Tag: media

Personally, I don’t think of it as much of a competition. But by virtue of both former Star Tribune editor and publisher Joel Kramer and former City Pages editor Steve Perry being inspired pretty much simultaneously by the collapse of print journalism in the Twin Cities and then deciding to bust sod for a credible alternative, the two men find themselves launching their much-anticipated websites within days of each other.

Kramer, who has received far more attention, recently announced that MinnPost.com will open for business on November 8. Perry, in a conversation this morning, believes there’s a chance the full public debut of The Daily Mole can match or beat that. Not that there is any direct head-to-head competition, you understand.

For those of you who have not been hanging on every cyber-whisper in this duel, if they were cars, MinnPost would be the Oldsmobile sedan with a box of Kleenex in the rear window to Perry’s tricked out ScionB, with the neon ground effect lighting and Borla exhaust. Plenty of style with not much horsepower. MinnPost has signed up something like four dozen local journalists, some stars, some solid veterans, some head-slappers and some unknowns. Perry, who says he has only recently begun to seriously work his network for money, will rely heavily on himself, his wife Cecily Marcus, and a handful of trusted wits like Jimmy Gaines and John Busey-Hunt, for the launch and (hopefully) build his cast of characters incrementally.

The Daily Mole has been in private, behind-password, beta mode for a couple weeks now, and, granting the common sensibility of those invited to look in, the reviews have been pretty good. If the real thing can deliver more of the same … with a boost in substance/value … it’ll be a must read, or must see, since Perry’s interest in original, funky, comic video is high.

Says Perry, “What I told Kramer at the outset when we had coffee, is that it is in our interests that both succeed.”

His point being that traditional advertisers can see as well as you and me that print newspapers are sorry, struggling beasts, shedding content and readability as fast as profit margins. What advertisers are waiting for is something credible to take their place. “With both of us out there trying to tell advertisers that online sites are for real we each get a boost. I think we’ll complement each other.”

Kramer, caught on the way to a luncheon speech of some sort, says MinnPost’s beta phase will begin very soon and run for about a week prior to launch. “We don’t expect things to be perfect at launch, but we hope readers understand and bear with us.”

The chattering class take on this duo is that Kramer must avoid recreating old school ink journalism on the web, adjust his “filter” properly to provide a genuine alternative to what is still being published in print and build a revenue stream rapidly enough — within the next six months — to take full advantage of his “staff” of freelancers before their severance checks from the Star Tribune and Pioneer Press have been lost to casinos, booze and mortgages. Perry’s challenge is to quickly develop a steady flow of bona fide content to match his video and audio cleverness … and find significant investors to keep him afloat for the year or more it’ll take to bring The Mole to some level of maturity.

As has been reported previously, Kramer’s freelance cast will be earning marginal compensation at best for their contributions. (The sliding scale for blog-type posts up to “featured” news pieces is a little confusing, but it is safe to say no one will be buying into a hedge fund with their MinnPost earnings.)

Kramer acknowledges the “ticking clock” of the severance checks on his Strib and PiPress staffers indirectly, saying, “What is a concern to us is the concern of trying to do daily journalism with a freelance staff.” Most of his writers are veteran and experienced enough to self-edit. But given their need to diversify their work loads with other endeavors, there’s no guarantee Kramer and MinnPost will have their full concentration when he needs it most.

Kramer hints that compensation may very well change over the first year as some of his contributors prove themselves to be more valuable than others.

MinnPost’s editing “filters” are another point of curiosity. Everything will be run through his full-time editors, with posts getting less of a work-over. His chosen filters are all experienced, meticulous and cautious. Maybe too cautious. It seems to me a vital quality of the new media is the willingness to take at least one step, (and probably a half dozen steps) further than a daily newspaper in terms of “reporters” offering what they believe to be true. (Along with clearly distinguishing what is “true” from what is bullshit “balance”.)

“Edgy” is a very tired word. But none of Kramer’s editors have ever been accused of “edginess”.

I asked Kramer if he worried about getting tagged with the “old school” label?

“No. Our primary goal is quality. We think we’ll have some elements that will be entertaining. But ‘edgy’ is not a priority. Quality comes first.” He adds that a lot of people think of the Internet in generalities — “edgy”, etc. — but that there are sites, he mentioned Salon and Slate, where solid journalism regularly trumps snark and cool. He wants a slice of that crowd.

Kramer did assure me that video and audio production will be a facet of MinnPost … at launch. And that this is not going to be the cheap version, with reporter/writers toting camcorders. “This will be professional video shot by professionals. I’m not saying on every story. But it will be there at the launch.”

The MinnPost vs. Daily Mole “battle” is not a zero sum game. There is no reason both can’t succeed … or fail. Kramer is carrying much more overhead, something close to $1 million a year, while Perry is playing a variation on the “low expectation game”, as in, “Hey, look what we did with squat and duct tape.”

Tonight. 9 PM, TPT. Ch.2 (Tomorrow, 9 p.m. ch. 17)

Once whoever comes next and historians begin clearing rubble from the administration of George W. Bush and trying to explain how this disaster happened the smart ones will start by boring into Dick Cheney’s bunker. If there’s any doubt left that Cheney is the ideological and tactical tent pole of the W* circus, tonight’s episode of “Frontline”, called “Cheney’s Law”, strips away another thin layer uncertainty.

The essence of “Cheney’s Law” is the vice-president’s breathtaking disregard for Constitutional niceties and his aggressive pursuit of highly-parsed, highly self-serving legal opinions. Opinions supporting a broad expansion of executive power in favor of the current administration, with little or none of the required congressional oversight.

This expansion, steeped in secrecy so strict key players like the Secretary of State (Colin Powell) and National Security Advisor (Condoleeza Rice) were kept out of the loop on the most provocative decisions, extends from Bush’s notorious “signing orders”, vividly detailed in a Pulitzer-winning article by the Boston Globe’s Charlie Savage, coercion of the head of the Office of Legal Counsel, Jack Goldsmith, (with regards to Bush-Cheney’s interpretation laws concerning extraordinary rendition and torture) and a smattering of the squeeze put on the now infamous nine U.S. attorneys shown the door for being insufficiently loyal/acquiescent to the Bush team.

To the well-informed, little here is new. But the less-than acutely aware will be stunned. It is still astonishing-to-appalling to hear a first-person description of the famous hospital bedside scene with Alberto Gonzalez and White House Chief of Staff Andy Card trying to get then Attorney General John Ashcroft — no one’s idea of an ACLU whacko — to sign off on another extension of a plainly illegal domestic surveillance program.

Producer Michael Kirk, who has obviously cultivated respect and sources from previous documentaries (“Rumsfeld’s War”, “Endgame”, “The Lost Year in Iraq”), gets Goldsmith, a lifelong ideological conservative — now in the news trying to put distance between himself and what he regards as the Cheney team’s reckless disregard for the rule of law — to talk at length about his experience in the grip of Cheney and David Addington, Cheney’s personal lawyer.

Author Ron Suskind turns up in support of the basic thesis, that it is Cheney from who policy directives flow, with Bush as little more than a rubber stamp. Suskind, Pulitzer Prize winner and former senior national affairs writer for the Wall Street Journal, is best known for his two most recent books, “The Price of Loyalty” about former Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill’s brief, unpleasant experience with Cheney and Bush, and the even more jaw-dropping, “One Percent Doctrine”, a genuinely startling behind-the-scenes look at how completely systematized Cheney and Bush’s chief strategist/public sock puppet act has always been.

(Check out the chapter on then Saudi Crown Prince — now King — Abdullah’s visit to Bush’s Texas ranch for everything you need to know about who is actually running this government, and who pretty much does as he’s told.)

By now documentaries like this are well past preaching to the hardened choir. A fair number of independents and political agnostics know something is profoundly screwed up, maybe even criminal. “Cheney’s Law” solidifies the “reality” around the last six years.

(It was Suskind who got the following classic quote from a member of the Bush team:

“The aide said that guys like me were, ‘in what we call the reality-based community,’ which he defined as people who ‘believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.’ … ‘That’s not the way the world really works anymore,’ he continued. ‘We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you’re studying that reality—judiciously, as you will—we’ll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that’s how things will sort out. We’re history’s actors…and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do’.”

The question for the commercial news media — the vaunted newsrooms of CBS, ABC and NBC — is where are they in raking together all the disparate
but now available facts on this, dare I say, epic story? True, in 15 minute bits, “60 Minutes” has delivered some goods. But the skeptic in me says commercial news will wait until well after Dick Cheney has left office to program the obvious — if then.

It’s been quiet, too quiet on the local TV news front, so thought I’d check in at KSTP and WCCO to see what’s cooking with the stations’ respective searches for replacements to news directors Chris Berg (let go in early August) and Jeff Kiernan (resigned in early September). The responses were as different as the competitors’ approaches to news.

Hubbard Broadcasting VP/KSTP general manager Rob Hubbard said he’ll take his time finding a replacement for Berg at the ABC affiliate. Hubbard’s been so happy with former assistant news director Lindsay Radford’s interim performance that, “I didn’t even make a phone call” until Radford went out on maternity leave several weeks ago.

He called Radford a “solid candidate” for the position. Interim news director duties are now being handled by I-Team overseer Dana Benson, a former KSMP news director and WCCO news manager himself.

Hubbard said that Berg had done “a fantastic job bringing the station back to a newsy focus” [best illustrated by the station’s superlative bridge collapse coverage], but that he wanted Berg’s replacement to focus on adding more context to news stories.

Conversely, WCCO spokeswoman Kiki Rosatti said the CBS-owned station would have liked a replacement for Kiernan “last week.” In the interim, Kiernan’s duties are being handled by John Daenzer with assistance from Mike Kaputa. Rosatti said station general manager Susan Adams Loyd is “looking everywhere” for a replacement.

However, unlike Hubbard, WCCO wants someone who will “fit in with and improve” the existing news focus and structure, rather than change it.

The only names that have surfaced so far as potential WCCO replacements are former KSTP’ers Scott Libin (news director pre-Berg), now on the faculty at the Poynter Institute in Florida, and his former assistant Mark Ginther, currently assistant news director at WFAA in Dallas.

(UPDATED):
After wasting almost three days trying to get some illumination on Minnesota Public Radio’s on-going/protracted fight with a tiny Christian Rock station in Norfolk, Virginia — and getting stonewalled by that station, its Christian attorneys in D.C. and a bland press release from MPR — I finally connected with Steve Behrens, editor of Currents newspaper, a small publication that follows the news in public TV and radio.

MPR’s fight with WJLZ-FM, aka “Positive Hit Radio, The Current” is over the Christians allegedly trespassing on the same name as MPR’s (very good) pop music station, 89.3 The Current. Mr. Behrens says he believes his attorney inquired into potential conflicts with MPR over the name of his newspaper, but that those concerns dissipated because of he obvious distinction between press and broadcast.

The MPR vs. The Christians story cranked up again this past week when the case was transfered out to federal court in Virginia and made public. Previously a federal judge here in Minnesota ruled that MPR had failed to present any evidence that Positive Hit Radio, The Current was meddling with 89.3’s Minnesota audience. MPR is appealing a court ruling denying its trademarking of the name, “The Current.”

If this sounds a little too much like FoxNews going to court to trademark “Fair and Balanced,” well, frankly there are too many similarities.

Obviously this is all about Internet reach and branding. No one listening to broadcast radio here, in Virginia, or halfway between in Indiana is in any danger of confusing “The Current” with a play-list of Iggy Pop, Ani DeFranco, Morphine, Jim White and Hot Hot Heat with Positive Hit Radio The Current’s line-up of Family Force 5, Disciple and The Beautiful Republic.

“There are a lot of ‘Currents’ in the world,” said Behrens, by way of explaining MPR’s concern over cornering the international market for its particular brand. “I suspect if they knew of a station in Africa using the name, The Current, they’d go after them, too. In today’s world it is no longer a matter of your local market. Your market is everywhere.”

Bill Kling & Co. have, as usual, already done a slick and proficient job producing and extending the reach of 89.3. Over air, via transmitters in the Twin Cities, Rochester and Hinckley, (try listening to Iggy Pop while you work a slot machine some time), and via the Internet everywhere else.

The MPR press release re-asserts its claim that the Christians, “with knowledge of MPR’s brand, The Current, began advertising, promoting, selling and offering its broadcasting services under the identical term, ‘Current.’”

Bastards!

It also assures everyone interested that, “MPR will take all needed steps to protect its rights in its mark THE CURRENT.”

Uh oh.

By complete coincidence, (I think), MPR was recently thwarted in its attempt to buy another Christian station, this one in the D.C. metro suburb of Takoma Park, Maryland. Despite waving $20 million at cash-strapped Adventist church-operated Columbia Union College, the college, says Behrens, decided not to sell the station. (MPR, which has long coveted a foothold in the D.C. market, was planning a news-talk format.)

MPR turned around, late last month, and spent $20 million on … another Christian station … WMCU in Miami, which it will program with classical music, the only format of its kind in Miami.

It would help if Minnesota PUBLIC Radio were more open with its thinking and processes and would entertain a few impertinent questions on matters like this presumably expensive legal battle with a pissant little station halfway across the country. But MPR doesn’t work that way.

While in straight corporate terms I get the idea of leveling all the brush around your brand, based on the way Google-like algorithms work, I tend to doubt more than a tiny fraction of web surfers are going to confuse Christian pop and the Norfolk station’s “positive news,” (oh, brother!), with 89.3’s sophisticated play-list and world-wise jocks.

And I say that as a bona fide 89.3 fan. Minnesota’s “Current” is terrific radio for everyone who enjoys music, being introduced to new music, getting some insightful background to good music and NOT being force fed 25 minutes of commercials, promos and filler every hour.

But the larger point here is that every time MPR big-foots in on some gnat-on-the-ass operation like Positive Hits Radio it looks crass and boorish. I have great admiration for the quantum improvements in breadth and depth MPR brings to its news and music “services.” (And, BTW, are they the only ones referring to their formats as “services”? I mean would KQRS ever refer to its “Toilet Jokes and Ossified Hits” service?)

But we all know that when it comes to business interactions, MPR is not a company known for its light and human touch.

Steve Behrens responds to this post:

“You’re entitled to your take on MPR, but I think in this case it’s
unfair. If The Rake were aiming to become a national webzine, or even trying to avoid having that foreclosed, The Rake would be brandishing sharp legal objects at any other Rakes publishing on the Web, whether they were helpless little blogs or thunderlizard properties of Time Warner. Names embody reputations and are not minor, transitory or worthless new-tech contrivances, even if they are called “brands.”

The Star Tribune’s Minnesota Poll, now out-sourced to New Jersey, has been in heavy play this past week. For decades a valuable snapshot of Minnesota attitudes, the Poll, as many of you know, was seriously down-sized under McClatchy ownership and “right-sized” into oblivion by Avista Capital Partners. The Poll’s most recent director, Rob Daves, was dismissed this year, the office shuttered and all institutional memory pretty well vacated.

With interim publisher, Chris Harte, cautioning his editorial section to avoid wild-hair liberal notions like calling for sufficient revenue to actually maintain the infrastructure we’ve got, I was intrigued to see that the question, “Would you be willing to pay more in gasoline taxes in order to pay for increased inspection and repair of bridges”, produced a 46%/50% yes/no verdict from the public. Though reporter Pat Doyle noted that that breakout falls within the 4% plus-or-minus margin of error, meaning you could if you wanted see a split decision, the usual suspects jumped on the “no vote” to affirm their campaigns to keep Minnesota’s finances just the way they are … or at the very worst shift some cash from all those lavish public schools and over-paid teachers to freeway construction.

Proper allocation and all that, you know.

Every poll depends on who you ask and how you phrase the question. In this case, the “Minnesota Poll”, contracted out to New Jersey-based Princeton Survey Research Associates, emphasized the hot-button word “bridge”, whereas polls conducted in 2004 and 2005 and at various times through the late ’80s and ’90s emphasized either “road improvements” or “road maintenance”.

Anti-tax crusaders and other status quo tub-thumpers will remain gleeful with the verdict because they can continue to make the argument that even after “goosing” the question with the word “bridge”, the pro-tax crowd “only” registered 46%, give or take 4%.

But if you dial back through the history of Minnesota Polls asking residents/voters about gas tax increases, it is interesting how thinking has changed, or not, over the last two decades. For example, in 1987 the yes/no split was 46%/48%. In 1990 it was 52%/45%. In 1993, 66%/32%. By 2005 it had drifted back to 41%/55%.

While 2007’s 46%/50% can be read as public sentiment against a gas tax increase, you could just as easily have said, “Public shows small increase in acceptance of gas tax hike,” based on approval moving up from 41% to 46% in the past two years.

Or … if you really wanted to stick a wrench in the spokes of the “non-partisan” Taxpayers’ League you could could point to the 2004 Minnesota Poll, which was conducted while Gov. Pawlenty and his transportation guru, Carol Molnau, were floating the idea of leasing out Twin Cities’ freeways to private contractors and charging tolls. In that context only 23% of Minnesotans favored increasing the gas tax.

With that in mind you could have had a headline on Sunday’s poll saying something like, “Support for gas tax increase doubles since ’04”, and been correct, technically.

I called Rob Daves, still here in Minnesota and busy assembling soon-to-launch Daves & Associates Research. He had only positive things to say about Princeton Survey. “Great firm. They do excellent work.”

He had been out of town this past weekend and hadn’t seen the gas tax poll. I read him the question as asked.

He offered that readers might have gotten a truer historical comparison had the gas tax question been asked the same way it always has, or at the very least, been subjected to a “split-ballot sample”, where half the 800-1200 respondents were asked the “road improvements” questions and the other half the “bridge” question.

That didn’t happen. So what we’re left with is a more or less an even split on the question of raising the gas tax, which is sufficiently fertile turf for legislation this winter. I mean, anytime you can get half the voters saying they’ll pay more you’ve got more than adequate
political cover.

Friday was the last day that the Star Tribune offered readers with beefs the name and number of a real person who would listen to them. Here’s the new procedure, as described under the headline “Have a Concern?” as it ran in Saturday’s paper.

“The Star Tribune is committed to correcting errors that appear in the newspaper or online. Concerns about accuracy can be directed to corrections@startribune.com. You may also call the main number, 612-673-4414, weekdays between 8:30 a.m. and 5:30 p.m. and ask to be connected to the appropriate department. Contact information for editors can be found in each section of the newspaper.”

I wonder what poor bastard has been assigned the thankless task of sorting through the new corrections e-mail bin? It’s doubtful the task was considered a plum assignment. Then, about that “main number” folks are directed to call. In the good old days of the live switchboard, the one person answering that line into the newsroom already had his or her hands full for eight frickin’ hours a day. With no one bothering to use the new automated system, I’m sure the pressure has already increased exponentially. Now, add to that the reader’s rep overflow–which is considerable and populated with regulars who call as much to chat as to vent. Oy.

My favorite part was the final suggestion that concerned or disgruntled readers could contact the editors of various departments directly, only no specific phone numbers were listed, just the vague directive to search through the sections for contact information. These are folks whose voicemail picks up 24/7 because they’re up to their eyeballs 24/8. Some of these folks can’t even get back in timely fashion to their own staffers who call or email questions about breaking news stories. What chance does Joan Q. Public stand of getting a response while her question/concern/correction is still fresh?

With a reader’s rep, the paper–though management may have been cynical about it–at least gave the appearance of wanting to hear from its readers. This latest system strikes me as one big FU.

I admit I had a few, fleeting concerns that my new partner, Ms. Rybak, might need a while to find her swing here in blogland. The daily newspaper grind is a pretty confining habit to break on a moment’s notice. In Capital “J” journalism one is expected to treat all subjects with equal respect, as in … “Ms. Rigoberta Menchu Tum and Mr. Charles Manson today released differing statements on the value of human life”. To vilify … “psycho scum Charlie Manson said today … ” is to betray a lack of self-discipline and gravitas.

To my great relief Ms. Rybak has proven herself fully-equipped and well-prepared to vilify as need be. Nicely done, my dear.

We are hearing from regular readers that we are close to obsessing over all things Star Tribune. To some extent this is a valid criticism. We will be paying more attention to other local and national media as news warrants and as we work out a few technical nits here at Slaughter Central. But come on you carpers, since January 1 has any local media story topped the gutting of the Star Tribune and the Par Ridder follies? I don’t think so. Has the paper ever actually been covered consistently? No. Does it matter? For the time being, yes.

We could follow old school, mainstream thinking and obsess about the ratings and skin rashes of our favorite news anchors, but we’re both kinda bored with that shtick, as is everyone whose opinion we respect.

Anyway, I take the always pleasant red eye in from Vegas and grab the first Strib I’ve seen in eight days — having already spoken with a few of the usual suspects about the latest editorial page purge, the push for still more “local, local” and the, uh, reassigning of “Readers’ Representative”, Kate Parry — and my eyes fall to a fresh editorial titled, “For Vikings, patience is a necessary virtue.”

Oh … my … God.

In my mind, the explanation for most of the on-going de-contenting of Minnesota’s largest news source can be reduced to this: It is a straight business deal being staged for sale, much like, as one
suspect said, painting every wall bland, neutral white so as not to provoke any negative thoughts or opinions in prospective buyers.

Others see an ideological game afoot, with interim publisher, Chris Harte, following private equity boilerplate and reducing the “liberal bias” of the Strib editorial page. I’m not ruling that out, but I suspect any reduction of liberal bite — anti-Bush, anti-Iraq, anti-government-on-the-cheap, anti-Pawlenty slipperiness– is more a consequence of the general blanding-down of the editorial page than an overt push to muzzle screaming “liberals”. (And again, if the Strib’s Powerline-style critics think the editorial writers, even the departed Jim Boyd, are screamers, they really need to get out more.)

But isn’t that usually the way it goes? Any time any media outlet or organization pushes toward a more cautious, status quo perspective, the first voices muzzled are those demanding change and progress and pointing out the flaws in status quo thinking.

So this pro-Vikings stadium editorial is precisely the kind of clubby, oily boosterism that I think of when I hear some corporate functionary selling, “local, local” or its mongrel cousin, “hyper-local.” When a paper like the Strib touts “hyper-local” and assigns one reporter to three large suburbs AND another “concept” beat you have every right to mutter, “bullshit.” And when a reliable functionary like Scott Gillespie is moved from the newsroom to the editorial pages with accompanying fanfare about “localism,” we have every reason to jack the antennae up to hi-gain for the kind of empty-to-predictably-fawning corporate comaraderie demonstrated in this “local local” testimonial.

You gotta love some of the phrasing of the Zygi Wilf editorial — which couldn’t have played better toward Wilf’s interests if HIS internal communications people had polished it for the Strib.

Referring to Wilf’s sales job at the U of M McNamara Center, the “hyper-local” Strib gushes, ” … he couldn’t have spoken words better attuned to Minnesota sensibilities than the ones he uttered … ” .

“Wilf avowed [“avowed”? What is this, a Jane Austen novel?] that his family thinks of itself not as the owners, but as the ‘stewards of this great franchise,’ the Minnesota Vikings.” (Note the assertion of Wilf’s “family” interests. I’m sure he’s thinking about the wife and kids — in New Jersey — every time he lobbies for that $700 million hand-out from Minnesota taxpayers.)

“He described the world-class stadium he wants Minnesota to build for that team as just deserts [sic] and a point of pride for worthy fans.” (Again with the “world class”! And I’m happy for the “worthy” fans. But isn’t the real question whether Wilf is “worthy” of BOTH the fans’ tax money AND $100 a ticket? And let’s not get into how far from “world class” the Vikings are.)

“Give Wilf credit for striking just the right tone … .”

Plainly agreeing with Wilf, the piece adds, “A people can be defined by the quality of things they hold in common … [like schools and bridges … oh, sorry] — and in modern America, and NFL stadium is one such thing.”

And just in case you missed the gooey respect the Strib has for the Wilf “family” position, the very next paragraph begins, “His message is valid.” It concludes with a linkage of the words “popular” and “Gov. Tim Pawlenty” in case you missed the “balance” the piece was trying to demonstrate.

I suppose an editorial praising the harvest of Zestar apples in Washington County would be lamer, but not by much.

The great sad irony in the Avista Capital Partners, Par Ridder and now Chris Harte “right-sizing”/blanding of the Strib editorial page, (a process begun by McClatchy), is that the Strib’s very vocal positions against the invasion of Iraq and various other highly controversial events with deep and profound relevancy to all Minnesotans should have been a source of pride.

If Powerline, etc. and the usual 29%ers want to scream about rampant “liberalism,” let them bray. That’s their game, braying. On Bush and Iraq the now mostly departed Strib edit page was right. Make that flat-out, dead right, and right earlier than just about every other paper in the country. In a world of brave journalism a publisher would give you a hearty pat on the back for that kind of intellectual clarity and courage. But in a world of risk-averse, neutral bland newspapering for quick sale … not so much.

On the matter of the Strib no longer having a Readers’ Rep … give me a minute, here.

Damn, it’s good to be back.

Andrew Zimmern loved the chance to talk on his WFMP radio show about subjects other than food, but in the end, his burgeoning success at the Travel Channel forced him to give it up, he said in an interview Thursday.
When the radio show launched on 107.1 FM four months ago, he said, “the Travel Channel thing [“Bizarre Foods”]was still fresh, I didn’t know whether the show would do well or even have a second season.”
However, Travel Channel now wants him to expand the “Bizarre Foods” concept and also “get me involved in new projects,” which he said he couldn’t discuss at present.
“Because of the success of [“Bizarre Foods”], it needed to be fed, not starved and it put me in a Catch 22 in terms of giving up what I really loved [being on the radio],” Zimmern said. “It’s not something I’m necessarily happy about. I held on to everything as long as I could.”
Zimmern, who says he’s now out of town “about two-fifths of the year” with his cable show, plans to continue on at 107 as a contributor “or a recurring guest” and will also continue his affiliation with Minneapolis/St.Paul magazine.
His weekend show, “Food Court,” will run until the end of October.

Got a call this evening from El Kayak, a.k.a. Lambert, as he stood outside the Pink Taco in Vegas, socks still damp from his Lake Powell adventure paddle. My colleague, however, was not all wet when it came to his scoop about fast rising cable TV star Andrew Zimmern, who is expected to announce during his radio show Thursday that he is leaving his weekday afternoon host post on WFMP (107.1 FM), the station we affectionately call “Chick Radio.”

Zimmern, who hosts the wildly successful Travel Channel show, “Bizarre Foods,” has been given another development deal at the channel, according to 107’s VP/general manager Dan Seeman, who was philosophical about Zimmern’s decision. “Everything is just exploding for him right now,” Seeman said Wednesday evening. “It was hard for us to compete with an international TV show.”

Seeman said that Zimmern will continue to contribute to the 1-3 p.m. talkfest, which posted good numbers with the noted local foodie at the helm (well, when he was at the helm, given his already busy travel schedule). The show will continue on with Zimmern’s sidekick, Colleen Kruse, in the driver’s seat. “She’ll be the center of the show and we hope Andrew will continue to contribute,” said Seeman, adding that the fate of Zimmern’s weekend radio show “Food Court,” is still unclear.