Tag: media

Ex-Stribber wanted to know why, if there are now two of us blogging, why there aren’t daily posts. As mentioned previously, my colleague Mr. Lambert is off kayaking in the wilds of Utah and is blameless. I was first out of town and am now deluged with out-of-town guests who want to see every piece of art the TC have to offer. So….haven’t been making a lot of calls. Fortunately, one of our correspondents had his ear to the ground and sent in this tidbit. I have no reason to doubt this post, as I was one of the folks who was told of her “reassignment” within days of the buyout deadline. Course, then they denied my buyout, but that’s a whole different story.

Read and discuss….

The Star Tribune Guild convened a 10:30 meeting this morning to look at a pattern of age discrimination in the reassignments cooked up by editors for the paper’s owner, Avista Capital Partners. Speaking on background, one Guild officer said that by their count “only three or four” of the [30-40] reporters told they are being reassigned, “are under the age of 35”.

It is generally considered “paranoid” or “cynical” to read individualized, strategic intent in these reassignment frenzies. But when, as the same Guild source points out, the percentage of reassignees is so heavily skewed to older writers AND they are notified of their reassignment only days/hours before they have to decide to accept a buy-out and leave the paper, you really aren’t left with many credible explanations other than that this is the latest exercise in the tried-and-true corporate “right-sizing” template of — let’s describe it the way it smells — — insulting/threatening a veteran reporter with a switch to a beat usually covered by a summer intern, if at all.

There are specific examples all over the place, but when you get to Neal Gendler, a 60-something with 40 years at the paper being reassigned to overnights from 10 p.m. to 7 a.m., you’re not even getting points for subtlety. In other words, police chase and flaming wreck with shoot out at 3 AM … Gendler’s your man.)

The Guild also has a problem with the peculiar sequencing of the reassignment/buy-out deadline process devised by the Star Tribune. As I asked/wrote yesterday, how else can you explain managing editors spending so much time re-mapping their employee universe BEFORE knowing for certain who they would have to work with, other than as a not too subtle and yes, fairly cynical process for “encouraging” those they most want out of the building to pack up and go?

It may be technically legal, but it runs contrary to the spirit of journalism, where your agendas, if you have them, are supposed to be plainly disclosed.

Whether the Guild alone can get any traction on the age discrimination issue remains to be seen. I happen to believe they should pursue aggressive outside counsel if only to squeeze Avista for a fatter, longer-term health benefits package. But that’s me and it wouldn’t be my money.

One of our correspondents the other day bemoaned our Strib coverage as appealing to “about 500 readers” and asked that we please write about something else. I hear you, brother (though I think the 500 number is WAY too high). I left the Strib because I didn’t want to think about it all the time and would much prefer to concentrate on other local media, but the management weasels over on Portland just won’t let up.
Arrived home from the North Shore Sunday night to find that the Strib’s longtime contact with the outside world–the reader’s representative–is the latest position to be whacked, or semi-whacked, depending on how you read the memo (posted below).
The paper’s ombudsman position, created in the late ’70s, was one of the first in the country. For years, Lou Gelfand handled the duties and was notable in his willingness to bite senior management’s hand when required. Kate Parry, who was imported from the Pioneer Press about three years ago, lacked Gelfand’s chutzpah during a time when those hands needed some serious gnawing. Well, at least she answered the phone. Now, with the switchboard operators gone and an Orwellian computerized phone system in place, and Parry reassigned as a health care editor, readers with issues are going to be hard-pressed to find someone to bitch to in the newsroom.
That’s where my esteemed colleague comes in. On the newsroom’s intranet communications board, one poster wondered if the new reader’s rep might be “Brian Lambert at the Rake.” I think that’s a great idea–I’d post his phone number right now, but he’s kayaking and can’t defend himself.
Here’s the memo and–hopefully–here’s the end of Strib news for a while:

From: “Rene Sanchez”
To:
Date: Thu, 27 Sep 2007 11:07:34 -0500
Subject: Kate Parry is our new Health Care Editor

Dear staff:

We’re pleased to announce that Kate Parry will be our new health care editor, taking on responsibility for coverage in print and on line. She will also occasionally serve as an at-large editor in the newsroom.

As you all know, we created one health care team to serve needs across the newsroom, including business, metro and features. This team has some of our most experienced reporters and writers, and we are looking to this team to produce some of our most ambitious journalism. In addition, we will need to expand our coverage online headed into 2008. We searched for several months for the right person to lead this coverage before coming to the conclusion that Kate had the best mix of skills for this important job. We know that she will provide thoughtful leadership and sophisticated editing; she has a long track record as an award-winning journalist.

When Kate came here nearly three years ago, it was with the understanding that the job of reader representative would not be a lifetime appointment and we discussed a tenure of about three years. I think we can all agree that Kate has served in that role admirably, and with courage. She has taken on some very difficult topics in her column, and spent hours listening to readers, and addressing the public. She has tackled prickly issues in the newsroom too, negotiating differences between writers and readers. We have been lucky to have her in that role.

But in a time of dwindling resources, we need more help with the journalism in the newsroom in order to serve our readers at the level they deserve.

We plan to keep the readers’rep position open while we evaluate our options although it’s likely that in the future this will be a part-time position. In the meantime, we hope to step up communication in other ways. We will, of course, continue to answer all readers calls and report significant issues to editors in the room. Department heads will be asked to take on responsibility for correcting errors in their sections. And newsroom leaders will be asked to increase communication with the public. I will be resuming the editor’s blog and the editor’s column that Anders started, and I will occasionally ask other top editors to share that responsibility. We will also take on more responsibility for outside speaking engagements to share with the public the work we are doing in the newsroom. I have done two in the last week alone.

Kate will start her new job Monday, Oct. 8. Since her work will cross all departments, she will report to Deputy Managing Editor Rene Sanchez. Please join us in thanking her for her work as the reader’s representative and wishing her well in this new role.

Nancy, Scott and Rene

I was covering the Larry Craig hearing for most of yesterday and, though I tried to keep the site refreshed by posting comments, memos and such, I didn’t have a chance to read through the entries until late last nigiht. They made me smile.
There were posts from some of the media people I respect most in this town, who offered viewpoints that were enlightening, entertaining, and irritating. There were posts from others I don’t know as well with fresh takes on old subjects, or who made comments with which I disagreed entirely. In short, this little blog offered a microcosm of what I like to get when I read a newspaper’s opinion pages.
That’s why interim Strib publisher Chris Harte’s memo to staff yesterday regarding the changes to come to the paper’s editorial pages left me feeling queasy.
The queasiness started with him naming Scott Gillespie editorial page editor “on an interim basis.”
Just last week, Harte named himself interim publisher while a “national search” is conducted to find a Par Ridder replacement. I saw no similar replacement strategy attached to the Gillespie appointment. Does that mean that by the time Scott has finished that assignment, there won’t be a need for an editorial page editor? I remember a time when the Pioneer Press had a sizeable, vibrant staff for its editorial pages. That disappeared with the paper’s downsizing and “localization” under Par Ridder, who Avista championed as its publisher until only recently.
Par may be gone, but “local” isn’t. It cropped up all over the Harte memo.
He sees the need for the paper to concentrate on “local, state and regional issues” (which I thought it already did) and I suspect that Harte agrees entirely with Ridder, who told a staffer during a recent meeting that he saw no need for the paper to endorse a presidential candidate, because it had no bearing locally.
Oops, there’s that sick feeling again.
It got worse when Harte mentioned that he has issued a “mandate” to Gillespie to move the editorial pages in a direction that “complements” the paper’s new strategy of locally zoning the metro pages. Readers who have complained consistently that the lefty editorial pages need “right-sizing” need to note this. Nobody is talking about a change in political slant; everything is just going to get smaller. I’m going to miss reading about issues that might be affecting an area other than my neighborhood. I thought that was what being part of a community was all about.
I didn’t always agree with Susan Albright, but I respected her fight to preserve the integrity of her section. And I respect her even more for choosing to walk away from her job, rather than become an administrator for implementing the “mandate” of a man who doesn’t even live here yet.

9/26 UPDATE: Albright is out, and Gillespie is in…”temporarily.” Hope that doesn’t mean he’s going to decimate the opinion pages, then return to his regular newsroom vagaries….

Here’s the memo:
“Editorial Page changes
by Chris Harte, Publisher and Chairman
September 26, 2007 – Susan Albright, our editorial page editor, will be leaving the Star Tribune, effective Oct. 12. Scott Gillespie, our managing editor, will move over to be the editorial page editor on an interim basis.
Susan has ably guided the Star Tribune editorial pages with the highest integrity since 1993, and I have the utmost respect for her as a journalist and an editorialist. She is a nationally recognized leader among editorial writers and a former president of the National Conference of Editorial Writers (NCEW).

Under her leadership, the Star Tribune editorial staff has won numerous editorial, op-ed and cartooning awards. In 2001 her staff conceived and launched the Sunday Op Ex section, now called “Opinion Exchange.”

With all of these fine credentials to Susan’s credit, it is all the more difficult to say that she and I have a difference of opinion that results in her leaving. As I moved into the chairman’s role in March and then into the publisher’s role, it was clear as Susan and I talked that we had different views of the future.

We have a professional disagreement about the role of the editorial pages and how they should be edited. The main shift I want to see is toward even more locally focused editorial pages.

I believe the role of a metro newspaper is changing radically and rapidly in a world of instant global access to information. I see the need for our editorial pages, like the rest of the newspaper, to concentrate more heavily than ever on local, state and regional issues. This is where we can stake a claim like no other media can.

Our readers can go to many places to get informed opinion on the Iraq war or global warming. But there are very few places they can go for expert opinion on local issues. And that is where I want us to dwell, with the active participation of our readers.

As you know, we will soon be locally zoning the metro news pages, and my mandate to Scott is to move our editorial pages in a direction that complements this local strategy.

Regarding her departure, Susan said: “It has been an honor and a privilege for me to serve as the Star Tribune’s editorial page editor for nearly 15 years. I am proud of what the opinion page staff has accomplished in those years. On leaving, I can only express my profound gratitude to all my colleagues, and wish them all the best.”

I hope you will please take the time to congratulate Susan on a job very well done. She is a true professional who stands up for her beliefs, articulates them eloquently and genuinely respects the views of others. I wish her all the best.

Posted yesterday: It should come as no surprise to any of our faithful readers that the Strib’s, uh, shall-we-say, “progressive leaning” editorial department, under the long-time stewardship of Susan Albright, has for years been a painful, pricking thorn in the side of McClatchy, and now Avista. My partner in crime, currently on a kayaking adventure in Utah, recently posted about management’s directive that the editorial department lay off support for the nickel a gallon gas tax hike.

The latest rumor to rumble around Shake-up Central on Portland has Albright stepping down from her post, to be replaced by none other than Strib managing editor Scott Gillespie.

It makes sense.

Gillespie hardly seems a favorite of Strib uber editor Nancy Barnes. Heck, when a reporter from the American Journalism Review showed up earlier this year to do a piece on the paper’s contractions, Barnes offered a list of people for him to contact. Although all her other newsroom favs were included, Gillespie’s name was nowhere to be found. Then there was the leak that now-vanished publisher Par Ridder wanted to bring PiPress’s editor Thom Fladung Stribside (Fladung declined).

Gillespie is well-known as an editor who has continuously lost vertebrae as he’s ascended through the ranks and become more adept at avoiding controversy at all costs. Over the last few months, he made his bones with top management by following its staff whacking and restructuring orders to the letter, no matter who got hurt. Staffers who once considered him a friend have no doubt that he’d run the layoff truck over them if Chris Harte so ordered, rather than take a stand.

Having Gillespie in the Editorial driver’s seat would not only get him out of the downsized newsroom–where two editors are probably now seen as too many (read expensive)–it would put a malleable executive in charge of what, until now, has been the paper’s last bastion of rage against the machine.

Watch this space.

A commenter asks Ms. Rybak and me to say something about the sorry state — make that “the perpetually sorry state” of Twin Cities radio, since people have been complaining about how dull, dim-witted, choked-with-advertising and uninspired local radio is since I started paying attention to it back in 1989.

It’s not like it has gotten any better, generally speaking, but where would we begin?

First though, just to catch up, two stations parted ways with their program directors last week. First, Doug Westerman, briefly my boss, at KTLK-FM, was shown the door, then Erin Rasmussen at FM-107. There had been some gossip that Westerman’s departure might signal the much-anticipated format switch at KTLk, away from conservative talk to … God knows what. But by replacing Westerman with a talk radio program director from Memphis, Steve Versnick — via WLW in Cincinnati, the signal would seem to be that Clear Channel will stick with, delusional 29%-er talk at least through next year’s election, which has been my bet for a while.

The move at FM-107, a.k.a. “The Chick Station”, home of Kevyn Burger, Lori & Julia and more recently, Andrew Zimmern and Colleen Kruse, is more like looking for fresh ideas.

The next quarterly Arbitron ratings won’t be out until later next month, but trends since the “spring book” show very little change other than an overall bump upwards for KSTP-AM, very likely due to Twins baseball — which provides the station with virtually no revenue.

What the commenter wants I think is a grand overview, a station-by-station analysis, which might be an interesting project. But it’ll take a while to gather the deepest of my/our deep thoughts.

Until then here’s a blurb a friend sent my way. It comes from Tom Taylor a veteran radio analyst/information trader, who has a successful independent until he sold and joined forces with … (cue Darth Vader theme) … Clear Channel.

Taylor’s headline is: After Clear Channel goes private — will there be an exodus of management talent?

He writes: One observer e-mails me to predict that “many folks at the management level are just waiting for their payday from the stock buyout. Watch and see. Fueling that is the feedback from the recent managers meeting. Market managers were told that they will be given their revenue goals from above, and then they’re expected to hit them. So much for bottom-up budgeting. The subtle hint was that ‘You’ll hit them, or we won’t be seeing you at this meeting next year.’” He goes on to say that managers feel particularly helpless because “in reality, local markets have discretion on less than 20% of the expense line items in the budget” and that “a large percentage of promotion and research decisions are made in San Antonio,” leading to what he calls “micromanagement.”

I include this only because the “Clear Channelization” of the seven stations the company owns in the Twin Cities and as well as the extent to which competitors acquire Clear Channel-like attitudes toward programming, salary levels and ad clutter is arguably the underlying malaise effecting this market and many others.

Clear Channel is going back to private status some time in the next few months, a move that will — you guessed it — re-line the pockets of the company’s major investors, some of whom joined the Gilded Age when it went public several years ago.

Finally, after nine straight months of blogging, I’m taking a brief break. I couldn’t leave town until the Par Ridder follies reached some kind of conclusion. The Slaughter will be in Ms. Rybak’s more than capable hands until I get back on Oct. 5, although she too will be away soon for a few days.

Proving once again that if God himself arrived on Earth X% of the chattering classes would complain that his luminous vestments were not luminous enough, his beard had split ends, his diction was stilted and (for balance) Satan thought him intellectually lacking, the niggling over Ken Burns’ “The War” has begun.

OK, so we’re off to a shaky start comparing Burns to God, (some of his recent interviewers have come close), but come on, is anyone out there doing better stuff on this scale anywhere in this country? The answer to that is, “No”. Personally, I locked in from the first frame last night and see no purpose in niggling, other than to bait/engender an argument. I’m a fan of Burns’ “style”, the pace, the panning, the narration, the “fiddles”. Not only doesn’t it bother me, I regard the time in frame and hours spent overall as a valuable antidote to the ADHD-pacing and “money shot” structure of way too many feature films and network documentaries. (In my opinion, Burns’ “Lewis & Clark”, which he described as a “visual valentine to the American West” is the apex of this style. Gorgeous. Hypnotic. Plug it into a plasma set.)

I have not seen all of “The War”. (I am still trying to convince PBS that I am worthy of press screeners, even though my last name is no longer the prestigious “St. Paul Pioneer Press”). Burns has said that last night’s opener was essentially a full-length scene-setter, designed to establish the characters from the four towns he chose to build his story upon. But the nigglers are already complaining that Burns’ is treading on overly-familiar ground, hasn’t revealed anything new about WWII, or why humans fight, and is already resorting to visual cliches of repeated stock footage.

Among the less-than-thrilled … my new co-blogger, Ms. Rybak. She of course is so much younger than me she can be forgiven for not remembering WWII. Hell, she’s such a pup she barely remembers Duran Duran.

Since I haven’t seen the next 12 hours I’ll reserve judgment on whether Burns goes anywhere new, anywhere no filmmaker before him has ever gone, and whether he creates an epiphanic moment whereby the human affinity for war is laid bare, Dick Cheney is dragged out behind the barn and peace petals blanket the planet.

But the Burns’ “style”, even the 14 and a half hours, he commits to these epics has the effect of a deep immersion class from the best professor on campus. You absorb his films. You LIVE in them, and the hours you spend with the rhythms and characters, especially the ground level characters he’s chosen here instead of generals and historians, provide insights and qualities “ordinary” documentarians struggle to capture, condense, condense again and and contextualize in an hour, or even more laughably, a 12-minute, “20/20” piece.

What amuses me first is the insistence on … speed … even from middle-aged book readers, who you’d think would know better and appreciate comprehensiveness. The vibe is: WE already know about Guadalcanal, the battle of Midway and MacArthur’s screw-ups. So come on! Chop chop. Let’s get to something new or at least get to the end … faster.

Burns has told every interviewer that he was inspired to make “The War” after reading a poll that showed a shockingly high percentage of American school children so ignorant of who fought who and why in WWII they believed the United States and Germany were allies against the Russians. (Holy shit.)

Knowing that those people soon become voting age adults capable of being swayed by cheap demagoguery, you may, if you’re Ken Burns, decide to devote a year and a half to re-telling an oft-told tale in a different way, (going light on the politicians and admirals). But the nigglers are arguing that this is exactly what the Burns “style” is failing to engage — the imagination and attention of teenagers and twenty-somethings who have no interest in the background noise about wars of their own generation, much less their grandparents’.

Burns has hinted he may take on the Vietnam War somewhere down the line. If the nigglers are upset that “The War” isn’t ideologically-driven enough, THAT adventure may be more provocative.

Alessandra Stanley’s review in The New York Times hits on the notion that the film is too tightly focused on America. Really? I mean, I understand the need to find something to niggle about under deadline pressure, but this is clearly a film about the American experience of WWII. (I’d love to see a similar film from a Russian or Japanese filmmaker with access to their archives.)

Even in the scene-setter opening I sense that Burns’ decision to speak from the perspective of GIs, flyers, sailors, nurses and relatives at home offers valuable illumination about how little the average soldier then (and probably now) cared about or followed (or even had access to) world events that drew him into the maw of war. Only the Jewish guy from Waterbury, CT. recalled having followed the ravings and fascism of Hitler with any particular interest before enlisting. Most other young men, as Minnesotan (and soon to be folk hero) Sam Hynes, says, were simply swept up into the current, often with a cartoonish notion of war and the promise of instant adulthood and an adventure far more interesting than anything they’d find at home.

If all the “war” nigglers are really complaining about the lack of direct relation to the disaster in Iraq, I think they might be guilty of being too short-sighted and literal-minded. I’m guessing that by the time “The War” wraps next weekend, viewers who don’t demand some kind of Michael Bay-meets-Michael Moore hybrid, will have had a remarkably fulfilling experience, even without learning anything new about naval strategies at Midway.

As mentioned here a couple days ago, Deborah Rybak, most recently media reporter at the Star Tribune, has consented to join forces with me here at Slaughter Central. To be very clear, this is not Ms. Rybak joining The Rake. (The mind boggles at the bloody, bruised-knuckle negotiating it would take to make that happen.) This is simply a couple old pros, neighbors and inveterate gossip-mongers getting together for a little fun. Her presence here also adds much overdue journalistic sobriety, insight and dignity to my vacuity and adolescent raging.

Somewhere back last winter I recalled my former employers at the Pioneer Press swatting me across the back of the head and slamming the latest edition of the Strib in my face every time Rybak scooped me — usually as a result of something she dragged back from her regular round of power lunches. I still wonder, Why do the famous and fatuous want to be seen in public with her and recoil in horror at the thought of lunching with me? Did I answer my own question?

Anyway, the inference of the head-swatting was that, “THIS” –whatever Rybak had covered — “is what you are supposed to be doing. Our readers don’t care about Bill O’Reilly? Get over it!”

I never learned.

In addition to the types of coverage I’ve been doing here since January 1, together we hope to build in some dialogues and more of the media basics; hirings and whackings, with or without further comment.

Separately, our experience has been that daily newspapers see very little value in covering the media universe and none at all in analyzing and commenting on it. Media, to “right-sizing” newspapers is primarily a celebrity gossip beat, with extraordinary emphasis on the comings, goings and ratings of local TV anchors. Deborah and I believe that view is almost completely backwards. Readers, i.e. people who read to acquire knowledge, want more media information, not less, and regard empty-headed gossip “coverage” as valueless.

We both see a literate, critical audience for coverage that uh, declines, to play press agent to the stars and anchors and, like good sports columnists, sees fun to be had in throwing back the curtain on the machinations of what is, let’s face it, a weird, woolly, often silly, vast and omnipresent facet of modern American life.

We plan to devote X-number of hours and posts talking to and about those who control, create and populate Minnesota media–sometimes farther afield than that. We’ll talk about who is schtupping who, figuratively speaking, (or maybe sometimes in actuality). And we will be covering TV, cable and Internet programming, movies and whatever else flickers and interests us.

There is interesting stuff on television, and we have different tastes. She may be bored to tears by “Ice Road Truckers”, and I may not agree that “Californication” perfectly captures Hollywood’s moral malaise. But we see opportunities to gas on about, for example, what in the hell drugs David Milch was using when he wrote, “John from Cincinnati”.

Everyone of course invited to join in, commend us, vilify us and test our vast knowledge of all things media-related … which when you get Alan Greenspan on Jon Stewart’s show is damned near everything under the sun. And yes, we will both rant from time to time. I wouldn’t want to disappoint my Fox News Kool-aid drinkers.

So, by way of introduction …

LAMBERT: Deborah, I’d welcome you, but really this is more of a salvage project, a reclamation effort on your part. You are the cavalry riding to the rescue. But the news late yesterday is that, as was heavily rumored, Par Ridder will NOT be returning as publisher. How shocked were you by this news?

RYBAK: Do I need to drag out that old “Casablanca” line? Since we more or less predicted it Wednesday, I would venture to say, not breath-intake shocked, nor even eyes-slightly-widened shocked. I guess when you called me yesterday evening my shock was of the “It’s almost cocktail hour, what are you bugging me for?” variety.

Here’s the phrase that interested me most in the Strib story, “Par is ‘likely’ not to return to the paper.” That tells me that lawyers are talking and I’m sure that exit pay is a major topic.

So how much more is Par going to take home from this misadventure in addition to the “relocation” money we hear he received to move about 5 miles from Sunfish Lake to Kenwood? I wonder if his lawyers want extra because he was so successful in whacking the staff down to size and saving Avista so much money, (well,until those legal fees started piling up).

I wonder if the “national search” for a publisher that interim publisher/Avista concierge Chris Harte mentioned to his staff will also include scanning for bodies to fill the other empty management positions that have turned the formerly executive-stocked fourth floor suites into a ghost town?

Or will everything–including the website–continue to be overlorded from New York?

LAMBERT: So the paper currently has no CFO, no director of high technology. What else am I missing?

RYBAK: Don’t forget there’s no Mike LaBonia, aka “Mikey Bones,” who just bailed on his sales and strategic planning gig to go to the San Francisco Chronicle. Oh yeah, and no director of niche publications, although Jennifer Parratt is getting paid to sit at home and wait for her non-compete to run out. Wonder if she’ll ever come back, now that the guy who hired her is out. Sorry, “likely” to be out.

Plus, during his staff meeting, Harte also clarified that it would be Avista money used to pay everyone’s legal bills …not Strib dough. Does it really matter?

LAMBERT: I’m sorry, Chris Harte telling the staff it’ll be Avista, not the Strib budget paying the $10 million-plus in Par Ridder-related legal fees is not something that would quiet my concerns were I employed there. The overriding issue is that the parent company — Avista — is bleeding out its eyeballs with this Minnesota newspaper deal and the twit they hired to staunch all that has turned out to be a very expensive pain in the ass.

Just as you heard from your sources, the word I heard Thursday morning was that Ridder would not be back. My first question upon hearing the court decision putting him on the beach was, “What is the upside to this guy hanging like a dark cloud over the paper for a year? He has no credibility with his staff. Anecdotally, he’s a joke around town. Who continues to love him, and why?”

I still say, and I’ll take bets, that there is Ridder family money in Avista somewhere, somehow.

I confess of course that I’ll miss Par. I think of him as my Nixon.

RYBAK: You have the weirdest crushes. First Mick Anselmo, now Par. I confess that I’m obsessed right now with Billy Dean Singleton. When he rode into town, the Star Tribune was almost arrogant in its rejection of Singleton’s favorite pasttime–creating joint operating agreements between former newspaper rivals (see Denver Post v. Rocky Mt. News).

Now I wonder if JOA might be the settlement that will satisfy Singleton in his lawsuit. Look at his remarks to the Pioneer Press’s John Welbes: “There are many things that the two newspapers could do together without crossing legal barriers, but that would depend on who we’re working with.”

Now that Par’s gone, and Avista’s investment needs some serious shoring up, what’s standing in the way?

LAMBERT: A JOA would have to be seen as an interim step to a full merger. Until now a merger has been viewed as unlikely because of anti-trust issues. But given the precipitous collapse of newspaper revenue, what DC regulator would oppose the argument that a two-paper universe here in the Twin Cities is no longer sustainable, and that the only possibility for continuing full-scale community “service” is to merge and seriously reduce overhead.

It may be a largely bullshit argument, but I’m thinking it is one that plays better with each passing quarter.

But welcome aboard, dear.

RYBAK: Thanks doll, nice to be here…

We interrupt the latest episode of L’affaire Par, (note the corrected, improved gender-appropriate French), for a comment on Dan Rather bringing a $70 million lawsuit against his old bosses at CBS over their shabby treatment of him in the wake of the infamous “60 Minutes II” National Guard story.

The early consensus among marquee pundits is bewilderment at why Rather would do this now, 15 months after getting the axe, (and there is no doubt he got the axe, velvet-sheathed or otherwise), and that it demonstrates a degree of muddled, misguided thinking on his part.

In my limited interactions with Rather — barnstorming through Minnesota, press tours, a brief chat in NY — he always struck me as an odd duck. A little too tightly wound for a high-profile job like his and very old school with his almost jingoistic respect for the hierarchy of journalism, where he was very near the top. Which isn’t to say he was arrogant. In person, he was almost overly self-effacing. But he was stiff even when trying to be casual, and self-consciously aware of his place on the landscape.

There was never any comparison to say, Tom Brokaw, who remains my idea of the gold standard for network anchor unflappability and gravitas. Brokaw, who has a memory for names and details worthy of Hubert Humphrey, is a listener — an absolutely vital quality to any journalist — constantly absorbing clues and cues which translates into a remarkably deft touch for both individual and group interaction. Rather … not so much.

Anyway, as I follow the legal assessments in this latest twist, it appears Rather may be able to make some head-way on the issue of whether CBS was contractually obligated to return him to the Sunday night version of “60 Minutes” after departing the anchor desk, and feature his work at least as prominently as Lesley Stahl, Steve Kroft and Morley Safer, etc.

But no one thinks Rather is in this for the money. (His lawyer says he’ll donate any awards.) This is about his legend, and odd duck though he might be, Rather is a big time student of history and has to know that that George W. Bush draft deferment/Alabama Air National Guard story will be in the second paragraph of his obituary if not on his tombstone. For a guy who did everything any big company could ask of a major player — running around Afghanistan with U.S. armed Taliban-types firing rockets at Russian tanks and strapping himself to a street lamp for every hurricane that hit the Gulf Coast — Rather has a right to be … real … pissed off at the way CBS buckled and how he was led out the door.

But the whole case will turn on Bush’s service record, and whether the story was as screwed up as is popularly believed. Or whether CBS, which had been taking big-time anti-Rather fire for years, simply didn’t want to deal with him/it anymore — what with Viacom CEO Sumner Redstone’s eye on good relations with the freshly reelected Bush White House — and instead of defending him concocted a clubby, wallpapering investigation to get themselves off the hook and Rather out of the building.

Rather says that based on some kind of new evidence his own private investigators have dug up he is now eager to force CBS in to court and get them under oath over who knew what when and what was said to whom? Personally, I think that would be real interesting.

Three things have always stood out with regard to what I’ll call the Bush AWOL story.

1: Even the so-called independent investigation ordered up by CBS held back from saying that the essential story, that Bush got preferential treatment to avoid Vietnam and then never showed up in Alabama, was false. The investigation’s much narrower focus was on the validity of type-written 30-some year-old letters and the reliability of Bill Burkett, the very funky guy who delivered the letters to Rather’s production team.

On one fundamentally relevant level — whether CBS accurately represented the opinions of professionals who examined the letters — Rather and his (very) veteran producer, Mary Mapes, will have to convince everyone watching that they did indeed seek out and accurately reflect the best opinions of the best professionals available. If they can’t do that, they risk sinking even deeper than they already are, just for the chutzpah of bringing a suit with so large an unpatched flaw in it.

But … if they’ve come up with some kind of exculpatory evidence that makes their explanations to date credible and returns the focus to the essentials of the story — and, who knows, CBS-Viacom’s discomfort with running it weeks before an election — we’re off and running again.

2. I was never comfortable with the speed at which the response/backlash to CBS’s Bush AWOL story erupted in the blogosphere. This astonishingly rapid response was led by Atlanta lawyer, Harry MacDougald, a.k.a. “Buckhead”, a very well connected Republican partisan.

And by “rapid”, we are talking almost instantly, and not only that very night but already with a laser-like focus on the bogus letters and the era of the typewriter involved. Even allowing for the intensity of animosity constantly pressing on Rather, and on CBS for having Rather around, that combination of speed and specificity always seemed much too convenient for my tastes.

The conspiracy theory that has floated on this one suggests the bogus letters were planted, via Burkett, by pro-Bush partisans aware of the avidity of CBS’s interest and investigation. Moreover the plan was linked to a tactical hair-trigger set among conservative bloggers to scream “foul” in a highly specific way the second Mapes and Rather bungled so badly they actually used the fake letters. (If that is true the fact Mapes and Rather used them at all once again consigns the two gullible old pros to the scrap heap.)

3. On the validity of the essential charge and the heart of the story — that Bush got preferential treatment to avoid service in Vietnam and then never even bothered to honor his Alabama Air National Guard commitment, while other guys his age were dying for what rock-ribbed conservatives like Ronald Reagan called, “a noble cause”, I found always found it remarkable that no one ever stepped forward and provided evidence of Bush’s presence in Alabama to pick up the $10,000 “prize” offered by “Doonesbury” cartoonist Garry Trudeau.

New Yorker writer and CNN legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin was on Terry Gross yesterday talking about his new book about the US Supreme Court, “The Nine”. The most provocative chapters concern the starkly partisan division within the court over Bush v. Gore, the 2000 re-count fiasco. Toobin’s point was that the Justices hated the specter of their fundamental partisan beliefs being betrayed so publicly and in such an epochal decision. They prefer to think they are bigger than that, different from mere mortals and other people of influence.

The same, I strongly suspect, is true down deeper in this Rather-CBS story.

CBS News and Viacom live and succeed or perish in nothing close to a vaccum. Most of the time they have the finesse and connections and mouthpiece to deny partisan influences. But when the heat really comes down, when access to and political favor from a freshly reelected administration with enormous power over the growth strategies of the corporate parent are hanging in the balance, “objective” players give service to who and what butters their bread.

Not really knowing anything more about legal issues than what I see on Law & Order, I confess to being among those who focused too tightly on the injunction handed down today against Par Ridder, tossing him out of the Star Tribune for one year. Obviously, the injunction was designed to remove Ridder from a situation where he could continue doing “irreparable harm” to the Pioneer Press. Now … things could get really interesting.

Or not.

My esteemed former competitor/arch rival, Deborah Rybak, recently separated from the Star Tribune and soon to join me here in a bigger, far better, far hipper Slaughter, sought out attorney Ron Rosenbaum, KSTP-TV’s legal expert.

Her report:

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Here’s what everyone missed yesterday in their rush to tell Par Ridder, “Hey, don’t let the door hit your butt on the way out”: Injunction aside, this case is HARDLY over.

The injunction is just one step (albeit a big one) in the process, confirms our legally fluent buddy Ron Rosenbaum. Singleton’s legal team originally asked for the injunction because, it claimed, Par and pals couldn’t be allowed to stay in their jobs and keep harming the PiPress until the case meandered to trial.

“It was a huge victory, but it doesn’t end the case,” said Rosenbaum.

“The finding of harm [that Ridder misappropriated and distributed PiPress confidential documents] also means that–more likely than not–the plaintiffs would prevail at trial. But with a finding like this, I doubt this case will ever go to trial.”

In other words, gentlemen at Avista, open your checkbooks and let the settlement talks begin!

Settlement overtures were allegedly made more than once by Avista during the run-up to the Ridder hearing in June, but Dean Singleton, out for blood, wasn’t interested. So has he proved his point now? Singleton told Editor and Publisher Tuesday that he was, “happy with the ruling but didn’t want to see it play out in a courtroom.”

Still, in trying to reach a settlement, Rosenbaum thinks putting a price tag on the damage caused by Par’s PiPress spreadsheet heist and distribution may be tough. “It’s not easy to know what the access to that information is worth and how it benefited the Strib.”

So it’s possible that settlement talks could break down and nudge Singleton back into court. Early chatter had the MediaNews titan dedicated to ensuring that Ridder never ran the Strib again. In light of the judge’s ruling, will Avista now balk at that demand? Who knows? Nobody can quite figure out why these guys have backed him for this long. Newsroom sources and others speculate that Ridder may resign from the paper in the days to come. At least, that would seem to be the classy thing to do…

Other newsroom gossip has former publisher Keith Moyer coming back to run what’s left of the paper. After all, it was Moyer who called some Strib reporters to compliment them on their reporting in the aftermath of the I-35W bridge collapse. Ridder never bothered.

In the meantime, Judge Higgs has ordered Avista to fork over Singleton’s legal fees and other costs for his efforts to date, which he told E&P totaled about $5 million.

Rosenbaum said back in June that he never understood the Strib’s defense. With Tuesday’s decision, “the chickens have come home to roost. Par tried to play fast and loose with the facts and the law, and the Court did what it’s supposed to — make the aggrieved party whole. So good riddance to Par Ridder, he got what he deserved.”‘

Rosenbaum was openly contemptuous of Avista honcho-turned-interim publisher Chris Harte’s company-wide statement that Avista found the judge’s decision “unexpected.”

“I doubt very seriously he was surprised. I doubt that any lawyer who advised him to be surprised ever went to law school.” Rosenbaum’s derision excluded Avista’s local hired gun Bob Weinstine: “He’s a first-class lawyer and litigator. I doubt very seriously that Bob was surprised; he’s too smart for that.”

Rosenbaum also opined that Ridder’s mini-reign of terror might never have happened had Randy Lebedoff — the Strib’s recently reinstalled in-house counsel — been in place at the time of his hiring. Now, Rosenbaum says, “I assume that she will bring good counsel to a case that is nothing more than a huge black eye and an embarrassment to what used to be a venerable institution.”
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(Thank you, partner. Back to Lambert.)

My question is this:

Dean Singleton would appear to be holding a very good hand — make that “extraordinarily good.” Judge Higgs’ decision essentially confirms that Singleton’s case is rock solid. (He wouldn’t have granted an injunction if it wasn’t.) Conversely, Avista is stuck with squat. A pair of twos, at best.

So why, looking at the millionaire gimps across the table, wouldn’t Singleton press on for punitive damages?

As I understand it, a push for punitive damages would grant Singleton access to something Avista’s close-mouthed, close-to-the-vest partnership would never ever want … namely, full disclosure of their worth. The mere thought of having to lay out who Avista actually is and what is in their tax returns would be enough — you’d think — for them to approach Singleton on bleeding knees — pleading for a settlement that puts a bullet through the head of this beast.

Dan Oberdorfer, one of Singleton’s attorneys from Leonard, Street and Deinard, was tight-lipped this afternoon about where his client might go next. “Let’s just say we are pleased with today’s decision.” If I were Oberdorfer I wouldn’t screw up a good deal trending bigger and better by the minute by making any irrationally (or rationally) exuberant comments to the press either.

So here’s my speculative analysis, based on following this tawdry, but outrageously expensive saga for the past few months. (One inside-Strib source, not a check-to-check reporter, puts Avista’s legal bill well north of Singleton’s. So, get out your calculators, Avista could very likely be looking at a legal bill of, at minimum, $10 million or more … to date. And for purposes of perspective, I am advised that $3 million buys 40 reporters per year at $65k plus $10k in benefits.)

As much as Singleton may have been annoyed by Ridder’s cavalier disregard for professional ethics, I’m still not buying that what he wanted most is to see the little rich kid slapped down in open court, or even to be proven right in his interpretation of ethical publishing. All that strikes me as too small potatoes for an operator like Singleton. This is a guy who sees himself as the only real newspaper man in what is very quickly devolving to a one-newspaper universe here in Minneapolis-St.Paul.

My guess is that Singleton, someone who understands the meaning of the word “ruthless,” sees Par Ridder’s almost adolescent bungling as a gift … which he can exploit to create very serious suffering for a group of dilettante publishers (Avista) who were hoping to make a quick killing and blow out of town without scuffing their tassled loafers.

The end game to this scenario has a battered Avista, already watching every Star Tribune revenue indicator fall into the toilet, becoming receptive to a fire-sale buy-out offer — from Singleton — years before they originally planned.

Here is an excellent Editor & Publisher story on the current state of Twin Cities newspaper finances.

With OJ Simpson all over the news again, reminding everyone how subtleties like evidence, logic and common sense occasionally have no bearing at all on the American legal system, I was prepared to hear that after reviewing the evidence in the matter of Par Ridder’s multiple, uh, indiscretions, Ramsey County Judge David Higgs had decided that all being fair in love and private equity, this was a case of no harm no foul.

On the other hand … since Ridder conceded virtually every point in Dean Singleton’s complaint you’d have to be a blind horse in a deep forest on a moonless night not to see the guy was guilty as hell. So the ruling is … he sits for a year …

Then this morning, in what has to be regarded as a textbook example of generically obtuse
executive “communication”, Chris Harte, Strib owner Avista Capital Partners’ “face of journalism” and now interim publisher, issued a memo stating “this was clearly not the result we EXPECTED” (my emphasis).

Now, “hoped for” I could accept. But “expected”? Did it occur to Harte that he was communicating to a group of several hundred professional skeptics? Not what you “expected”? As in. “It never occurred to us … .” Now that’s a reassuring display of critical judgment.

To say you “expected” something different in this decision, is kind of like Britney Spears’ (former) managers saying, “Despite the fact she showed up 20 pounds overweight, five margaritas and god knows what else to the wind, refused both a corset rehearsal, we fully expected a brilliant performance.”

Harte also had the bad sense to drag out the rusted, toothless saw about how “recent events [that would be the mendacity and ham-fisted lack of ethics displayed by your hand-picked publisher] will only make us stronger.” As I have said before, if there is one reporter, editor, sweet old lady at the call center or delivery driver so stupid they believe that anything in the past five months has made them “stronger”, they deserve to be fired — or worse, sit on a beach for a year with Par Ridder.

I will continue to gather comments throughout the day, but I have to note a curious line in an early version of Matt McKinney’s official Star Tribune story. It read, “Officials for the Star Tribune and its owner, Avista Capital Partners, could not be immediately reached for comment.”

Really? Granted, Higgs’ decision came out first thing this morning, but we’ve all been on alert since last Friday, awaiting the decision. Neither Harte or editor Nancy Barnes had given McKinney a cell-phone contact for the perfunctory comment? (A later version by McKinney included a bland quote from Barnes asserting the need to continue putting out “a great paper.” I’m not ripping McKinney here, rather the lack of basic coordination on what was going to be a major story.

As the legal battle continues — despite the judgment and the significant cost to Avista of defending Ridder, (very likely more than the $3 million the paper’s former owners put into the Star Tribune Foundation) — the question over the next few months will be, “Why ever let this guy back in the building?”

One prominent Strib writer, requesting anonymity out of an on-going need to support a family, remarked, “The guy has already been overwhelmingly publicly rejected by the journalists he is supposed to lead, and now his tenuous claims to legal legitimacy have been stripped away by the court.

“So now he has a year to rearrange the mirrors in the Magers’ mansion to better advantage, important if you’re a fellow his size. But why bother waiting for him? These guys,” referring to Avista’s stated short term interest in the Star Tribune, “aren’t going to be here that long.

“Ridder got what? $600,000 from Knight-Ridder for promising to stay in St. Paul? Well, that was a contingency for any inconvenience he might suffer. So he’s been paid. This is the inconvenience. Take the money and take a hike.”

More to follow.