So this time it’s the Native Americans going after Tom Barnard. I’ll watch with amusement to see if Clyde Bellecourt can extract even an ounce of pain from the Twin Cities’ most dominant entertainer (and, in my opinion, most potent "new media" political pundit). But based on historical precedent, I’m be betting heavily that Barnard … Read more
It was purely coincidental. I got an e-mail as I was surfing through cable coverage of the California wildfires and caught … Fox News … asking the rhetorical and self-serving question: Might “terrorism” be behind the multiple infernos? They had no evidence of course. No more reason to shout “terrorism!?” than I do for that … Read more
RYBAK: It’s so hard to keep up with the folks on DishZilla C.J.’s shit list: it just keeps growing all the time. This week she trashed respected KSTP reporter Bob McNaney–not really for remarks he made at the Midwest Emmys, as she wrote in her column– but because he never makes remarks to the Strib … Read more
RYBAK: Word trickling out of Kenan Aksoz’s Metropolitan Media Group in Bloomington is that its newly launched RADIO magazine has encountered some static after just two issues. Kenan told me Tuesday that RADIO, which is jointly owned by Metropolitan and the radio marketing group Marketing Architects, “will be put on hold while we assess the … Read more
(UPDATED) Okay, okay…enough with the ranting about fake presidential candidates, weathercasters and global warming. Media news (of sorts) transpired over the weekend — the annual Upper Midwest Emmy Awards — and I’m here to break up the six-pages of winners into some edible doses for y’all. Lambert, who finds award-tallying to be beneath his station, … Read more
(UPDATED 10/22) I am not without a sense of humor (anybody see the Ambiguously Gay Duo/Minneapolis police spoof on SNL Saturday?) and I am a big, big fan of the Jon Stewart-Stephen Colbert week-nightly comedy hour on Comedy Central. So why don’t I find this recent “I’m running for president as both a Democrat/Republican in … Read more
While hunkered down at the cabin over the long MEA weekend watching a monsoon-like system refill northeast Minnesota rivers and lakes I had to laugh at a front-page (above-the-fold) story in the Duluth News Tribune. It seems Duluth NBC affiliate weatherman Karl Spring, formerly of KSTP and WFTC here in the Twin Cities thinks Al … Read more
The tentative deal between the Pioneer Press’s newspaper guild and Dean Singleton’s MediaNews doesn’t look so hot at first glance — the guild agreed to a pension freeze, a one-time vacation concession and significant changes to its medical and disability plans in return for a paltry two to three percent raise. [The entire agreement is … Read more
This just in: Dean Singleton’s PiPress and the newspaper guild have a tentative deal. Here’s the memo: October 18, 2007 Guild, Pioneer Press reach tentative agreement on 4-year contract After three days of intensive, off-the-record talks, the Guild and the Saint Paul Pioneer Press reached agreement late Wednesday on a four-year contract covering 340 employees. … Read more
We’ve all seen movies with monsters — aliens, masked serial-killers, cyborgs from the far future — that just will not die, no matter what you do to them. Incinerate ’em and a loose gram of their psychotic essence reconstitutes itself and the battle is on again. So it with the FCC announcing that it is … Read more