Tag: media

My recent post on KSTP-TV’s news “package”, which included covering a one-man protest against the City of St. Louis Park’s showing of, “An Inconvenient Truth” followed by Al Gore’s appearance before House and Senate Committees discussing global climate change, brought out the usual suspects making the usual claims.

There is this …

“You are a joke, Brian. The very thought that someone would disagree with the global warming doctrine being shoved down our throats makes you convulse with outrage. You’re pathetic.

“What is it about other viewpoints that angers you so?

“By the way…the movie is entitled “The Great Global Warming Swindle”. You didn’t bother to see it, I surmise.”

And …

“Nice to know you will wait to form an opinion about the “The Great Global Warming Swindle” until you see it. Otherwise, “flatly asserting” that it is “crackpot” would really be stupid, especially after hitting the Elder on the same point.

“Incidentally, I’ve seen “No Inconvenient Context” twice and I can flatly assert that it is a partisan piece of trash that randomly pulls events together and calls them global warming. It is an embarrassment to science, which even scientists who agree with Gore on the core principle will admit.

“You oughta widen your mind and thus your experience Lambert.”

As I’ve said before elsewhere, this “debate” over whether global climate change is occurring is a settled issue, at least for those who value science over the gamesmanship of partisan rhetoric. It is happening. How “global warming” became yet another point of left-right conflict, I’m not sure. But I’m guessing the mere presence of Al Gore was sufficient to light up the usual right-wing echo chamber/spin machine that supplies so many of these “correspondents” with their templated sources, talking points and arguments.

In the context of responsible journalism, what I’ve been asking of the legitimate press is this: “When does the science and gravity of this particular issue — not to mention the common sense of it — rise sufficiently high so as to obviate the “requirement” of equal, opposite “balance”? On the one hand you have here overwhelming consensus among the people who have devoted the most time to researching the problem, while on the other you have — if you care to scratch the surface at all — mangled science at best, (if any at all), and constant, pervasive ideological partisanship.

Point being: When do TV stations and newspapers who so regularly trumpet their “accuracy” and “leadership” say, “Case closed. One professor in Winnipeg, one ill-informed Senator in Congress and one wingnut blogger in a basement is no longer sufficient to balance out the staggering preponderance of science supporting the prevailing view.” Or, conversely, “When does our professional, journalistic responsibility require us to stop giving partisans with such reckless disregard for accuracy equal time on our air or in our pages?”

This isn’t a debate over the 2000 election, WMD in Iraq or any of half dozen other ready recent examples of gross partisan “gaming”. This one is even more important, in that effects the entire planet.

I’m not going to “debate” my commenters, because it really is important to marginalize them into insignificance. If their entire rationale for living is shrieking “fraud” at anything and everything said by anyone who may have voted Democratic, submitted a report to the U.N. or had lunch in a French restaurant what’s the point in interaction? Like a belligerent drunk at the end of the bar or some spittle-flecked street corner prophet, the best course of action is a simple, “Sorry for your loss, pal”, and move on.

But for the record, while I was being flippantly dismissive about the global warming documentary the wingnut blogger is demanding St. Louis Park play as “balance” for its’ citizens, I have in fact seen the film. (The precise title is, “The Great Global Warming Swindle”, and you can watch it here if you’ve got 73 minutes you don’t mind never getting back.)

But on the charge of “crackpot” — (my capsule review) — I encourage the more sober-minded and critical-minded to check out this letter to The Independent newspaper in Britain from Prof. Carl Wunsch of MIT, who agreed to be interviewed for a film vastly different than what was eventually shown. Prof. Wunsch is, as you can see, not a happy camper, and, I suspect, inclined to seek full and proper redress from Britain’s “edgy” Channel 4.

For a quick primer on the producer’s background I recommend this and this . Do note his pattern of misleading interview subjects and distortive editing … so severe Channel 4 was forced to make a public apology after his previous film … the one where he declared modern environmentalists to be the true heirs to 20th century Nazis. Also note that the scientists he populates his film with are almost all linked to neo-conservative think tanks which have in turn been shown to receive funding from major oil interests.

It is hard to know what among all the distortions is most egregious, but the claim that liberals are using global warming to deprive the Third World of the opportunity to achieve affluence via fossil fuels is the sort of thing that leaves you dizzy and speechless. The oil economy is doing great things for the Third World. Wouldn’t want them switching over to renewable energy anytime soon.

My underlying point about KSTP-TV’s completely routine global warming “package” is that it representative of a timidity that borders on cowardice. In KSTP’s case it is more a fear of ownership since reporters and managers are well aware that their boss, Stanley S. Hubbard, regards global warming as hokum. But elsewhere in the Twin Cities news marketplace, saying nothing whatsoever about climate change, or “balancing” anything said “by others” with … a wingnut blogger or some transparent knucklehead like Oklahoma Sen. James Inhofe … is, let’s be honest, a way of avoiding an avalanche of snarling e-mail and phone calls from the types of fevered reactionaries quoted above.

THAT ain’t community service, it ain’t leadership and, IMHO, it ain’t responsible journalism.

I won’t bore you with another of my tales of woe, but I can relate to this one. The Philadelphia Inquirer, formerly owned by Knight-Ridder, is whacking the media column written by Gail Shister and directing her toward more “pop culture television features”. This can’t be seen as anything other than, A. Some kind of vendetta-driven ploy to get Shister to leave out of exasperation, or B. Further proof that the modern newspaper model has no tolerance for actual news about the news/entertainment industry.

Was I once told, “No one cares about all that CNN stuff you write about.” Yes. Did I once ask, sarcastically, if they’d rather I write about, “The twelve hottest kisses on MTV?” Uh-huh. Did in fact my bosses respond to that last one with an enthusiastic, lip-smacking, “Yeeesssssss!!!!!” Yup, again.

But was I ever as good a reporter as Gail Shister? No way. Gail is a battering ram. No one eludes her. If you gathered parts to assemble the best possible media industry reporter you end up with Gail. Every national anchor knows her by her first name and, in my judgment, respects her. Which is different from “liking” her, may I remind you.

But almost every second-tier and lower paper is stepping back from serious coverage of modern electronic media. This despite what I was always told that readers showed high interest in the goings on at local TV stations and elsewhere. For reader research purposes, TV coverage is often lumped under “gossip”, which is then interchangeable with nattery celebrities, Paris Hilton and Tom Cruise, none of which is under-covered everywhere else.

My guess is Shister will soon get a call from some “Gawker” like site. My curiosity will be if the Inquirer does the ethical thing and offers her a buy-out.

OK, it was funny that Par Ridder’s staff memo about graphics guru Monica Moses leaving the Star Tribune appeared on Jim Romenesko’s site before it was sent out to the paper’s employees. But hey, maybe we should see that as a concession to harsh reality. In a prolonged information vacuum, Ridder must know that his (new) staff long ago learned to search outside the building for the first and final words about their fate.

But what gets the skeptical dogs’ heads shaking is Ridder, a sales guy, trying to slide the old “readership increase” babble passed a group of professional skeptics, people who really do deserve to be fired if they ever fall for sleight-of-hand jargon as lame as that.

As EVERYONE who works in newspapers today knows, readership has no monetary value. Increased “readership” is impossible to prove. On the other hand, you can prove circulation, which is why the Star Tribune’s advertisers buy based on paid circulation numbers, not some fanciful, in-the-best-of-all-possible-worlds guess-timate.

But there was young Par, still getting his bearings after abandoning the Pioneer Press for a sturdier vessel, trying to impress his ever more skeptical staff that Ms. Moses’ seven-figure, umpteen month redesign of the Star Tribune, which debuted to a shrug, at best, in October of ’05 … increased readership.

For the record, using numbers from the Audit Bureau of Circulation and published in the Star Tribune, circulation has DECLINED since the redesign. The Sunday edition is every paper’s cash cow. In 2004 the Sunday Strib had a circulation of 671,275. In 2005 it was 655,198. By 2006 it had dropped to 596,333.

Ridder would have his employees believe that despite selling far fewer papers MORE people were reading them. If you believe that I’ve got an ’83 Yugo with a salvage title that I’m telling you is one hot chick magnet.

I’m not arguing that the fall off that last cliff was Moses’ fault, only that a new boss with shaky credibility — Ridder’s principal claim to competence is his proven ability to supervise downsizing and decontenting — does himself no favors with a restless, anxious staff like the Strib’s by serving up stale, transparent bullshit.

So I’m watching “Lost” last night, the only network series I make an “appointment” to catch every week, what with all the time I’ve committed to blowing spit wads at Bill O’Reilly. Last night was a big episode. The back story to John Locke, who was crippled and wheel-chair bound until crashing on the island. And I stuck with it pretty good even through ABC’s usual blizzard of commercial breaks, some long enough to walk the dog, wash the car, re-paint the basement and fix a five course snack. (And they wonder why viewership is dropping?)

Checking back in the room during one of these marathons to see if programming had resumed, I caught either a crawl or a voiced teaser, can’t remember which, from the KSTP, Channel 5, Eyewitness news room. Something about “Al Gore”, “controversial” and “global warming”.

The teaser worked. Knowing KSTP is, shall we say, “challenged” on the notion of global climate change, i.e. The Hubbards don’t believe in it, I knew I’d have to stay tuned to see the twist KSTP would put on an Al Gore Capitol Hill performance. I was not disappointed.

So “Lost” signs off and we begin the usual Eyewitness News hit parade of mayhem; near abductions of innocent children, terrified neighborhoods, murders, fear, attempted murders, plagues of venomous snakes, (I’m making that up), and on and on making the Twin Cities sound worse than Al Anbar province until we finally get to reporter Tim Sherno(*) in St. Louis Park. Sherno has a story about one wingnut protesting the city’s plan to show, “An Inconvenient Truth” at some civic venue. The guy is thumping the “teach both sides” argument. You know, like the “theory” of evolution vs. creationism, the “theory” of gravity vs. non-gravity, etc. He is one guy in a basement vs. City Hall — but Eyewitness News smells news and believes in balance. Al Gore movie? A guy in a basement complaining about it. Equal time. That’s, uh, journalism.

To Sherno’s credit he inserts a clip of the crackpot, “Global Warming is a Fraud”, (not exact title), movie the wingnut wants St. Louis Park to show … as balance. He also points out that … no surprise here … the winger hasn’t bothered to see, “An Inconvenient Truth”, (yet flatly asserts it is partisan, politically motivated, yadda yadda, insert the usual talking points).

With that as a set-up Cyndy Brucato and Leah McClean intro the Al Gore-before-Congress clip, which has Gore in a chair at a Senate hearing with an unidentified legislator — actually renown bonehead, James Inhofe of Oklahoma — the Senate’s version of a basement dwelling wingnut telling Gore he’s just plain wrong and Gore responding with the analogy of the “planet having a fever”. And that’s enough of that. End of clip. A balanced report. One “theory” refuted in the same breath by one person who says it ain’t so. Another bright night for TV journalism … now over to Dave Dahl. “And say Dave, didn’t it snow a couple weeks ago? So much for all that global warming talk, huh? Ho, ho, ho.”

Now, in modern, culturally and intellectually fragmented America, where the thinking of the late Nebraska Senator Roman Hruska has born fruit and every group really can have its own set of facts, KSTP is doing a tremendous service to those who don’t want to know much or be sold this global warming-Al Gore-liberal-hoax bill of goods. (Hruska is the man who once argued that mediocre lawyers, people and judges deserved representation from a mediocre supreme court justice, like Nixon nominee, Harold Carswell).

Of course if you’re “one of those” who watch news to learn more than you already know, you are probably more inclined to accept the findings of the vast preponderance of pedigreed climatologists as opposed to a wingnut or one lunk-headed Senator. If you are, the KSTP version of journalism probably seems a little thin and suspect … which might explain the station’s consistently miserable ratings.

A wingnut in a basement and a bite-for-bite stand-off between a guy who has studied the issue deeply and one who hasn’t … and that folks is your community service for tonight.

Not that KSTP was ever in the market for fully-fleshed report on the face off between Gore and the few remaining Congressional Flat Earthers, but it was, by Dana Milbank’s account in the Washington Post’s video section, a lot more interesting and significantly different than KSTP represented it.

* Because he is lawyered to the teeth, I’m required to credit Sherno with the title of this blog each and every time I mention his name.

You can only shake your head in dismayed amazement at the over-the-top-and-into-the-stratosphere reaction to Garrison Keillor’s March 14 Salon column. I only read the thing today, a week after the fact and a week after the eruption of anger from … and lets be careful here … a certain portion of the gay community, abetted and egged on, ironically enough by a smattering of gleeful righties always eager to push the “liberals do it too” hypocrisy argument.

In what was CLEARLY a standard issue, garden variety piece of Keillor satire basically riffing on the diminished roles of adults/parents in modern America’s child-oriented culture he spends a couple graphs batting around the cliched image of “flamboyant” gay parents adding to the increasingly complex family trees of 21st century families. Not only was it a friggin’ joke, but it was a variation on a thoroughly familiar joke I at least have seen thousands of times in movies and on TV. Flamboyant gays. Sardonic. Amusing … apparently not.

Of all people, Dan Savage, the normally very funny gay columnist/blogger jumped on the Keillor-is-a-bigot train, mugged the engineer, tore out of the station and has been driving it across the country all week blowing the whistle and flashing the lights. Check out the venom in his “comments” section for an object lesson in grim vituperation. One word that comes to mind as I scroll through it is, “Astonishing.”

A couple days later Keillor issued an apology in which he explained that in his world of literati and artists the type of satire he employed in Salon is well understood and accepted. I know very little about Keillor’s real world salon mates, but based on the show biz types I’ve met and hung around over the years that seems entirely accurate. Show biz is always trading in stereotypes for drama and comedy. The trick is in the tone and the performer, and Keillor long ago proved himself adept at both, if you care to actually read or listen.

In Keillor’s case I’m here to argue that as much as any public figure in the state he should be indemnified against charges of “bigotry” and homophobia. I don’t consider myself a big fan. I don’t make appointments with the radio show, but somehow I hear it fairly often. (How often does MPR re-run that thing?) We’re certainly not close. (Last time I checked I think Keillor was pissed at me for calling around checking about some minor personnel flap at Prairie Home Companion.) But, come on, people, over his career, through the guiding sensibility of his radio show, novels and columns and his outside work on behalf of hundreds of progressive candidates and causes the guy has demonstrated as full a commitment to building fair-mindedness into government and public institutions as any local celebrity I can think of. Put another way, he has walked the walk. Have you?

The newest theme in Keillor-ripping, post-apology, is the charge that he explained his satire on the basis that, “some of his best friends are gay”, which I’m willing to bet in his case is actually true. But the real point of cultural curiosity here … in this blog … isn’t Keillor at all, but the hair-trigger on the knee-jerk of his critics.

From my time in the media I can tell you there is a compulsive quality in the need of some people … of all races, persuasions, ideologies and genders … to achieve and display maximum indignation and pity-worthy personal offense in the shortest possible period of time, which is to say usually before they read something twice or stop and ask themselves, “Is this a joke?”

We see the commercial pay-off to instantaneous public indignation every day on cable TV and talk radio. Get angry! Get the viewers angry! Its an expression of passion! Do it well every day and make millions! Believe me, this exhausting bit has seeped into the citizen/consumer culture. But no matter what the level of commerce, the 0-to-60 indignation shtick requires a steady supply of enemies, old and new. In this case Garrison Keillor gets the casting call. Too bad about that. But to feed the indignation beast you occasionally have to vilify people who not only are fundamentally sympathetic to the cause you’re so incensed over, but very likely have devoted a higher percentage of their free hours to advancing that cause than you have.

Another theme running through comments to Keillor on the Prairie Home website is that he doesn’t fully understand the pain of being gay. And that too is indisputably true. Not to go totally Oprah here, but which of us ever fully appreciates another person’s pain? My folks taught me the best you can hope for is a friend who is there to help when you really need him/her, and with whom you’ve achieved enough comfort to trade back and forth the real work of buffering the bullshit and real dipshits of life with, you know, a little humor.

Bottom line: Your friends aren’t you, exactly, but know the difference between them and your real problems.

“Spot” questions the fanged female …

“Brian,

I do enjoy your blog; you obviously know a lot about the media scene in the Twins. However, Spot has to question your choice of a female lion as your avatar for the blog.”

Spot my man/(gal?). Ask yourself the fundamental question I ask myself every day. Is there anything more fearsome than a female intent on bloody vengeance? Then, by extension, is there any creature you’d rather model yourself on if you aspired to the status of supreme predator?

I am wondering if I should call The Rake graphics department and request more blood.

Great minds thinking alike, Pt. #38 … This “comment” came literally minutes after I read the piece in question.

“Any thoughts on Kate Parry’s pretty extraordinary column on how Strib editors either:

“A. Dumb down NYT stories for Strib readers, or
“B. Improve NYT stories for Strib readers.

“Depends on how you look at it, I suppose. But in general, watching Perry try to explain that cutting “12 inches” out of a story (god forbid, a story “run long,” as Parry puts it) is actually a good thing because it gets rid of all of that pesky “background and details.”

“There’s been a lot of whining and crying about the Strib’s new owners and how they’re going to potentially gut the paper. Fair enough. But I don’t think that there’s been near enough whining and crying from readers and journalists-who-should-know-better about how current Strib staff (and I’m not just talking about high-ranking editors, either) are just as culpable in destroying its journalistic credibility, mainly via dumb acts like “improving” NYT stories.”

I have no idea who the “commenter” is, but something tells me he/she has a working knowledge of the editing practices at America’s second-tier newspapers.

Parry’s column, available here is fairly typical Company Ombudsman-speak. Everything the company does is reasonable and thorough and beyond reproach. All decisions are made with intention of providing better information to Star Tribune readers, everyone involved works extraordinarily hard, (editors in these reports are always “scrambling” over last minute shifts in news flow, etc.).

But yeah, the idea of the hard-working Strib wire editors, (several of whom, like Parry, are Pioneer Press refugees), cleaning up, toning down, editing out and plugging in better copy than the New York Times original — especially on something like this US Attorneys scandal — smacks of the ever so slightly of professional hubris. (“Really. You know better?”)

Not that the Times is all-knowing and infallible, mind you, (we all remember Judy Miller, right?), or that new, tastier items aren’t available from other sources. But 95 times out of 100, I’m just fine with reading THE ENTIRE Times reporting job on a story like this … which is why I have the Times’ lead stories e-mailed to me every morning, and why I buy the paper version two-three times a week. (I subscribe to the Wall St. Journal, because I really want to know when to roll my hedge fund winnings.) Speaking for myself, I don’t need the Strib’s truncated, re-arranged version of these stories at all. In most cases I’ve read it all the day before … in its’ entirety.

But then, they’re not publishing the Star Tribune for me.

What’s ironic here of course is that the Strib cuts and pastes dozens of New York Times stories a week because it long ago stopped pretending to regularly cover national and international events as part of its’ own personal mission. They’ve farmed out all that fundamental, big-story action.

But then, because of its constricted newshole, it compounds the problem by retreating even further. By slicing and dicing the work of news organizations that are still devoting resources to national/international coverage the paper isn’t even providing the full-service of the best aggregator websites/internet competition.

Put another way, this repackaging and compacting, (and based on experience I can assure you these stories rarely if ever INCREASE in length … shorter is always better), just gives voracious news consumers — once thought to be every paper’s most loyal customers — another reason to seek the original reporting at its’ source.

But then, I suspect the Strib wire desk isn’t cutting this stuff up for its “voracious” readers, if you know what I mean. At the risk of sounding wholly elitist, there is a significant difference in the Times’ and Star Tribune’s view of their target audience.

Here is a comment from reader Dave on yesterday’s post about blogs leading the mainstream press to the US Attorney’s story …

“Brian I agree with you that stories are missed by the mainstream press and also agree that this is a worthwhile topic for discussion. But you owe your readers a small disclosure on your source.

“The Center for American Progress is a left-leaning group with seed money from George Soros. Of course any opinions from them will be anti-Bush and in complete agreement with the Dems.

“I tend to be moderate, and have my own issues with the Bush administration. The danger of the blogsphere is exactly what you just did, you did not describe your source. You made is sound like fact when your source has their own bias.

“I have no problem at all with your own left-leaning opinion and take on topics. I enjoy reading your thoughts. But do your readers a favor and give a little background on your sources.

“What would be an interesting topic is the mix of politics and justice. We all know that presidents nominate supreme court justices based on their political leanings. I wouldn’t be surprised if the same thing happened with the Attorney General’s staff throughout history. That makes for an interesting discussion and debate.”

First, let me say, Dave, that I appreciate the civil tone. It would be nice, not to mention more productive, if the various sides in ideological disputes could always interact like adults instead of barroom brawlers. So, thanks.

But while, yes, I could (and maybe should) have identified Eric Alterman and the Center for American Progress as a “left of center columnist for a left of center think tank as well as the left of center magazine, The Nation”, and Josh Marshall’s “TPM Muckraker” as a “left of center news blog” and the Project for Excellence in Journalism as, “a non-partisan, non-ideological and non-political media research organization funded by the Pew Charitable Trusts”, I consciously short-circuited all the descriptors and qualifiers because my point was basically that a certain prominent blog, (Marshall’s TPM Muckraker), had persisted mightily, done its own reportorial footwork in places and succeeded in pushing the commercialized mainstream press to recognize and cover a story of far greater relevance than Anna Nicole Smith, Britney Spears, etc.

Now, okay, Dave, you got me on me, a proud liberal, patting fellow travellers like Alterman and Marshall on the back for their insights and hard work. “My team” scored. But for the record, back last spring when Michael Brodkorb of MinnesotaDemocratsExposed.com was dropping a series of “scoops” about Keith Ellison I … grudgingly … complimented him on his work. And that was to his face and on the public airwaves.

Do I think this US Attorneys matter is a far bigger fish than Ellison’s parking tickets/messy paperwork? You bet I do. And I defy anyone to make the case it isn’t. Never the less, Brodkorb did the footwork, (or had it dropped on him … and that counts), and the mainstream press piled on afterwards. In the end the public decided, resoundingly, that they didn’t much give a damn about Ellison’s parking tickets. But they at least had information on which to base their judgment.

I’ll grant you the obvious that Alterman and Marshall are no fans of the Bush administration. But neither are they particularly star struck by the big foot mainstream media. Pick three or four of their most recent columns or postings and decide how badly the allegedly liberally-biased press is under-performing in their estimation.

More to the point, the fact that they are partisans, in the same way Brodkorb is a partisan, doesn’t automatically render their information inaccurate. What is true is true. Whether it is George Soros or Richard Scaife throwing money into the budget, all that should matter is whether the information is true. (I’ll take Soros’ record on that count over Scaife’s every day of the week.)

I should add, that IMHO, the public’s ability to assess truth as it is presented by the mainstream press has been seriously clouded by hyper-partisan performers who incessantly accuse the NBCs and Star Tribunes of the world of sloppiness and “bias” while offering only the quintessence of commercialized, bowdlerized information themselves. By that of course I mean the crowd that will say anything and pander to any degree of ignorance to make another buck.

Alterman and Marshall are not playing the Hugh Hewitt-Sean Hannity agitator-entertainer game. Facts are critical to their credibility, and part of being a discerning citizen/news consumer is developing the ability to concede a fact regardless of who provides it.

As for the Supreme Court Justices point. Various anything-for-a-buck
bloviators are trying to push the argument that “everyone replaces US Attorneys”. This is a conscious smokescreen. Aka: bullshit. As Marshall has been reporting for some time, and as the mainstream press is now confirming and adding to its reporting, the idea of flushing out eight US Attorneys in one fell swoop … in mid-administration … , (much less all 93), is completely and totally unprecedented. And that is a fact.

Eric Alterman offers a valuable, and as far as I can tell, entirely accurate timeline of reporting on the U.S. Attorneys scandal. His essential point being that this fascinating episode of ham-fisted politicizing would have been ignored, as so many other stories have been, were it not for REPORTING work done by prominent blogs, principally Josh Marshall’s TPM Muckraker.

Reading this as I slog through the Project for Excellence in Journalism’s dispiriting 2007 State of the Press report, I’m reminded again of commercialized news’ numerous self-inflicted wounds. Forget Anna Nicole Smith — if you can — the sheer volume of inconsequential, excuse me, “repetitively inconsequential” news plugged into both newspapers and TV as a marketing strategy is a fundamental factor in the declining appeal of that style of mainstream journalism. Put another way, all of us so-called “busy news consumers” have less and less time for junk information and are hungrily searching for reliable sources of information that is relevant to something other than small talk with a barista. Hence the growth in public radio.

There is no shortage of junk information. In modern American culture you acquire knowledge of Anna Nicole and Britney’s dysfunction by osmosis, like a virus. Its appearance in the mainstream press as anything other than an analysis of a cultural phenomenon is properly taken as signs of desperation and lack of imagination. And the influence of otherwise serious news venues decreases in moments when someone contrasts the sluggish response to something as valid, though complex, as the US Attorney’s story to what editors and news directors regarded instead as a more palatable mix of topics.

The headline says it all. The Twin Cities’ omnipresent food guru is a freakin’ master of self-promotion.