stepped away from coverage of the State Legislature in its final, most newsworthy hours, I would not want to hear whispers that I was being disciplined for some reason or another, or that my employers had yanked me from the beat.

Eskola is a bit of a Minnesota icon for good reason. The guy is, and has been, tireless in his coverage of Minnesota politics and government, (not always the same thing, you know). Colleagues and competitors marvel at the hours he puts in covering his beat, which of course sprawls from WCCO radio to TPT’s “Almanac” and on and on.

WCCO is, as I say, taking the position that it is, “respecting Eric’s privacy”, and on one level I can appreciate that. But my experience is that the public at large is tremendously sympathetic to public figures — especially those they admire for their work ethic and credibility — who reach a point of exhaustion, for whatever the reason, and have to leave the stage for a while.

More to the point, it simply isn’t possible to pretend nothing is happening, or allow rumors to build that the reasons for Eskola’s absence are related to anything disciplinary or a dissatisfaction with his professional conduct.

When Eskola returns from “a well-deserved rest” he can explain as much or as little as he wants. But for the time being, be advised that his issues are entirely personal and there is no truth to any suggestion that WCCO or CBS has made a move against him.

I do wish him the best.

It says something about the quality and value of TV news, local TV news in particular, when a guy suggests a big city newspaper like the Star Tribune demonstrate a hipness to the coming convergence of internet and television and smart people react like he’s suggesting polluting Perrier with dioxin.

In the previous post I argued that if Strib publisher, Par Ridder, and his Avista overseers had any inclination to invest in the paper’s future — and I see no evidence that they do — they could begin by dipping a toe in the “televisionation” of the paper’s best assets. “Television” being a loaded word, fraught with connotations of nit-wits, blowhards and pop effluvia, several of my regular readers reacted quite loudly.

There was this from, “jimmy”:

“Great strategy. Cut staff and then give those who survive a new medium they’ve had no experience with to feed every day. Both the paper and the website are bound to get better. It just makes so much sense. Can’t wait for the Bloomington City Planning pieces to hit the web.”

And this from the, “frogman of grant”:

“No thanks. I’ll see your numbing prospect of Katherine Kersten and James Lileks in high-def and raise you Lou Dobbs, Joe Scarborough, and Tucker Carlson. I mean, enough already.

Worse, it seems that if I want to send you a snotty message like this three years hence I’ll have to somehow manage it via my TV.

Maybe I’ll just read a book instead.”

If the concept here were to repeat all the witless, dime-deep marketing spin and journalistic irrelevancies of local TV news and cable, I wouldn’t bother, and I certainly wouldn’t disagree with either gentleman’s concerns. But the whole point is a ready and relatively cheap opportunity to offer something far better. We’re talking an interactive and on-demand website from which you the reader/viewer not only gets all the printed copy of the present Strib but also a video component built around writers and reporters with established reputations. It would never be “all TV”, and there would be no reason outside of basic editorial judgment to limit “reports” to something less than the time it takes to tell the story — and maybe offer analysis.

More to the point, unlike today’s TV news, where you’re held hostage by six minutes of redundant sports or the sight of Lou Dobbs once again blowing a feeder tube over immigration “amnesty”, you have total command over the menu of options. You can ignore sports or the opinion page entirely, or click away to literally anything else that is in the paper that day — or has been in it for months or years back.

My underlying point is that newspapers — ironically — are better equipped to deal with the “televisionated” future than local TV newsrooms are. The latter have long ago been reduced to skeletal operations selling cornball “glamour” more than anything of depth in order to supply the 30%-40% profit margins THEIR owners have demanded. (Newspapers really are just arriving late to the game of strip-mining news operations for short-term profit.)

As far as the “look” of StribTV, think more C-SPAN than a gorgeously shot KARE-11 sweeps piece on migrating ducks, at least at the start.

Here are a couple examples of what is already being done. First, Dana Milbank of the Washington Post providing some interesting background and context for Al Gore testifying on Capitol Hill before Oklahoma flat-Earther, James Inhofe.

And then, as an example of the consumer/sales possibilities, here’s consumer tech writer, David Pogue of the New York Times.

Or, (just to annoy him), my old pal, David Carr from the Times doing a ditty on the New York Auto Show. (Carr vows this was a one time only deal. But I liked it.)

No individual reader reads the entire newspaper. “Consumers” cherry pick the subjects and writers they’re interested in. What could and should come next is a way to give those cherry pickers more of what they already like, and at no significant new cost in terms of hardware.

(In the comments, “TV Guy” correctly points out that Hi-Def cameras and editing decks are cheap and not particularly difficult to learn, certainly not by professional shooters already on staff at most papers. And hell, Ridder and Avista have already covered the cost of a dozen cameras and editing decks by firing the sweet old ladies at the switchboard.)

Can’t stand Nick Coleman? Experience the thrill of cutting Nick off in mid-sentence and clicking over to Katherine Kersten. No interest in Billy Friedkin’s director’s comments on the latest re-release of, “The French Connection”? To hell with Randy Salas’ DVD review, hit up the Strib’s Capitol Hill reporters grilling Minority Leader Marty Seifert.

Would a stray newspaper wonk go nutty with prolonged exposure to a TV camera and turn into a spittle-flinging caricature of Chris Matthews? Oh, probably. But in an interactive world, he disappears at the click of the button and instead you’re sitting in on the editorial board’s discussions over who to endorse in the next election. The potential for features — with architecture coverage, TV and music reviews, etc. are obvious. Likewise for sports, think of the possibilities for Pat Reusse to goad AJ Pierzynski the next time the Sox are in town.

Could say, WCCO-TV, do something like this … and with better looking people, (I mean, they’ve already got Pat Kessler …)? Sure. But no local TV station is ever going to make the investment in staff to approach the size of a major newspaper — at least not a paper like the Star Tribune of today, before it’s gutted by Ridder and Avista.

Obviously, there are technological advances required here beyond just digital TVs and higher-powered servers. Not far over the horizon, for example, are highly portable, flexible/”foldable” ergonomically appealing screens for downloading all internet content, including that from major newspapers. (Considering the carbon footprint of forests leveled for newsprint and fleets of trucks and cars to deliver the paper version of the paper, there’s even more to said for “televisionating” ASAP. And hell, if you’re so hopelessly old school you have to feel paper in your hands you can always download the damn thing.)

As foul as the air is over the Star Tribune these days, (and it isn’t any better across the river), the soon-to-be-“right-sized” staff might feel the slightest bit better if they were being given any reason — ANY REASON — to believe the end result of all the slashing, cutting, out-sourcing, etc. was going to be a better product. They aren’t being given such reason for optimism. And if there is someone who believes they have, I haven’t met them.

One story has a member of the sports department interrupting a presentation from editors Nancy Barnes and Scott Gillespie recently to tell them, “You know, you’re insulting our intelligence here,” with the by now long-since-stale talking points of adjusting to demanding times, properly orienting resources, blah, blah, blah.

It would have been far better for Strib managers to have told their staff, i.e. the professional skeptics whose respect is vital to a cohesive, productive newsroom, that, “None of this has a damn thing to do with creating a better newspaper. We know it and you know it. Yes, classified advertising is down, and kids aren’t reading the paper. But this whole thing wouldn’t be nearly as bad as it is if we didn’t have to guarantee investors who don’t give a damn about any of us, the quality of this paper, or even the Twin Cities for that matter, implausibly fat profits for the three or four years they’re paying any attention to us at all.”

If the Strib’s new “plan”, which is really a forced march to the past, before the Star Tribune acquired regional and national influence, included even one concept that signaled “investment” by Avista Capital Partners, the grumbling wretches would be marginally less wretched.

Last week former Strib publisher, Roger Parkinson, took a quick stroll through the building, saying hello to old employees and compadres. I finally got him on the phone this morning, before he flew off to Vienna to meet up with his book club. (They read a book, in this case something about Sigmund Freud, and then gather in the appropriate location to soak up the vibe. “The Brothers Karamazov” took them to St. Petersburg. Dante and Galileo to Italy. Meanwhile, my book club makes it no further than Stillwater.)

Parkinson, a bona fide curious intellect – unlike “the current occupant”, as Garrison Keillor says of George W. Bush — had a ready litany of the pressures creating turbulence around his old industry. (Parkinson is currently chairman of the board of the University of Toronto Press, which probably means he gets his book club books at a discount.) He pointedly declined to criticize current Strib management, but has a significantly more forward-looking view of journalism than anything coming out of the Strib’s executive suites today.

I’ll tuck away most of what Parkinson had to say for another time and move to one specific point of agreement, namely that ownership genuinely interested in investing in its product and maneuvering for survival into the on-line, post-print world would get serious right now about creating television out its abundant assets.

Certainly within three years the union of the television screen and the internet will be a fact of American life, and considering the boggling range of material available on the ‘net, the steady drop in the price of digital televisions and the February 17, 2009 deadline for fully converting to all-digital transmission, this union of TV and internet will likely come at us a lot faster than anyone is expecting now. But when it does, StarTribune.com, (or StribTV), instantly becomes a video competitor to WCCO-TV, KSTP-TV, KARE-TV and everything else offering “news” and infotainment.

The difference between TV news as it exists and a newspaper, in terms of value as a news source, is obvious. Even after the forced attrition going on now, the Star Tribune will still have seven or eight times the staff of a major affiliate TV newsroom like KARE. Moreover, when you factor in how much of TV news is sports and weather, and how much of TV news has been acquired after reading the morning newspaper and sending a truck across town for pictures and 30 seconds of “reportage”, there’s a looming “no-contest” to a head-to-head competition. Anything TV news can do newspapers can do as well and with several times the breadth.

Were Avista in the newspaper game for any reason other than to strip present assets as close to the bone as possible and still make claim to being a daily newspaper, they, like the New York Times, the Washington Post and several others, would have already commenced the “television-ation” of the Strib newsroom.

This of course would require a personnel strategy radically different from the one Par Ridder and Avista are currently following. For better and for worse TV runs on personalities and character. The upside to the Star Tribune is that while their personalities may not exactly sport consultant-approved haircuts and orthodontia, the best known of them are authoritative, deeply-sourced, know what they are talking about and, assuming they are allowed to be themselves, long ago acquired an internet-ready attitudes.

Whether it were field pieces with say, Nick Coleman, talking up witnesses and cops at the scene of the latest shooting, a Linda Mack feature on the new MacPhail building, Randy Salas spinning through off-beat new web sites or special features on the latest DVDs, Dan Browning and super-intern Brady Averill discussing and taking viewer questions on the US Attorneys scandal, Katherine Kersten slashing away again at the Flying Imams, Mark Brunswick, Pat Doyle and Pat Lopez giving updates from the legislative session, Sara Glassman showing and explaining fashion trends, or even, hell, James Lileks “quirk”-ing from a Linden Hills coffee shop, all the elements are there in terms of both established brand and abundance that TV stations — with their own “right-sized” newsrooms and rapacious, short-sighted ownership groups– can’t/won’t be able to approach.

And that’s all before you even get to the daily grit of covering fires, sports and the Op-Ed page.

Parkinson jokes that in his experience, first in newspapers and later in academia, “Newspapers and faculties are the least susceptible to change of any cultures I’ve ever known. But, as loathe as newspaper journalists often are to doing television, once they try it they realize they enjoy it.”

Among the many consequences of Ridder and Avista not giving one goddam about investing in a truly vital news source large and sufficiently connected to both cover and explain the Twin Cities is that their current attrition process is shoving out and/or marginalizing exactly the sort of next generation-ready journalists the Star Tribune needs most.