The Rake Magazine

Tag: star tribune

  • Mr. Smith Goes to Kenwood

    Dane Smith is back, and he’s back with
    the panache that only serious money can sustain. Is this a good thing?
    As per Rupert Murdoch’s Pravda West, you decide!

    When last we saw our hometown hero, March of 2007, Dane Smith was walking the plank at the Newsreel of the Twin Cities,
    where the new spew of hard-edged gossiping, gay-bashing,
    Muslim-bashing, Kersten-style investigative journalism has dragged
    Strib reader’s average IQ down yet another 20 or 30 points. (When IQ
    approaches zero it’s a basic math problem; check out renormalization. If you find this stuff difficult, you’re reading too much Strib).

    Back
    to our story, shouldn’t we feel sorry for Smith, who coughed up a
    20-plus-year career of determinedly non-partisan political reporting in
    favor of getting out "while a good buyout offer was available"?

    No, we shouldn’t. Smith quickly re-invented himself, jumping the shark
    onto the career path of a politician who’s been around long enough to
    know what principles to sacrifice, and when. He followed the money.

    A
    mere month from his Strib swanbyline, Smith was "found" for the
    self-identified "progressive economic think tank" Growth and Justice in a "search" conducted by DFL mover and perennial candidate Rebecca Yanisch. This hookup paired Smith with ex-Strib crony and DFL candidate (do I sense a trend?) Joel Kramer, in a deal which looks chummier than a Wild night in the penalty box.

    Politicians
    leaving office are inclined to tap their Rolodexes, those arteries
    through which political influence and big money run fastest, for
    whatever purposes motivate them. Smith is now the poster boy for an epidemic of similar vascular incursions by exiting political journalists.

    What
    brings this all to mind is that, on Wednesday past, Smith and his pals,
    self-appointed keepers of Minnesota’s moral and electoral rectitude,
    treated us to a gloriously righteous fit of profitable indignation, the
    Worst Political Advertising in America Awards Ceremony. The event was, more or less, the political set’s version of the Bad Sex in Fiction Awards. Or something.

    Smith’s pre-event spiel
    touted an "Academy Awards style event," but admitted the content was
    just the baddest stuff of a few intern-hours’ search on YouTube. He
    proposed "marketing it as a way for people to blow off steam" in a
    "non-partisan, multi-partisan setting," but that’s where it gets even
    harder to believe.

    What it is, really is, is a feel good dollar hook for Growth and Justice, Smith’s we’re-not-very-partisan lobby. Smith’s real message is "send me money!"

    Growth and Justice has only one identifiable BOD Republican (Arlen Erdahl). The case makes itself that G&J is "nothing more than a front group for the DFL."
    Nevertheless, Smith, like most partisan Democrats, has handed over to
    the right the right to be openly partisan about anything. Like Dems in
    general, he’s scared to death of the word.

    Wednesday,
    in exchange for the paper-thin political cover of having kicked-out
    (Ron Erhardt) and forgotten (Charlie Weaver) Republicans,
    self-promoters (Mitch Pearlstein) desperate for their thoughts to be
    remembered, and US Senators (some guy named Coleman) desperate for
    their acts to be forgot, all act as award co-presenters, along with a
    bevy of the DFL’s Kenwood elite, Smith and G&J happily conceded Democratic ads to be just as stupid, dishonest, and downright evil as Republicans’.

    Irony
    the First is that Smith’s methods, indeed his very position, are those
    he so recently decried. His portentously perverse parting proposition
    for a Strib successor: "Always pay attention to who’s getting what and
    why    . I’ve always liked the old saw about comforting the afflicted and
    afflicting the comfortable." Today no powerful or desirous Minnesota politician is too comfortable to sit in the shade of the G&J umbrella.

    And let’s not mention that, as an entrenched media elitist, Smith has no trouble convincing MSM (see here, and here) to spring for free space ("earned media," in political parlance) to promote his fund raising activities.

    To
    be fair (must I?), Smith and his cronies are emulating a right wing
    strategy of years’ proven effectiveness. For as long as memory, the
    Heritage Foundation, American Enterprise Institute, Cato Institute and
    other unabashed cash laundries have ecstatically catapulted Republican
    candidates and causes upon us from behind the invisible shield of non-profit tax deductions. Left-wingers are finally catching on, and G&J is but one of a rapidly flocking coterie of port side dollar decoys.

    But the impartiality illusion must be maintained.

    G&J’s
    complaints about Dem ads are fatuous at best. Growth and Justice
    cheerily Swift-boats national Democrats, declaring the DNC’s smooth,
    smart Valentine’s Day 2008 "Sweetheart Deal" to be the bad ad equal to North Carolina lunatic fringer Vernon Robinson’s 2004 "Twilight Zone v. Leave It To Beaver." "Sweetheart Deal," tapped as a "guilt by association" ad, wins G&J’s Daisy Award for Dems bashing Republicans, while "Twilight Zone" wins the Willie Award for the reverse. But there’s a qualitative difference between the two.

    Robinson,
    who has lost Republican primaries in multiple NC Congressional districts,
    takes on Islamic extremists, homosexuals, lesbians, feminists, liberal
    judges, burning American flags, killing a million babies, the ten
    commandments, God, black children born out of wedlock, Jesse Jackson,
    Al Sharpton, racial quotas, aliens (with and without spaceships) and
    the unguarded Mexican border, in 59 seconds flat. He’s an avenging
    angel, and there are a lot of us on his hit list. McCain and Bush may
    not be peas in every issue’s pod, as "Sweetheart Deal" hints, but
    they’re from adjacent rows of the same vegetable garden, and the ad
    uses McCain’s own audio to make that point. The DNC MO isn’t guilt by
    association; it’s association by guilt. Don’t bother trying to decode
    this one. It’s tautological.

    Smith’s
    supreme intellectual insult, though, for those whose IQ numbers still
    require sock removal (see paragraph 2), doesn’t even have a
    (non-)partisan point. It’s a shame shame about using sex to sell
    politics. Smith/G&J cite a clever tongue and cheek (sic) show by porn actress and political opportunist Mary Carey,
    demonstrating her qualifications to command the office of Governor of
    California, and whatever else might arise. How opportune! Mr. Smith, to
    lure us to your very own fund raiser by flashing a hint of porn. C’mon,
    Dane, who’s zoomin’ who?

    To
    entertain a rumsfeldian dialogue, is the growth of Growth and Justice
    justifiable? No. Is it necessary to balance the political equation?
    Yes. Will American politics improve, as Democrats catch up with
    Republicans in the Think Tank Wars? I doubt it. Is there a better
    way? You tell me!

     

  • Legal Lolitas

    I have always wondered why certain cars remain off limits to men of a particular age.

    What makes a Red Corvette more age-appropriate than a Mini Cooper? (Forgetting the conventional wisdom that posits the Corvette as "gold chain"—a sentiment unmasked as a simple prejudice with the Z06, a true American Beauty in red.)

    Or, for that matter a Mazdaspeed 3? Or the brand-new Mercedes SLK?

    While I am barely beyond a sophomoric mindset (seething, Kersten-kudoing hatred of video games notwithstanding including filthy games like Donkey Kong) I can appreciate certain rides for what they are. That is why I am currently fixated on a turbo VW bug in black.

    This car has a lot of issues.

    It is not the fastest 180 HP turbo on the market, its handling is a little spongy and it will choke and die on the dust of a Mazdaspeed 3.

    It does pack one little asset however–the simple to chip 1.8 liter turbo. I have seen this chipped to a cool 250+HP without extensive modifications to the drivetrain or suspension. You can also take full advantage of the superb after-market upgrades that exist for VW/Audi and even Porsche vehicles.

    Not that you, given your age and gender, would take advantage of a situation like this. Not with your misplaced longing for a Jag (not.) Not with this black bug possessing an equally black rag top (yes, its a convertible.)

    What would this do to your rug?

     

     

  • If I were king of the fore-e-e-est

    I hope you all noticed the bold initiative of the Star Tribune, as expressed on their editorial page on Sunday. Yup, they put their heads together, snorted and wheezed with the Herculean effort, pressed hard on their temples to concentrate the intellect, and made their endorsement regarding tomorrow’s "Super Tuesday" nationwide primaries and caucuses.

    And you thought they were too timid to actually make an endorsement without doing a focus group first of what they could get away with without offending their ever shrinking base of readers and advertisers.

    Well, the joke’s on you. The Strib editorial board ain’t afraid of nobody or no thing. Not nobody. Not nohow.

    And just to prove that, they threw caution to the wind, damned the torpedoes, hurled themselves once more into the breach and endorsed…voting.

    As they put it, "Super Tuesday, Too important to miss." If that weren’t endorsement enough, they even said,"It could be a transformative moment in American politics."

    That’s some bold talkin’ there.

    So whatever you do, don’t miss Super Tuesday. It’s too important AND it could be transformative.

    And speaking of "Super", how ’bout them Giants? They made the top of the Strib’s front page today, right above the coverage of the candidates.

  • Lost Files of the Star Trib Readers' Rep

    Sunday morning’s aren’t nearly as much fun anymore. Not long ago I’d heft the Strib off the doorstep, chuck out the ads, the news and the sports and dig right into my favorite column, "The Readers’ Representative." Having worked for a decade and a half at a daily newspaper, I miss hearing first hand the way self-criticism is transformed in to self-congratulation, the way dense curtains fall over assurances of transparency, the way anyone and everyone higher up the company ladder is not only always right, but right and brave. And especially I missed the way a big, high-profile media company saved a bundle on PR flackery by having a compliant middle manager wallpaper over the corpses hanging in the living room.

    But now I just miss the Reader’s Rep. Back in early October the kids up the ladder decided that, gosh, they were just so committed to giving us the latest health news — not so much on dark, complicated stuff like how local health insurance billionaires have goosed the cost of medical care and our collective stress level — but rather the importance of eating vegetables and getting annual exams, they "reassigned" the old Readers’ Rep to the health section and replaced her with … well nobody, apparently.

    The last two Sundays have featured columns by the Strib’s top editor, Nancy Barnes. In the first one she displayed a lot of comaraderie with veterans like Paul McEnroe, a.k.a. "Mac", as she called him, much like she does when they bowl together every Tuesday and Thursday night, I’m guessing. This week she gave out a number that’ll connect you to an editor somewhere in the building (maybe) whenever you’re pissed off at Nick Coleman, want to give Katherine Kersten a wet kiss or point out that someone, maybe one of the new (and cheaper) hires on the suburban team had Stillwater on the banks of the Mississippi in the morning’s East Metro edition.

    Somehow this isn’t as appealing to me. Obviously the old Readers’ Rep wasn’t actually "representing" readers so much as she was taking bullets for her paymasters, the now beached Par Ridder in particular. Not that Mr. Ridder’s myriad problems; a near complete lack of awareness of business ethics being just one, were ever addressed mind you. But the sheer spectacle of the Readers’ Rep’s elephant-in-the-room avoidance and the frenetic patter of her happy feet scurrying back and forth in search of any vantage point to laud the wisdom and bravery of her colleagues was reliably entertaining. You could read her and think to yourself, "Goddamit, I may have to spend eight hours in a cubicle working for psychotic nerds, but at least I don’t have to sign my name to that!"

     

     

     

  • Over the Coals 2007

    BUSINESS

    On the other hand, we recommend that you call Duluth “Paris.”
    A New York marketing research firm hired by Meet Minneapolis, the Minneapolis Convention and Visitors Association, to help with a branding campaign for Minneapolis and St. Paul came up with the suggestion that Minneapolis and St. Paul refer to themselves in their marketing materials as Minneapolis-St. Paul.

    A cool, shady (really, really shady) place, conveniently located between Brian Herron Boulevard and the Dean Zimmermann Bike Path
    In May, a new, much-admired park opened along the Mississippi riverfront, next to the Guthrie Theater. It was originally going to be called McGuire Park, after former UnitedHealth Group CEO William McGuire and his wife Nadine, whose foundation donated $5 million to create and maintain the park. But when McGuire resigned in October 2006, after an internal investigation revealed that United was backdating stock options to sweeten the pot for its executives, a new name was cooked up: Gold Medal Park.

    Arrested Development: the Minneapolis version
    Former heir apparent Curtis Carlson Nelson left Carlson Companies and sued the corporation’s high-profile doyenne (who just happens to be his mother) because she refused to name him CEO and cut him in on the family’s huge fortune. Marilyn Carlson Nelson countersued, by claiming her son was too incompetent to run the business.

    In related news: Yahoo Serious named most powerful man in hollywood
    In March, Forbes.com ranked Kevin McHale as the top general manager in major professional sports. The website of the formerly esteemed business publication said it didn’t matter that McHale had never won a championship in his twelve years at the helm of the Minnesota Timberwolves. Two criteria pushed Big Mac to the top: His dramatic improvement over the horrid performance of his predecessor, “Trader” Jack McCloskey; and his narrow win in the “Separated at Birth: Herman Munster Category.”

     

    Sometimes that old addition-by-subtraction thing doesn’t really add up
    In July, the Timberwolves traded Kevin Garnett, the greatest athlete in the history of Minnesota team sports, to the Boston Celtics. Afterward, Wolves owner Glen Taylor told the media that KG had asked for too much money, protected malcontents in the locker room, worked behind the scenes to get former coach Flip Saunders fired, and generally contributed to the team’s dysfunction. KG is the current favorite to win his second NBA Most Valuable Player award and take the Celts to the playoffs, while the Wolves are on a plodding track to the league’s worst record.

    I never promised you a Rose Bowl … oh, wait—I did!
    In January, when he was named head coach of the Gophers football team, Tim Brewster proclaimed, “Our expectation is to win a Big Ten championship now.” Later he boasted, “You’re not going to be a great salesman if you don’t have a great product … This is going to be an easy sell.” Sadly, Brewster never deviated from that script as the Gophers proceeded to go 1-11, losing more games than any team in Gopher football history.


    FLYING HIGH?
    We didn’t think that the beleaguered Northwest Airlines—which, among other catastrophic blunders in 2006, issued a pamphlet advising soon-to-be-laid-off employees to save money by Dumpster diving, renting out rooms in their houses, and popping sample prescription pills—could possibly offer up additional follies in ’07. We were wrong.

    We recommend a little product Called “Airborne”—it’s effervescent!
    On July 1, the airline announced that it lost $25 million in June after being forced to cancel hundreds of flights. Spokespeople said the cancellations were the result of pilots calling in sick.

    Corporate welfare: Helping moguls get back on the road to happy, productive lives.
    On July 31, however, the airline announced it had pulled in a $273 million pre-tax profit, a 53 percent increase from the same period in 2006.

    Fee Enhancement? Is That Why We’re Getting All Those Emails?
    The very next day, on August 1, the lead law firm that handled the airline’s bankruptcy case attempted to nab another $3.5 million on top of the $35.4 million it had already charged. They claimed they needed a “fee enhancement” after realizing that the airline would be able to pay back nearly seventy-five percent of its creditors. That idea didn’t fly, but lawyers took in quite a haul nonetheless in steering the airline out of its mess: twenty-two firms pulled in $124.2 million in fees and expenses.

    See? Corporate welfare really does work
    That was followed in late October by Northwest’s announcement about its third quarter: $244 million in net profits, which it declared its highest profit in ten years.

     

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  • Boned

    Noam Chomsky says a well-informed
    populace is a necessary ingredient to any democracy. In other words,
    we’re boned.

    Newspaper readership is down,
    and showing no signs of reversing the freefall. And since
    they’re not reading, Americans are forced to rely on such reliable
    political indicators as gut instinct, party affiliation, and the ever
    popular "he’s kinda cute in a presidential way" vote. Even more
    frightening, any attempts to address the problem have only compounded
    the issues.

    Here in Minnesota, redesigning
    our leading paper to include coloring
    pages     (sponsored
    by Crayola, naturally) hasn’t done a whole hell of a lot to improve
    the landscape, as evidenced by the recent layoffs (which Sid Hartman’s
    "close personal friendship" with Lovecraftian Powers have shielded him from, to date) and
    consolidation. Of course, this is further evidenced by the fact that C.J. still writes
    a gossip/grammar column
    for the Star Tribune, no one actually reads the City Pages for anything
    but restaurant
    tips    , advice on safe B&D play, and where to find the
    aforementioned B&D play    ,
    and the
    Pioneer Press    ,
    well, the Pioneer Press is in St. Paul. I hear they have hockey there
    these days.

     

    But what does this mean? What doom and plagues could something as innocuous as poor
    newspaper readership and content as fluffy as Anne Hutchinson left in the dryer for a day and a
    half bring down on our tranquil Midwestern existence? At best – a
    zombie apocalypse. At worst…a future in which Katherine Kersten serves
    as the Star Tribune’s first ever Page 3 girl. The truth is likely somewhere in
    the middle of these bleak predictions, but do you really want to risk
    it?

    Granted, I’ve already engaged
    in three of the five cardinal blogger clichés (bonus points to anyone
    who can name them in the comments below!), so I’ve probably already
    blown my wad of credibility into the digital Kleenex that is the Internet,
    but for the next week I’ll be doing my best to stave off the impending
    holocaust of the walking dead and mind-rending photography by taking
    a fresh look at the news of the day and providing some analysis. Or
    at least offer completely unconstructive viewpoints and commentary.
    And since I have nothing but disdain for Democrats, Republicans, Anarchists,
    Green Party members and those wacky Independence Party hosers (they’re
    Canadians, right? Only Canadians would put forth him as a gubernatorial candidate), I don’t
    have to choose my targets carefully. Or even aim, really.

  • Randy, The Reader's Rep …

    (A semi-regular Q&A with "Randy" the new Star Tribune Reader’s Representative, most frequently found on the corner stool at the Dry Dock roadhouse, in the shadow of the big microwave tower, Chaffey, Wisconsin.)

    Randy, Your Reader’s Rep: Dang but stuff piles up. I come back from baitin’ a few bear traps, havin’ a couple beers and getting old Jonsered ready for cuttin’ season and look at all this mail. Sheeeit. When the Star Tribune hired me back, I had no idea they really meant a weekly gig. I thought with little Par out sun-bathin’ it’d quiet down.

    Guess not. So here goes.

    Question: I heard that the staff at the Star Tribune all got flu shots the other
    day? Is this true? Where did this happen? Were these shots administered in a sanitary way? And did the top executives
    join in?

    Randy, Your Reader’s Rep: That is definitely true. Flu season is coming on pretty strong, and Avista Capital Partners, the really fine folks that own the paper want all their Full Time Employee Units running like a big pack of Dodge Hemis. There are a lot of very big stories that are going to mean plenty to the Avista folks’ year-end numbers. Like for example, ‘Who is going to buy them damned parking lots?’, and whether the folks in Eveleth and Granite Falls are going to pitch in to build a new stadium for the Vi-Queens, which would mean Avista might have half a chance of selling the main building to what’s his name, the billionaire dude from New Jersey.

    As for "where it happened"; it wasn’t in the butt, Bob.

    I know. I know. I heard some pretty risque jokes about everyone standing up, dropping trow and bending over at their desks while Chris Harte went down the line pokin’ tushies. But the truth is everyone took it in the arm.

    Don’t know about the sanitary thing. I suppose a bunch of $4 coffee drinkers like that crowd used … ooooo … pre-moistened towelettes, like you get at Famous Dave’s. But I’m not sure. I mean, hell, I usually just wave a butane lighter under my buck knife to cut out slivers.

    But yeah. Chris Harte himself took a pokin’. Right there in line like he was a normal person or something. Ain’t that something?

    Funny though how happy and agreeable everyone was for the rest of the day.

    Question: I was reading that bastard Nick Coleman’s column a couple days ago and I noticed that right next to his little picture, the one where he doesn’t look anything like George Clooney, it said, "One view". Was that a typo or something? I mean, he’s writing a column, right? Who else’s view were we supposed to think it was? And does this mean that all the other columnists, like Katherine Kersten and C.J. and Sid Hartman and Reusse are going to have "One View" next to their pictures. (And none of them look much like George Clooney, either.)

    Randy, Your Reader’s Rep: That’s a good question. Tell you the truth, I didn’t notice until you brought it up. So I sent a note asking what the deal was. Nobody wrote back. But I hear through the old company grapevine that no one told Coleman about it and no one knew who put it there. But come on, there are so many brave and courageous editors at the Star Tribune doing so many important things to, you know, enhance the quality of life in the better zip codes of Minneapolis they probably just overlooked it.

    My guess is all whoever stuck it there meant to say is that, "This is that commie prick Coleman’s view, not our view." In fact, I gotta check and see if it says, "Our View" next to Kersten’s and Sid’s pictures the next time they write.

    Question: That blonde Republican babe, Sarah Janecek, wrote a story this week saying how a couple of your reporters used some pretty foul language talking to the MnDOT people. Those guys McEnroe and Kennedy sounded like jerks. I suppose they were pretty ashamed when that story came out, and they must really be pissed that people know how obnoxious they are.

    Randy, Your Reader’s Rep: Oh yeah, and how. I tell you, nothing
    makes those two stick their tales between their legs more than everyone in town knowing they shout in the phone and use words like, "bullshit". I don’t know what they were smiling about after that thing ran.

    Because, we have a very strict policy about bad language here at the Star Tribune. Penalties, too. If you’re heard saying, "This place is total bullshit", you have to put a dollar in the Save Par jar. If you say, "I’m going to cap the next a**hole who assigns me an Eagan Sewer Commission story", you have put in $5. Of course if you say something like, "These Avista douche bags wouldn’t know a paragraph from a parsnip," you have a choice between hurling yourself off the roof or editing a Katherine Kersten column.

    Question: I see that you are starting to run more editorials supporting a new Vikings stadium, which would be built practically right next door and most likely goose up your real estate value pretty nicely. Don’t you think you need to at least mention that fact every time you write opinion pieces? You know, maybe a standard little box at the top that says something like, "If you stupid chumps bite on this deal we’ll make a shitload of dough."

    Randy, Your Reader’s Rep: Man, I’ve heard cynical. But you about take the jelly donut. You got something against football? You want to see a place without a team I suggest you come up to Superior, because that’s what you’re going to end up with if you don’t close ranks and play to win, pally.

    The folks at Avista Capital Partners, some of whom have even heard of Green Bay, are actually doing you one shiny ripe favor. They are looking out for your interests when obviously you won’t. They are family people just like you, and they know that special feeling fans get when they contribute a little bit extra out of every pay check to have a place where, you know, if they cut their coupons and save up a couple months they might be able to take their kid to see a game. Three months if they want to park and have a beer.

    Until next time. Think transparent thoughts.

  • Banana Republic Fades into the Sunset

    Damn! Over here I keep a list of great story ideas and names of people I’ve really got to get around to catching up with, just to see what their story is today. Like MPR’s Bill Kling. Like all the guys who played in The Warheads years ago. And like Kirk Anderson, the former cartoonist for the Pioneer Press whose heave-ho in April 2003 was early, solid confirmation that "local, local" was going to have more to do with "money, money" and "innocuous, innocuous" than reader appeal.

    So what happens? That bastard, David Brauer at MinnPost.com, posts the news that Anderson’s weekly, spot-on evisceration of the myriad Bush follies, "Banana Republic: Adventures in Amnesia" is being dropped by the Star Tribune. (Brauer likes being called a bastard when he beats someone on a story.)

    Much to my disappointment, when I called Anderson was not raging against the machine. "It had to happen sooner or later," he said. "I’m thankful to the Star Tribune for giving me the opportunity." And, "I wish that it could have gone on endlessly." Well, you and me both, Kirk.

    With 70% of the public saying they believe the country has jumped the rails and is wandering in a profoundly bad direction (not to mention seriously considering a 180 degree change next year) you would assume the topics Anderson was trading in — gross abuse of executive power, officially sanctioned torture, the decline of our international reputation, etc. — would be thoroughly mainstream fare — and in a novel, entertaining concept.

    Obviously the quarter page the Strib had been giving Anderson will not go to a Denny Hecker ad — (but let’s not give them ideas) — and most likely will be filled with … well what? More deep thoughts from Debra Saunders and Jonah Goldberg?

    Anderson is very complimentary to opinion exchange editor, Eric Ringham. The feeling is mutuial.

    "I think Kirk’s a genius," says Ringham. "I really hope we can find a way to work together again. I just wish his fans were more vocal than they were. I loved it. But I didn’t hear the kind of buzz I wanted to hear. But the decision was strictly about money."

    Being a classier guy than me Anderson wouldn’t
    divulge how much the Strib was paying him, (I’m guessing
    somewhere between a free-lance music review and a quarter the monster
    salary of one of those sweet old switchboard ladies). He did put it in
    perspective saying that he and his wife aren’t big spenders and "pretty
    much live like college kids".

    Ringham likewise insists that the decision to drop, "Banana Republic" was, "not content driven." And, as for the money involved, the intention, he says, really is to hire a part time writer with the Anderson money, someone who will have to be paid at Guild rates. (If Captain Fishsticks or John Hinderaker gets the job the Strib will take unholy hell from this quarter.)

    As Ringham describes it he approached Anderson around the time of the Strib’s expensive re-design with the idea of doing some kind of "graphic novel", (as Brauer also pointed out). "In very short order Kirk brought back four different proposals, all of them very professional."

    The decision to drop "Banana Republic", he says, was made by interim editor for the editorial page, Scott Gillespie, who was recently elevated (some say "pushed") into the Op-Ed department in the wake of the paper’s not exactly cheery parting with Susan Albright.

    "But," says Ringham, "I don’t know that I fault him for the decision, and I may very well have made the same decision were it mine to make."

    It is my opinion that Steve Sack does a very good job as the paper’s official cartoonist. But in an age of declining readership … yadda yadda .. when papers are supposedly on high alert for topics and concepts that attract the mythical "younger reader", the decision to drop a sharp-edged, "Daily Show"-worthy weekly cartoon strip/graphic novel arouses suspicions (again) that the new, "local, local, hyper-local" Strib’s idea of irresistible fare for "younger readers" and people hip to "new media" are celebrity consumer features on Hannah Montana, reviews of "Halo 3" and of course, the latest sighting of Josh Hartnett.

    Anderson also has no bitter rip for the PiPress, although literally everyone who might have had a hand in "right-sizing" him out of that building in ’03 are now gone themselves. (For all intents and purposes the PiPress editorial "department" has been reduced to a staff of one, Jim Ragsdale. He’ll be local enough.) Neither paper, Anderson says, rode him hard to mushify his cartoons, even in the run-up to the war in ’03, when almost every paper in the country (with the notable exception of deputy editor Jim Boyd at the Strib) was swallowing the Bush administration bit and charging hard for freedom and glory, shock and awe.

    "Of course," he says, "as a staffer at the Pioneer Press my cartoon ideas got shaped a lot more than as a freelancer for the Star Tribune. I’d be told to ‘tweak this’ and ‘change that’. But it wasn’t that bad. I look at some of the ideas I had and I’m grateful they said, ‘No’."

    This despite the prevailing mood at the recent Association of American Editorial Cartoonists, where, he says, most of the complaining was about "the push toward the mushy middle" and the "local, local" gimmick, the latter of which — as has often been said — serves to discreetly remove the biggest and most provocative themes and material of the moment from the playlist of editorial writers and satirists.

    "The war in Iraq is a huge national story and provides a lot of ideas," says Anderson, who by the way is free to re-launch "Banana Republic" anywhere he chooses. "It’s tougher doing a cartoon on the Chamber of Commerce. It’s not nearly as juicy."

    No kidding.

     

     

  • If you're going to insult me, cancel my subscription first

    Here is the first sentence of today’s Star Tribune editorial on "Aiding Baby Boomers’ Search for Meaning": "The nation’s supernumerary baby-boomers have reached what’s being
    gently called "the second half of life," but the big generation is
    still doing what it has done since its diaper days: It’s demanding
    notice and altering the contours of every phase of life it touches."

    Yuk.

    And not only for the mawkishness. "Supernumerary" means superfluous, not numerous.

    Of course, maybe the editorial writer is superannuated, which means "too old to work."

  • Strib's Hage to join Klobuchar

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

     

    Here’s the memo from Scott Gillespie:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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