The Rake Magazine

Tag: media

  • MinnPost Debut: A "Thoughtful" Approach to News

    RYBAK: Sigh.

    For some time, I’ve put off writing a post about today’s 11 a.m. debut of what’s being touted in some circles as the divine answer to the Twin Cities’ current Crisis in Journalism. I’m referring, of course, to the launch of MinnPost.com, the online newspaper creation of Joel Kramer, the former Star Tribune editor-turned-publisher-turned journalistic manumitter.

    Kramer stepped forward this summer to, I guess, rescue the Twin Cities from the ravages of PiPress owner Dean Singleton and the faceless Avista-owned Star Tribune. Both, you see, have condensed news, bought off and spit out reporters at such an alarming rate (well, alarming if you’re a reporter), that it seems Kramer decided it was his sacred duty to restore Twin Cities journalism to its illustrious past.

    I want to put some emphasis on the word “sacred.” It contributes to the fact that—as much as I’m trying to keep an open mind about MinnPost and as much as I would like to see it succeed as a kick-ass publication—the whole undertaking makes my teeth hurt.

    As Kramer makes clear in his rather dry lectures–um, presentations– (one of which I recently attended) that there will be nothing frivolous about MinnPost. No sports scores, no stocks, no movie, music or theater reviews. No oddball, newsy feature stories that gave newspapers of old their vibrancy. Instead, Kramer emphasized, his new publication is designed to attract “news-intense,” “civically-engaged” readers, the sort of readers “who like to read The Economist,” and who value news written by “high quality” “professional” reporters “who care about Minnesota.”

    Hence, his new publication’s motto: “A Thoughtful Approach to News.”

    That’s where my hackles really start heading north.

    Let’s talk about how Thoughtful it is to tout this new online/new media approach, then, just to be on the safe side, announce that you’ll be passing out 2,000 printed copies of the paper every day. They won’t look like a paper, mind you, (just eight sheets of 8×11 paper stapled together) and they’ll be handed out on street corners in downtown Minneapolis, St. Paul, the 494 strip and Edina. How Thoughtful is it, when you’re operating on a shoestring and paying only your editors full-time wages, to be spending 20 cents a copy on that endeavor, for a total of $104,000 per year? Oh, and then brag about the fact that, as a non-profit, you’ve already raised about $120,000. Guess we know where those Thoughtfully-donated dollars will be going.

    It just doesn’t make sense.

    Nor does it make sense to tout yourself as an online version of the extraordinarily popular Slate and Salon online journals where little similarity exists. Kramer has taken pains to distance his Thoughtful Approach to News from Thoughtless, opinionated outfits (well, like ours). However, Slate was just described recently in the New York Observer (probably not a Thoughtful enough publication to suit Kramer) as a fixture of “opinion journalism.” The San Francisco-based Salon is an online magazine (as opposed to a collection of tiny posts or news stories) which prominently features reviews and articles about music, books, and films.

    LAMBERT: Damn, talk about a tough crowd. I knew I needed a little sharper knife when I was alone in here, but you, girl, are one hard sell. Do you heckle funeral eulogies? … not to make any connection between funerals and the arrival of MinnPost.I’ve listened to more than a few of Kramer’s presentations, and I concede they aren’t exactly 20 minutes of Chris Rock. And I’m assuming he will steer MinnPost in a direction I wouldn’t go … entirely.

    But before anyone accuses me of being closed off and utterly negative to MinnPost I have to say I admire and will root for anyone who can deliver more credible content into the public news diet. Too many people consume too much fact-free bullshit. Anyone who is working to re-balance that situation has my support. Moreover, I admire someone who is willing to stick $250k of his own money into the venture and actively work at it, as Kramer has and is.

    I attended his open house, too. Remember? I was the one encouraging hugs between you and my old drinking buddy, Neal Justin, (who we told we were going to rip for his new Monday column, and which we did a couple days ago). The concept and the cost of this 2,000 stapled copies thing strikes me as kind of funky. The sort of thing that could be the first item red-lined when someone screams, “belt-tightening!” But I do recall Kramer talking about some kind of feature/analysis style sports coverage.

    In fact, one of the more interesting conversations I had over at the MinnPost office was with ex-Strib Timberwolves beat writer, Steve Aschburner, who will contribute stories to the site. Steve’s separation from the Strib was one of the most hamhanded of many hamhanded episodes. But he seems philosophical about it now.He said two things that I found interesting. One, he sees in Kramer – for all his wonkiness and lack of hip-hop cred – “an actual leader,” as he put it. A much overlooked factor in the struggles of modern newsrooms is that while the staffs may be aging-to-aged veterans, middle level editing/managing jobs – thankless eye-glazing jobs — are often handled by comparatively inexperienced people for whom budget control is as high or higher a priority than quality writing and reporting. Too many, in my experience, don’t even qualify as avid newspaper readers themselves. I’m paraphrasing here, but Aschburner’s view was that, “I’m tired of being told to respect and follow somebody just because they’ve been handed a title. With Joel, I have no proble
    m following his direction because he’s proven he can lead.”

    The other thing Aschburner mentioned was that as a sports writer he doubts he’ll have the difficulty making the transition to the less formal and freer style of the Web. Sports departments everywhere have long had a special license for language, attitude and commentary that newsroom managers in other departments – some for reasons of inexperience, others for reasons of incompetence and/or timidity – don’t allow their staffs.

    RYBAK: I truly am sorry. I don’t mean to be so nasty. But as a ratty-ass reporter, undue pretentiousness beckons like an overfull balloon to a pinholder. Oops, there I go again, not being Thoughtful.

    I want to say something nice about J-Kram, so you’ll get off my butt. I wasn’t working at the Strib when Joel was in the building. But my homies say that he was one of the finest editors the paper ever had during his days in the newsroom. A guy you wanted looking over your shoulder as you wrote. The best.

    Once he ascended to the publisher’s suite, however, opinion shifts. Kramer the publisher, in order to save journalism back in the mid-1990s, implemented procedures at the Strib that remain laughable to this day.

    He divided its reporters into “teams,” (which totally Balkanized the newsroom), and engaged in a whole bunch of newsroom renaming: Subscribers became “reader-customers,” the managing editor became the “news leader,” and the newspaper became “perhaps the most ridiculed newspaper in the country,” according to a New York Times article about the Strib written in 1995. Kramer, the once-accessible editor dug in his heels and stubbornly defended his rampant jargonism, which was dismantled after he left the paper.

    I see Joel the editor in his commitment to an ambitious undertaking like this and in seeking to bring some legitimate news gathering back to the marketplace, even if I think he is severely underpaying the talent. There are some real standouts among the reporters he’s signed up and I look forward to seeing their bylines regularly.

    However, I see Joel the publisher in his stubborn belief that he knows better than anyone else when it comes to the Internet. If he really believed in the Internet, he wouldn’t be messing around with handing out expensive stapled copies of an online paper. If he really understood the Internet, I think MinnPost would be a lot more Daily Mole and a lot less refried mainstream media.

    That said, I’ll be reading with great interest.

    LAMBERT: The other issue that caught my attention was when he declared that MinnPost, with people like Doug Grow, Britt Robson, Susan Albright, David Brauer, my old buddy Sarah Janecek, G.R. Anderson and Steve Berg, to mention just a few, would not be offering political endorsements … on the advice of his attorneys and their interpretation of the 501(c)3 statutes.

    I don’t get this.

    As it is, MinnPost might be tilted more heavily left-of-center than the old Strib – Sarah can’t do all the righty lifting – but other than porn and Britney Spears (a redundancy, I suppose) nothing drives traffic like politics, and a fair and open Op-Ed board-style discussion of candidates and referendums would be pretty damned interesting.

    This will be a fascinating test of the appetites and affinities of web users, web-intense users. Will Kramer appeal to an MPR quality audience with a product that goes only a little bit further than the existing daily papers? Or will he find that the stories/posts that earn the largest audience – and hold out the greatest potential for ad revenue – point in him a different direction, possibly more Slate and Salon than StarTribune.com?

    I wish him and his crew the best.

  • BREAKING NEWS [UPDATED]: Scott Libin Named WCCO-TV News Director

    As we projected, WCCO-TV announced Scott Libin as its new news director to staff this afternoon. Libin, former news director at KSTP-TV, comes back to the Twin Cities from his job as managing editor for on-ine content at the Poynter Institute, the journalistic think tank in St. Petersburg, Florida.

    Libin replaces Jeff Kiernan, who left the station in September for WBZ-TV in Boston. That leaves only Libin’s former employer KSTP with a news director slot to fill. (Prevailing belief there is that GM Rob Hubbard will hire from within this time.)

    Lambert spoke with Libin from his Poynter office this afternoon and filed the following:

     Scott made a point of saying all the right things. Like how, "Even when I was at KSTP I greatly admired the work they were doing at WCCO." (He’s never been accused of not having a smooth, political touch.)

    But the current situation has two lines of thinking. One is that the mini-franchises the station has built with unique segments like "Reality Check", "In the Know" and "Good Question" are heading Ch. 4 into an irresistible direction for more a feature-ish style of news product, something the new guy — Libin — would be expected to build upon.

    The other is that these same mini-franchises have become a bit of a velvet trap (only one, "Reality Check", has much of a news punch), and that attention to tougher news coverage has slackened as time and resources migrated their way. Point being that the new guy — Libin — would have to do something about that.

    So, what is it? Ying or yang?

    "I don’t know," was Libin’s response. "And frankly, I think it’d be pretty foolish of me to plant my flag on anything before I’m in the building. But listen, my impression of ‘CCO has always been that they do a very credible, very solid job of covering the news of the day and breaking news, and that while it isn’t exactly rocket science to want to build on what is working, I don’t know that the way you do that, necessarily, is by multiplying the exact same elements."

    One upside to WCCO comes as a consequence of Libin’s somewhat professorial personality. As much as he loves to talk the nuts, bolts and theory of journalism, he does actually listen. (And as Don Shelby’s boss he’ll have to learn to listen a lot. … oh settle down, that’s a joke.) As WCCO knows from fairly recent memory, (the crowd that preceded Kiernan), fatal symptoms of bad managers include those who arrive with no curiosity about the staff”s institutional memory, no apparent curiosity in what anyone else thinks might be a good next move and a wholly unearned, "New Sheriff in Town" attitude.

    "Yeah," said Libin, "I’m not really one of those characters who comes in and marks his territory as a first order of business. I’ll take some time to talk to people, and see what I can learn." (He says he’s taking a flight up Sunday and plans on schmoozing the troops most of Monday.)

    Another facet in Libin’s favor over the 24 others who interviewed for the job might have been the Poynter factor, in the context of the very imminent convergence of the Internet and TV and the transition to all-digital transmission on February 17, 2009. Given the average four to five year life cycle of most news directors, both these epochal events in the history of media will likely occur on his watch at ‘CCO. And down at Poynter, convergence and transition are the kinds of topics they sprinkle on their Froot Loops for breakfast.

    Does Libin have any deep thoughts he’d like to share before starting work here, Dec. 3?

    "Well," he says, "I wouldn’t bet on any news organization that isn’t dealing with those issues on a daily basis. But overall, after hearing that newspapers are dead, that the book is dead and that TV is dead, I still think there’s plenty of life in the TV beast. I’m looking forward to this."

    Libin will be gratified to know that the ‘CCO newsroom broke into applause when his name was announced this afternoon.

     

    Here’s the official WCCO press release:

    Scott Libin has been named News Director of WCCO-TV, it was announced today by Susan Adams Loyd, WCCO-TV Vice President and General Manager. Libin, who is currently managing editor of Poynter Online and a faculty member at the Poynter Institute in St. Petersburg, Fla., will oversee the station’s day-to-day news operation beginning Dec. 3.

    "Scott Libin is a highly regarded news executive," said Loyd. "Colleagues and competitors tip their hat to his leadership abilities and eloquence. He has many qualities that make him the perfect fit for this position, particularly his journalistic integrity, along with strong ties to the Twin Cities. We are thrilled to welcome Scott to the WCCO family."

    "I’ve admired WCCO for so many years," said Libin. "It’s a truly exceptional television station recognized and respected by journalists across the country. I’m honored by the opportunity to be a part of it, and I can hardly wait to get started. This would be an extraordinary job for any news director. But beyond that, my wife and I are very excited about getting back to the Twin Cities, to family and friends, and to be a part of a community we really love."

    At Poynter, Libin is responsible for daily online coverage and edit content for the country’s No. 1 Web site serving journalists. He also leads seminars for journalists. This was Libin’s second time working for Poynter. From 1995 to 1998, he taught management, producing, reporting and ethics there.

    Libin is known locally as he was the News Director for KSTP-TV in St. Paul from 1998 to 2003. He was responsible for producing eight hours of daily news for the market’s first duopoly (KSTP and KSTC) and was leading the charge when KSTP won the NPPA Station of the Year award twice and the regional Edward R. Murrow Award for Overall Excellence, Best Newscast and Spot News Coverage. Prior to that, Libin was Vice President of News at WGHP-TV in Greensboro/High Point/Winston-Salem, N.C. He was managing editor, weekend anchor and senior reporter for this station from 1986 to 1991. Before getting into television, Libin was a Congressional Press Secretary for the US House of Representatives in Washington, DC.

    Libin graduated with honors from the University of Richmond, with a Bachelor of Arts in English and journalism. He earned his Master of Arts in journalism and public affairs from American University. His wife, Michelle, grew up in Bloomington and has family across the Twin Cities.

    WCCO-TV is part of the CBS Television Station Division, a division of CBS Corporation.

     

     

  • Prominent Local Attorney Wins "Golden Wingnut" Award!

    Not being much of a fan of show biz and media award shows –
    I mean, what explains WCCO’s “Good Question” guy beating out Pat Kessler for “Best
    Political Reporting” or whatever it was called at this year’s local Emmys? – I usually
    just ignore the latest Winner du Jour.

    Except … when the news gets as good as the news this morning.

    I mean
    we here at The Slaughter are nothing if not (also) local-local, hyper-local,
    and when a prominent local attorney walks away with the championship in a
    national media competition we have an obligation – to you – to report the good
    news.

    I am a fan of Kevin Drum, who blogs as “The Political Animal”
    for The Washington Monthly, and I admit that I have both followed avidly and
    voted in his contest for the “Golden Wingnut Awards”, his first annual
    competition to honor the most unhinged, delusional, delirious, no-relation-to-anything-on-this-planet
    nut-baggery posted in all the blogs in all the world … which I think is saying
    something. Furthermore, this year’s award is uniquely prestigious by virtue of being the 1st Annual competition, meaning it includes every astoundingly lunatic, over-the-top thing ever written in the history of the Internet up until this year.

    Now do you appreciate the depth of this competition?

    But enough with the suspense. Ladies and gentlemen a huge round
    of applause for Minneapolis
    attorney, John Hinderaker, a.k.a. “Hind Rocket”, the sharpest shiv at Powerlineblog.com,
    Time magazine’s 2004 “Blog of the Year” for his July 2005 posting titled, “Stroke
    of Genius?” The guy smoked serious wingers like — the National Review’s Jonah Goldberg, Michelle Malkin and Glenn "Instapundit" Reynolds — by 2-to-1!

    The breathless opening to Hinderaker’s Wingnut Hall of Fame post:

    A Stroke of Genius?

    It must be very strange to be President Bush. A man of extraordinary vision
    and brilliance approaching to genius, he can’t get anyone to notice. He is like
    a great painter or musician who is ahead of his time, and who unveils one
    masterpiece after another to a reception that, when not bored, is hostile.

     

    Now that is what I call separating yourself from the herd.

    Mr. Hinderaker is notable for being both a highly influential far right-wing
    blogger, (the giddy intellectual chops on display in the above quote clearly demonstrate his
    appeal to the echo chamber crowd), and, historically, a huge source of concern
    to the upper managers of the Star Tribune, at least under the leadership of
    Anders Gyllenhaal.

    Powerline’s persistent, high national-profile ridiculing of the paper’s
    alleged “liberal bias” and “political correctness” was – despite Gyllenhaal’s
    denials – a key motivating factor in the ascension of Katherine Kersten from
    Op-Ed think tank contributor to metro columnist. Moreover Powerline’s call-and-shout
    alliance/mentorship with Kersten continues to make them important, albeit un-credited
    contributors to the paper’s new, uh, “balanced” tone.

    Anyway, nice going, John. You’re a credit to the local culture. We couldn’t
    be more proud.

    Here is a complete list of all the other contenders in Drum’s contest, none of whom, as I say, really
    came close to topping Hinderaker for sheer, I-can-no-longer-feel-my-body hyperbole.

  • Meet the New Readers' Rep. — Same as the Old

    RYBAK: Oh gosh, that Nancy Barnes. How does the girl do it? She’s editor of the Star Tribune and still found time these past two weeks to write a Sunday column filling us in on all the neat goings-on at the paper, just like the old readers’ reps used to do.

    Why, last week she introduced to some of the nice people still on her staff. Like Paul McEnroe, who has been there for almost 30 years.

    And then this Sunday, that thoughtful Nancy took us up on our suggestion of a month ago (because we try to be caring, helpful Scouts here at Slaughter Central) and printed all the names and phone numbers of the Strib’s assistant managing editors so that readers with questions could call them directly. She mentioned that maybe a lot of readers were mad that she didn’t do that earlier. Nancy also wrote about another reporter, Pam Louwagie, and said Pam’s story was just so neat, it was her very favorite of the day.

    I guess Nancy was so excited about Paul McEnroe, Pam Louwagie and all those other swell, talented people she works with that she just plain forgot the other big news that happened in the Star Tribune yesterday. That would be the fact that there was no weekly TV guide. Why? Because Nancy Barnes killed it off. I guess maybe she didn’t think anyone would notice.

    It was funny, though, because they did. They noticed so much that the paper had to bring in extra news assistants on Monday to answer all the phone calls that poured in from the angry readers. Uh, oh.

    Well, at least Nancy was smart enough to print the phone number of the new Features editor, Christine Ledbetter, because the readers sure liked calling her, too—so much that they crashed her voicemail.

    But gee, Nancy is so darn busy in that important job of hers that I don’t think we can blame her. But, you know, I think she probably could use the help of a new readers’ rep.

    Brian, tell our nice readers what we found.

    LAMBERT: I’ll get to that in just a minute. But first, I can tell you from personal experience that as much as you hear readers complain about crazed, whiny liberals and boring Minnetonka city council stories nothing … NOTHING … sets them off like when you mess with the weekly TV guide. Basically, you order up 50 more rent-a-cops just to protect you from irate senior citizens.

    But I have to get something off my chest. As an avid newspaper reader, I’m finding that Sunday mornings aren’t nearly as much fun anymore. Not long ago I’d heft the Strib off the doorstep, toss aside the ads, the news and the sports, and dig right into my favorite column, "The Readers’ Representative." Damn, it was always good stuff.

    It’s weird, but after 15 years at a daily newspaper, I actually miss hearing first-hand the way self-criticism is transformed into self-congratulation, the way thick, dense curtains fall over assurances of transparency, the way anyone and everyone higher up the company ladder was not only always right, but right and brave. And especially I missed the way a big, high-profile newspaper company could save a bundle on PR flackery by having a compliant middle-manager wallpaper over the corpses hanging in the living room.

    But you know what, Deborah? Now I just miss the Readers’ Rep. Back in early October the kids in Strib management decided that, gosh, they were just so committed to giving us the latest health news — not so much news about dark, complicated stuff like the ways local health insurance billionaires have gamed the cost of medical care and with it our collective stress level, but rather the importance of eating vegetables and getting annual exams — that they "reassigned" the old Readers’ Rep to the health section and replaced her with—well–nobody and everybody.

    As you say, the last two Sundays have featured columns by the Strib’s current top editor, Nancy Barnes. In the first one, I enjoyed her display of camaraderie with veterans like Paul McEnroe. I like the way she called him "Mac," just like she does when they bowl together every Tuesday and Thursday night, I’m guessing. Then this week she gave out numbers that’ll supposedly connect you to an editor somewhere in the building (maybe) every time you get pissed off at Nick Coleman, or want to give Katherine Kersten a wet kiss or point out that someone, maybe one of the new (and cheaper) hires on the suburban team managed to re-locate Stillwater to the banks of the Mississippi in the morning’s East Metro edition.

    I don’t like this Barnes-itorial Valentine thing. It isn’t as appealing to me. Obviously the last Readers’ Rep wasn’t actually "representing" readers as much as she was taking bullets for her paymasters, in particular the now beached Par Ridder. And it wasn’t like Mr. Ridder’s myriad problems — a near complete lack of awareness of business ethics being just one — were ever addressed by her. But that was part of the fun. The denial. The sheer spectacle of the Readers’ Rep avoiding the elephant in the room and the frenetic patter of her happy feet scurrying back and forth in search of any vantage point from which to laud the wisdom and bravery of her colleagues was pretty damned amusing. You could read her and think to yourself, "Goddammit, I may have to spend eight hours in a cubicle working for psychotic nerds, but at least I don’t have to sign my name to that!"

    So what we have to tell folks is that, here at the Slaughter, we too wondered about whatever happened to all those letters to the editor about young Par’s ethics problems, and all those calls to the Readers’ Rep asking when she was going to say something about the fiasco, other than, you know, how hard she and other editors were working to report great news in a great paper for a great community. So, we started poking around. We looked into the whereabouts of all those questions and, quite frankly, what we found shocked us.

    We were aware of the various jobs and departments the new Strib — your local, local, hyper-local paper — has outsourced to India, not to mention the way young Par whacked those sweet old ladies who used to answer the telephones. But after scouring the phone logs, we were stunned to see an extended, expensive series of calls between the Star Tribune and a pay phone at a roadhouse called the Dry Dock Bar in Chaffey, Wisconsin.

    That’s right. Wis-f**kin’-consin.

    Home of cheeseheads, the world’s sickest serial killers and turpentine-swilling bear baiters. WTF?

    One call connected us to a gentleman–we’ll call him “Randy”– who confirmed to our satisfaction that for beer money he in fact took over for the Strib’s exhausted Readers’ Rep last summer, about the time Par was taking a dive over in Ramsey County Court. She was strung out and mumbling in the hallways. It seems Randy actually "ghost dictated" the column for months, right up until it was killed off completely. He had some credentials, too: Apparently he was good at handling complaints for the septic company he works at, and his brother built a deer stand for a Strib sales guy hunting up north last fall. Moreover, he said he’d happily do it all again. "That was easy money," he told us. "You ain’t seen pissed until you got a guy with six inches of shit backed up in his basement."

    This time, though, he demanded enough cash up front for a hunting license and a differential flush for his ’89 F-250. We tapped the Rake hedge fund account and called it a deal. We told Randy to get back to work ASAP. Here’s his first report.

    Question: Hi. I’m wondering when you’re going to say anything about the behavior of your publisher, Mr. Ridder? The way I always thought it was supposed to go, a big city newspaper like yours was in the business of digging up dirt on politicians and business scoundrels, uncovering people ripping off the system and making life tougher for the average guy. T
    hen after you reported it, you were supposed to analyze and comment the hell out of it, and then your editorial department was supposed to write a few tut-tutting pieces wondering what in the name of Enron the world was coming to when crass punks like this end up in positions of such influence? But, I gotta tell you, other than the usual perfunctory who, what and where stories, I haven’t read any editorials or anything else really from you. What gives? I mean, if I can’t trust you to be completely candid about the dirt in your own house, why should I trust you to be honest about the dirt in anyone else’s?

    Randy, Your Readers’ Rep: Look dude, I don’t know what you do for a living, but where I come from there isn’t much upside to ripping the boss. Mr. Ridder had a pretty bad summer. You want to pile on, go ahead. But I got a trailer payment, two ATV payments, a bass boat and alimony to cover. I ain’t kickin’ him while he’s down.

    What’s more, the last time I checked, this whole thing boiled down to the opinion of one guy — some judge in St. Paul — against the opinion of a bunch of other guys, namely Mr. Ridder and his lawyers. More importantly, this is an ongoing legal matter. Which means, if I have to spell it out for you, that I can’t say anything until it gets all resolved out, and that’ll only happen when that Dean Singleton guy in Colorado gets handed a fat ass check to shut up and go away. Then, at that point, the whole thing will switch from an ongoing legal matter to "old news" and something we’re "putting behind us" as we "move forward."

    Ka-peach-ay?

    And as for tut-tutting from the editorial department, well, we’re a little under-gunned right now. One little downside to Mr. Ridder’s courageous "right-sizing" campaign, (i.e. "Less for you, but more for Avista Capital Partners"), is that we’ve thinned out about two-thirds of the deadwood up there, and the two who are left have been pretty busy re-thinking their brave but well, you know, hysterical editorials calling for a reliable funding process for roads and bridges. They’ve been told to look for something that doesn’t raise taxes on any of the Avista Capital Partners team or those lawyers at Powerline.

    Question: I am a big, big fan of Katherine Kersten. I can’t tell you how overdue the Red Star was in getting someone in there who understands regular Minnesotans, people who change their own oil, play snowmobile poker, don’t buy all the liberal claptrap about melting glaciers and practice small animal taxidermy in their basements. People like me have had it with these rich, elitist, ivory tower pricks like Nick Coleman constantly taking pot shots at hard-working guys like Carl Pohlad and Bill Cooper. So thanks for Katherine. She is a breath of fresh air.

    But as I read her story titled, "Pariahs on Campus", the one where all these clean cut kids are getting beat over the heads with leftover hippie liberal bullshit about habeas corpses, mal-distribution of wealth (whatever that means) and French ticklers, I kept thinking about that Bethany Dorobiala kid Katherine mentioned. I know her, and I think Katherine’s story would have been a lot stronger if she had mentioned that Bethany is no run of the mill kid. She’s the goddam chairman of Minnesota College Republicans! I mean, come on. Bethany’s one smart little lady. She’s hip to all the liberal tricks. You might even say she is on "high alert" for their crap. I think saying right out front that Bethany was a big cheese with every kid who still loves freedom would have been a knock-out punch for that story. So where are your editors? How come someone didn’t get that kind of important detail in Katherine’s story?

    Randy, Your Readers’ Rep: You make many excellent points. It goes without saying that Katherine, as the only person on our staff that anyone north of 694 can relate to, has a special mission, namely to point out the shocking conflicts of interest and bias … in liberal professors and kids. But in the case of straight-ahead, unbiased kids like Bethany, pointing out details like her titles in some campus club is kind of irrelevant isn’t it? I mean, what else? Do readers need to know if she prefers Pepsi or Coke?

    In fairness to Katherine, who works so very very hard drawing readers’ attention to the often murky terroristic links between the Flying Imams, anarchist bicycle groups and public schools, there’s only so much of her to go around. We agree though that she is a jewel. Kind of like that bracelet I won for my wife out of that machine down at Hole in the Wall in Danbury.

    Question: I hear odd rumors all the time. But this latest one seems pretty unfair. It says that your new editor, what’s her name, Lacey Barnes? wants to blow this frozen popstand and get back on track with an actual newspaper company, and that she’s decided her ticket out of Avista Cap … I mean, Minnesota, is winning a Pulitzer for your coverage of the bridge collapse. I’ve read a lot of your stories and they’re pretty good. But I don’t think they are exactly the New Orleans Times-Picayune covering Katrina. You know what I mean? Don’t you think you need a blockbuster? If so, can you hint at anything that might be in the pipeline?

    Randy, Your Readers’ Rep: Our very courageous editor’s name is Nancy Barnes, and she has not said anything directly to the staff about being pissed off at the McClatchy gang for leaving her marooned in Minnesota while Anders Gyllenhaal is catting around Coconut Grove in Miami. I know I couldn’t blame her if she was a little PO’d. I mean, try finding a decent mojito up here, and by "up here" I mean Minneapolis, not Superior. What’s with all that syrup crap? Besides, as she’s said before, she hates that people here look at her funny when she runs around in her favorite summer short-shorts.

    As for possible Pulitzers, we fully expect that several of our bravest, hardest-working teams will be major contenders for next year’s awards. The team that handles Sid Hartman should be in the running for his series of exclusives with Zygi Wilf, and the courageous editors shaping Kneel Justin’s new Monday media columns, especially the one where he got Frank Vascellaro to break his long, self-imposed silence will also be given serious consideration.

    As far as our bridge coverage goes, we’re working courageously and tenaciously digging for the smoking gun. Obviously we’d love nothing more than for someone out there in the public to come forward with a grainy cellphone photo, or, hell, rank hearsay showing a tax and spend liberal with 10 sticks of dynamite and a plunger next to the bridge last August. But even if it’s just video of Lt. Gov. Carol Molnau jumping up and down on the overloaded bridge deck, we’ll take it. After that the awards will take care of themselves.

    (A favor though, if I could. If you or anyone you know is down in Miami this winter and spot something for sale on the Intracoastal, maybe Fisher or Star Island, please don’t hesitate to drop Nancy a note, at nbarnes@startribune.com. Thanks.)

    Question: I’m 83 years old. Where in hell is the TV Weekly, and what is this cable crap you’re always talking about?

    Randy, Your Readers’ Rep: Our editors made two brave and courageous decisons. One, they killed, I mean they "right-sized" the TV Weekly, and two, they didn’t say anything about it. Cable is a kind of sweater. Up here we go with the dish.

    If you have questions for Randy, the Star Tribune’s Readers’ Rep, please feel free to submit them here at Lambert & Rybak to the Slaughter. (E-mail addresses are visible next to this blog. We’ll make sure they’re passed on … before the big Sunday All You Can Drink NASCAR Happy Hour.)

  • John Hines Out at KTLK

    John Hines’ 17 year-run with Clear Channel and what Clear Channel was before it was Clear Channel ended this morning — a Monday, go figure — when he was told he was being removed from his morning job at KTLK (100.3-FM). Hines was a standard at Clear Channel’s country music K102 until this past March when he shifted over — by his choice — to add a little mainstream professional sheen to ratings-deprived KTLK, an all right-wing talk station.

    Hines shrugged off the move when reached by phone around noon today. "It’s a part of the business. I accept that. They said we’re going in a different direction, and I get that."

    He said his six-month non-compete and six-month severance will tie him over, and until then he will happily entertain offers from other stations in the market. The most obvious of those being KSTP AM 1500, where rumors are swirling about their interest in KFAN’s Dan Barreiro — most likely for afternoon drive, were Barreiro to leave Clear Channel, and were Joe Soucheray agree to earlier tee-times — and where the usual, often clueless "experts" believe KSTP could use help in mornings.

    AM-1500’s program director, Steve Konrad, hadn’t heard about the Hines move when I called. "Hines? Really?" Konrad avoided any direct mention of Barreiro other than to state the obvious. "He’s a talent". On any possible interest in Hines, he said, "A well known, popular host? You always have to be open to someone like that."

    We are awaiting a response to our call to Hines’ boss, Steve Versnick.

    The first question to him being, "What new direction?" KTLK was originally pitched as a 21st century version of WCCO. Almost immediately it took an entirely familiar, hard right-wing turn and has stayed there despite consistently disappointing ratings.

    The hiring of Hines suggested to some that the station, then supervised by regional boss, Mick Anselmo, was beginning an evolution into something more mainstream. Another rumor floating in the wind last week was that Anselmo’s replacement, Mike Crusham, had decided the time had finally come to "blow up" the struggling FM talk experiment, supposedly to go in that more WCCO-like direction, with bona fide news.

    The problem there being that bona fide news would require bona fide reporters out on bona fide streets, something Clear Channel has been unwilling to do until now and, with the entire 1200-station company about to return to private ownership, it seems even less likely to bother with in the future. (Reporters cost money, and separating themselves from Hines’ hefty salary — likely in the $250K range — is an early example of 5% to 8% expense cutting expected across the Clear Channel empire.)

    More likely — another bit of gabble on the grapevine — is moving comparatively cheap Dan Conry into morning drive and dropping yet another (cheap) syndicated act, Glenn Beck, etc, into the 8 to 11 slot.

     

     

     

  • In Defense of Tom Barnard

    RYBAK: Okay, I’ve spent the last three days watching the media have a field day trashing Tom Barnard (mainly) and his KQRS morning show (secondarily) and I’m just not getting it.

    As we’re all well aware, (since it’s been front page news in the Strib and all over TV), the show ran afoul of Minnesota American Indian leaders for remarks made on a recent show about suicides on the Red Lake Indian reservation. Since then, everyone has stepped up to the plate to take a crack at Barnard– the latest being former St. Paul City Councilman Jay Benanav, who raged in a Strib letter to the editor that, "KQRS lets Tom Barnard" get away with blah, blah, blah.

    Hey, Benanav, (who I believe may have an axe to grind with TB), it wasn’t Tom who made the grossly bigoted remark. It was his terminally stupid sidekick Terry Traen, whose painfully uneducated, ill-informed,tone-deaf pronouncements consistently drag down the show. Have you heard her on terrorists? The Middle East? Or religion? Or geography? Or movies? Take your pick.

    By my transcript reading, Barnard tried to diffuse her remarks in as professional a manner as possible. Now everyone’s calling for him to be fired or to quit.

    Still, nobody seems to be thinking about what actually happened in their rush to kick Barnard for — who knows? Remarks he made a decade ago? The fact that he has the second most popular morning show in the country? Because they can shake money out of the mighty Citadel/ABC coffers?

    I may be in a minority, but I’m not alone in feeling like Tommy B is getting a bum deal in this latest dust-up.

    Ron Rosenbaum, who got pistol-whipped on his KSTP 1500 radio show a couple years back, (for quoting a line from Goodfellas that a listener took as a racial slur), was most sympathetic.

    "There’s nothing more painful than to be dragged through the media circus," Ron commiserated. "And in this case, the comment wasn’t even made by him. I’m not a fan of racist comments, but I don’t think Tom did what he’s accused of doing. People just accepted that he did."

    Even you took a shot the other day, Mr. Lambert, by suggesting that his listeners were all bigots. Or most of them. Or the ones who lived up in Jesse Ventura country. I wasn’t really clear.

    I don’t think you can stereotype an audience like that…not when 31 percent of radio listeners in the Twin Cities tune him in every morning. How about this for a theory? You’re driving in your car and want to listen to something in the morning on your old-fashioned, non-satellite-radio enhanced radio. You can listen to music; tune into MPR/KFAI or another public station for news, or you can take your pick of a number of middling talk shows that mix news with girltalk/sportstalk/teentalk/politicaltalk/whatever.

    But what if you just want to be entertained? To have a couple laughs before you get to your day job? That’s when I tune into KQ.

    There, I get weird news stories–many with local angles, one-liners,comedians and yeah, some stupid adolescent humor. I also get interviews with interesting people. Tom’s interview with docu-king Ken Burns was one of the better ones done during his sweep through town.

    LAMBERT: Well … what is that giant puckering sound I hear? You’re going to have to freshen the lipstick a bit after that one.

    I remember Rosenbaum’s experience pretty well. In fact, I remember writing a column for the PiPress defending him … on the basis largely that there was nothing else in his on-air experience that remotely suggested racial exploitation, much less outright racism. Rosenbaum was railroaded, pure and simple.

    Unfortunately for Barnard, his record on this kind of stuff is nowhere near as clean as Ron’s. There’s a pattern here.

    In this particular episode I get the part about Traen riding the stupid bus. (Although, let’s not omit the detail about Tom pitching that not exactly fact-checked line about the rich tribes not giving anything to the poor tribes). But my point is that knuckleheadedness is something Barnard both engenders and exploits.

    Barnard’s a very shrewd operator. He and every other "shock jock" (tired, badly worn phrase, that one), understand that winning the ratings game means playing down, not up to audiences. Sure he can do an intelligent enough interview with everyone from mountain climber Ed Viesturs to Ken Burns. I’ve never said he was stupid. But the popularity of the show rests on a bedrock of adolescent humor — and hell, I laugh at fart jokes — and blue collar antipathies, which occasionally come back to bite.

    As I’ve been explaining to some of the trolls on the comment board,my run out to the bowling alley in Ramsey years ago was prompted by statistics showing that Jesse Ventura pulled the highest percentage of support in the very same area that Barnard is most popular. Interesting. What gives? I wanted to meet these people. I’m not saying there was any great science to it. I could have gone to a church basement dinner and asked the nice ladies spooning up meatballs what they thought of Barnard. They’d probably have a different view of life.But as local watering holes go, the big bowling alley seemed a good place to chat up a reasonably average enough collection of locals.

    And there were plenty of Barnard and Jesse fans to go around. Beyond that, what can I tell you? They said what they said, and more than just a little of it wasn’t exactly Chamber of Commerce quality stuff. But that’s life.

    I saw the Benanav letter in today’s Strib. He might have helped his cause if he had reminded readers how exactly Barnard and he tangled.Benanav was running against Randy Kelly for mayor of St. Paul in ’02. Kelly was Norm Coleman’s guy, and Barnard blistered Benanav steadily all through the last week of the campaign, including election day morning. No one could ever prove the impact of that kind of advertising", but 400 votes (Kelly’s margin of victory) ain’t much.

    But hey, Tommy needs some good lovin’ from somewhere. Knock yourself out.

    RYBAK: You know, I do appreciate the fact that you took a trip up to a bowling alley in Ramsey to do some field research, but I hardly think we should be taking that as scientific fact. First of all, there are no radio ratings that I have ever seen that pinpoint listeners geographically. Where would you get data like that? Does it exist?

    Second, did you visit a bowling alley in South Minneapolis? St.Paul? Is the correlation really to Ramsey..or could it be to bowlers?

    I am absolutely certain that if you searched cars throughout South Minneapolis and socially conscious Edina, you’d find an ENORMOUS numberof radios with KQ set on the dial–and not for the classic rock.

    Tom Barnard’s career here has lasted almost 40 years, and the guy’s not on the fade–he still dominates the ratings. Just as you’ve written some dud columns and I’ve written some lame-ass stories–everyone has their off days. I’ve even gotten facts WRONG (as you mention thatBarnard did). Have you ever gotten a fact wrong?

    My point is that this episode shouldn’t be recorded in the Barnard ledger that the press dutifully tallies up and regurgitates each time he makes the news–it’s one for Terry Traen. That’s all.

    LAMBERT: I’ll dig through my vast collection offloppy discs and find the old, whacked PiPress story, which explained the geographical confluence, and it was as scientific as the Arbitron ratings and radio research ever gets. But I’ll show what a big guy I am and concede this: This latest flare-up doesn’t rise to the level of theSomali or Hmong episodes. What’s more … (all I do is give and give and give) … I’ll also agree that Barnard takes more heat by virtue of being by far the biggest dog in town.

    But as I’ve said, I’m not accusing the guy of stupidity. He knows exactly what he’s doing, and it is a calculated shtick — that after all this time is second nature to him. His talent is in playing it so well. A little up-scale for them with book learnin’ and plenty of down-scale for the kids in the back of the class. If various interest groups cared what Jason Lewis or Bob Davis were saying they’d probably have as good if not better reasons to go after them. But those guys can only dream of an audience the size of Barnard’s.

    We’re talking about this at all because the guy — for better and for worse — is a bona fide cultural icon in Minnesota, every bit as big (hell, bigger ) than WCCO’s Boone & Erickson in their day. If the license Barnard exercises to win and hold a huge audience is the issue here — and that certainly is what interests me most — I think we can agree that it says something, something real and true about modern Minnesota.

    Maybe you’re on to something after all. Maybe we should thank Tommy for holding up a fog-free mirror to the state of our sensibilities.There’s no gooey gloss on his shtick. Real, tenured cultural anthropologists — as opposed to amateurs like us — can use "The Appeal of Tommy B" as a damned good object lesson.

    But hey, nice going. I’m betting the boy hasn’t gotten that warm a squeeze in a long time.

  • This Saturday's Big Local Media Forum

    The good folks at the Twin Cities Media Alliance — best known for their work producing Twin Cities Daily Planet — (click here for schedule and registration info) are staging a day-long event this Saturday at the Central Library
    in downtown Minneapolis. Major next generation publishers and
    journalists will be in attendance. While some of us may look like
    critters out of a previous generation, if you’re interested in what is
    going down in journalism and what is coming next in terms of on-line
    newspapers — like MinnPost.com and The Daily Mole, both mentioned here numerous times — you’ll find this worth your time. Or, you can always just heckle.

    Robert McChesney,
    U of Illinois professor and author of the excellent book, Rich Media,
    Poor Democracy    , will deliver the keynote speech at around 10:50 AM.
    (The event runs from 9AM to 3 PM, and is free but you must register if you want a box lunch.)

    Immediately prior to McChesney’s talk, a panel titled "The Future of
    News: What Role for Journalists?" will include local heavyweights Joel
    Kramer, (former Strib editor and publisher, now heading up MinnPost), Steve Perry (former City Pages editor, leading The Daily Mole, Eric Black, (former Strib writer now publishing at ericblackink.com,
    Matt Thompson, the Strib’s deputy editor for interactive content, and,
    for comic effect, yours truly. The panel will be moderated by veteran
    writer/poet Rich Broderick, who blogs at The Daily Planet
    .

    RYBAK: Didn’t you just tell me to re-apply lipstick after puckering
    up to a subject in another post. Back at you, Hot Lips…..

  • Is Ben Tracy leaving WCCO? Good Question!

    Short
    answer: yes. This is one of the least surprising announcements in local
    TV circles, as Tracy’s departure was widely anticipated in the wake of
    his close friend Jeff Kiernan’s departure as ‘CCO news director. It was
    just a question of whether he’d follow Kiernan, or jump up to network
    news.

    Here’s General Manager Susan Adams Loyd’s memo to staff (which feels more informal than the press release):

    In just a few minutes, you will be getting a copy of a press release
    regarding Ben Tracy, and I wanted to give you a few minutes heads-up
    about some news related to him. Ben will be joining CBS News in January
    as a network correspondent where he will report for the CBS Early Show
    and the CBS Evening News with Katie Couric and will be based out of Los
    Angeles.

    Of course we will miss Ben very much, but I hope you feel like I do
    in that this is a great opportunity for him. He is an example of the
    kind of talented people that work here at WCCO. I am not surprised when
    other big stations and the networks call upon our folks for that next
    step. He is hard worker, and the caliber of his reporting has been
    recognized by our viewers over his tenure. Fortunately, because Ben
    will be with CBS, they will continue to enjoy his work.

     

    Ben has agreed to stay through the November book and into December,
    his last day being December 16. Although the process has not been
    initiated yet to find Ben’s replacement, we do plan at this time to
    continue Good Question in some format and fashion.

  • Strib's Hage to join Klobuchar

    In
    what can safely be called a HUGE blow to the Star Tribune’s already
    shaken editorial staff, Dave Hage announced today that he is leaving
    the paper to join Sen. Amy Klobuchar’s staff as communications director.
    Office scuttlebutt holds that newsroom editor D.J. Tice will be tapped
    to replace Hage. That makes sense: Doug Tice provided the conservative
    voice for the Pioneer Press editorial pages when he worked there, and
    has faced some criticism for allegedly bringing that bent into the
    Strib newsroom. Moving him back to the opinion pages would solve that
    situation, plus give publisher Chris Harte the kind of editorial writer
    he appears to be seeking.

     

    Here’s the memo from Scott Gillespie:

    Newsroom staff: During almost 30 years in journalism, Dave Hage has
    been passionate about public service journalism – first as a local news
    reporter, then as a national magazine writer and more recently as a
    member of the Star Tribune’s editorial board.

    Now he’s decided to put that passion to work in politics and government as communications director for Sen. Amy Klobuchar.

    To say we’ll miss Dave’s contributions to the Star Tribune and
    journalism in Minnesota is an understatement. He’s one of the best in
    the profession and has been a tremendous contributor to the newspaper,
    both in News and Editorial. He’s an award-winning journalist who has
    always been humble about his own work while supporting and praising the
    efforts of his colleagues on the third floor.

    Many of you know Dave quite well, but here’s some background for those who might not have worked with him over the years:

    Dave joined the Star Tribune in 1979 as a suburban reporter for the
    Community section, then wrote about labor, business and the economy
    from 1981 to 1991. From 1991 to 1995 he was an economics correspondent
    for U.S. News & World Report in Washington.

    He returned to the Star Tribune as an editorial writer in 1995 and
    has written expertly on a range of subjects including Minnesota’s
    economy, health care, aviation, poverty and agriculture. He’s also
    written two books, No Retreat, No Surrender, a chronicle of the
    meatpackers’ strike at Hormel, co-written with our own Paul Klauda; and Reforming Welfare by Rewarding Work, published by the University of
    Minnesota Press in 2004.

    In his new job, Dave will divide his time between Washington and the Twin Cities.

    I know you’ll join me in wishing Dave and his family all the best.

  • Fun With Radio Ratings

    In response to thunderous demand for radio ratings statistics — a task I find strangely titillating — the Slaughter offers these snapshots of what Twin Cities listeners say they were tuned to over the past summer.

    The disclaimer I will always issue is that as they are currently handled, by volunteers filling in written diaries, the Arbitrons have about as much scientific validity as The Flat Earth Society. The game will change dramatically when the so-called Portable People Meters, devices that accurately record what people are actually listening to, as opposed to what they remember, or prefer to think they were listening to, hits this market. But until then, the radio industry lives and dies by these things, and the patterns — even with constantly shifting volunteers — are pretty static.

    Here are the rankings for the top 15 local commercial stations, among adult listeners 25-54.

    STATION…..2006…….2007

    KQRS ………….11.1…….11.0
    KS95……………5.9……..7.0
    K102……………9.2……..6.7
    JACK……………5.0……..5.8
    Cities97………..4.3……..5.3
    WLTE……………4.6……..5.1
    93X…………….4.8……..4.8
    (Tie)KOOL……….3.1……..3.8
    (Tie)KSTP-AM…….3.4……..3.8
    KDWB……………3.0……..3.7
    KFAN……………3.5……..3.3
    WCCO……………4.7……..2.9
    KTTB……………2.9……..2.0
    KTLK……………2.3……..1.9
    KMNV(Spanish)……0.5……..1.5
    (Tie)FM107………1.5……..1.3
    (Tie)BOB106……..1.4……..1.3
    LOVE-FM…………1.4……..1.2
    (Tie)Air America…0.6……..0.7
    (Tie)The Patriot…1.2……..0.7

    The story here and in other demographic breakouts is that “free form” JACK-FM did very well over the summer, as did KS95, with Cities97, WLTE and KOOL108 bouncing back from a year ago

    On the downside, K102, Twins-less WCCO and The Patriot took tough slides in audience levels. Speaking of the Twins though, KSTP-AM can’t be thrilled that their expensive “partnership” with the Twinkies netted them only a meager 0.4 increase in adult listeners. That ain’t good.

    But money is made in drive time. Here are some numbers for morning drive (6 to 10 AM), again, adults 25-54 (not every station’s target demo, but what the hell?) Prominent hosts listed.

    STATION … AUDIENCE SHARE
    KQRS ……..22.9 (Barnard)
    KS95……….9.3 (Greg & Cheryl)
    KDWB……….5.4 (Dave Ryan)
    93X………..5.4
    K102……….5.1
    WCCO……….4.4 (Dave Lee)
    WLTE……….4.1
    Cities97……4.0 (Turner & Valsvik)
    JACK……….3.9
    KFAN……….2.8 (Morris/PA and Dubay)
    KOOL108…….2.1
    AM1500……..2.0 (Willie & Jay/Davis)
    LOVE……….1.3
    KTTB……….1.2
    FM107………1.2 (Punnetts/Burger)
    BOB………..1.2
    KMNV……….1.2
    The Patriot…1.1 (Bennett/Ingraham)
    KTLK……….1.0 (Hines/Conry)
    AirAmerica….0.5 (Press/Miller)

    And here are the adults 25-54 numbers for afternoon drive, (3-7 p.m.) I’ve included the talk show hosts for the period as well.

    STATION AUDIENCE SHARE

    KS95…..8.3
    K102…..7.4
    KQRS…..6.6
    JACK…..6.2
    Cities97.5.5
    93X……5.4
    AM1500…5.3 (Soucheray/Thomas)
    KOOL108..4.4
    WLTE…..4.4
    KFAN…..4.0 (Hartman/Barreiro)
    KDWB…..3.4
    WCCO…..3.0 (Shelby)
    KTTB…..2.5
    KTLK…..2.3 (Hannity/Lewis)
    FM107….2.2 (Lori & Julia)
    LOVE…..1.7
    BOB……1.4
    KMNV…..0.9
    AirAm….0.8 (Hartmann/Heaney)
    Patriot..0.5 (Medved/Hewitt)

    I’ll update this when I get my hands on numbers — usually only the broad, “All Listeners 12+” category — for the three Minnesota Public Radio stations.