Media Monitor: January 10

Today's post from Minnesota Monitor:

Model T Journalism: The best--and saddest--quote from City Pages' coverage of the Avista purchase of the Star Tribune comes from reporter Mike Kaszuba:

A lot of us here, a core group, are too young to be eligible for Social Security and too old to be considered young. We need to squeeze out another 10 years to stay in this industry. And you sit back and say, wow, I wonder if there is another 10 years left in this industry? We are the Watergate babies, from back when it was cool and sexy to be a journalist. We were naive, goofy idealists in a way. Now it is about dollars and cents. The thing I got into it for, I'm not sure it's even among the top five reasons this place runs anymore. Your best day is publishing a story that you'd really like to have your name on top of, for all the right reasons. And you look around and wonder how many people who are around here anymore share that need to put out a paper that matters. Then you see what McClatchy paid for us and what they sold it for and you think, my god, I am sitting in a Model-T here.

Surge prep: Even though a large majority of readers in an unscientific Star Tribune online poll say they won't watch George W. Bush's speech tonight, Eric Black offers an excellent primer on what to look for in the speech, while the Pioneer Press has front-page coverage (same placement as Black's print piece) on what state officials hope to hear tonight.

Speaking of Eric Black: Why doesn't his boss, Doug Tice, just get his own blog already? Some of the Strib's blogs haven't been updated in months--SeeSaw hasn't been updated since October, and two others don't yet have 2007 posts--yet Tice has already been a featured guest poster at Black's The Big Question three times this year, January 4, 6, and 9.

Is MySpace a free-speech zone? In 2004, media mogul and Fox owner Rupert Murdoch petitioned the Federal Communications Commission complaining that proposed rules on media consolidation violated the free speech rights of companies. In a funny turn of events, the Murdoch-owned MySpace is refusing to run ads on its site for Common Cause's anti-media consolidation campaign. See--and host on your blog--the offending ad.