Read Standing Up: New York Times' David Carr Comes Home to a Changed Media Landscape

Growing up in Hopkins, Minnesota, David Carr observed his dad’s morning ritual, which involved toast and a copy of the Star Tribune. "This, I thought, is what it means to be a grown-up,” he wrote in a January column for The New York Times. "You eat your food standing up, and you read the newspaper. So I did the same thing when I turned 13.”

Today, having moved from editor of the now-defunct Twin Cities Reader in the mid-1990s to editor of Washington, D.C.’s City Paper, to his current job as a blogger and media writer for the Times, he still reads his morning paper that way. But his family, as he notes in that essay, doesn't: his kids are checking text-messages, Facebook, or the mail for Netflix arrivals, while his wife heads to work with iPod earbuds in place.

In Minneapolis this week, Carr witnessed the local impact of this technological shift away from the "paper artifacts" he grew up reading. He covered the protest on Thursday by Star Tribune employees facing buyouts and reassignments. And he characterized the legal feud sparked by Par Ridder's jump from publisher of the Pioneer Press to the top job at the Star Tribune as a distraction for companies that should be battling to stay alive: the fight, he wrote, is as if "two men, hanging off the cliff by the fingernails of one hand, decided to have a knife fight with the other hand."

Before he gave the keynote at the Society of Professional Journalists Page One Awards banquet Tuesday night, Carr spent a few minutes with Minnesota Monitor discussing how such shifts are affecting the Twin Cities. He weighed in on local media players, including former City Pages editor Steve Perry (praiseworthy as an editor, less so as an individual) and Nancy Barnes, the Star Tribune editor who seems "plenty sincere," but finds herself "playing out of George Orwell’s playbook" in spinning newsroom cuts as a "renewed focus." And, in considering the Times' successes, offered a bit of advice for managers who are pondering deeper cuts at area papers.

"I don’t think that staffing appropriately to come up with compelling content is a luxury," he said. "I think it’s a necessity. I don’t think you can cut your way to excellence or cut your way to viability."

As past editor of the Twin Cities resident and editor who's now a New York Times media columnist, you have an interesting insider/outsider vantage point. With what’s gone on here with Village Voice Media and City Pages, the Pioneer Press lawsuit and the layoffs that preceded it, and the Star Tribune’s restructuring, what does it look like from where you sit?

I picked up a copy of City Pages this week as I always do, and compared to other alternatives, it’s a really good paper. I still have hurt feelings about City Pages eventually running the Twin Cities Reader out of business. I wasn’t here but I still felt it. ...I’ve never much liked [former editor Steve Perry] or his approach. But I think as an editor, he really had few peers, in his ability to attract and sustain really, really great writers.

People like to talk about his superciliousness or his politics. The test is on the page. For years I’ve been coming back and seeing that paper, and I see papers all over the country. It’s a great paper. Or has been. And the idea that Village Voice Media didn’t have worse problems on their hands, I think is a joke. When you’ve got people like Britt Robson, Dave Schimke, Terri Sutton. Come on! Those are super-talented people.

Some say the New Times purchase of the Village Voice chain will lead to a more libertarian and less liberal — or perhaps more apolitical — kind of writing.

I share politics, probably, with Steve Perry, but I share newspaper approaches with [Village Voice Media]. I’ve always been, at both the Twin Cities Reader and at City Pages, equal opportunity in terms of choosing opponents and choosing targets. I’ve felt my job is to hold up a rigorous and true mirror that allows readers to make their own judgments. So I don’t know if that makes me a libertarian. I think it makes me a newspaperman.

I never wanted to work on an op-ed page. The other thing: [Village Voice Media] papers in general are far superior to most weeklies, and they fund great journalism, pay a living wage, pay healthcare. So many times the weeklies talk about how bad the dailies are, and I always think to myself: “Have you looked at your own paper lately? This thing sucks!”

What about the metro dailies? The lawsuit, the downsizing plans at the Star Tribune? What does that look like from your office at the New York Times?

I’m a person who grew up reading both those papers. My heroes worked at both those papers.

Who were some of those heroes?

I watched Eric Black, Tom Hamburger, Stormy Greener, Dane Smith at both papers, and I mean not just to restrict it to them. Local journalism in general was great: Eric Eskola [of WCCO and TPT], Pat Kessler [at WCCO], you name it. These people were giants to me. So, to watch papers — first the Pioneer Press -- cut right to the bone and foregoing their ambitions is sad.

I loved how the Pioneer Press was positioned as a feisty, nimble, fairly muscular competitor. The Star Tribune I don’t think has been trending well as a media organization. I think it’s a fairly safe paper. It’s far too focused on what they think the reader wants, as opposed to covering what they do. But they’re still within the bandwidth – plenty of great journalism: Paul McEnroe, Jon Tevlin, you name it.

To watch newspaper reporters out marching like steelworkers and raising their fists at the building they work in was scary and frightening to me. I don’t think there’s a boat high enough to really – you shouldn’t position me as being in a perch at the New York Times. You know, the people at the Wall Street Journal thought they had a pretty good perch two weeks ago. All the sticks are up in the air, and I don’t think anybody should feel too smug about what they’re doing. The regionals got problems. The nationals got problems. Small local dailies with monopolies still seem to be OK.

The question is how do they get from one ledge to the other? If there is a digital future how do they get there and still have the branded, quality, local content that gives them the edge?

What about local? A lot of what Nancy Barnes, the editor of the Strib, has said, and much of what we’ve heard since the 2005 redesign, is about “local, local” -- that we can make a difference by being intensely local. But I’ve also heard a lot of criticism about what might be left out -- world and national news that people need to be engaged civic participants – of that equation.

The Star Tribune gave up on a lot of that slowly over time. They had two people in their national bureau, really good ones, and now they’re going to one. The fact that there’s going to be no Duluth bureau, that somehow not having Larry Oakes in Duluth is good? I mean, c’mon! Duluth is a huge news bed. It’s a port city; it’s a place where you can jump off and cover the other half of the state. That can’t be good for the state. It can’t be good for the readers. It can’t be good for democracy.

She is saying these things partly because she has to, partly because she has to believe it. I talked to her the other day. She seems plenty sincere, but any editor who’s selling cutbacks as a renewed focus is going to be playing out of George Orwell’s playbook: more is less, less is more. You know what I mean? You have to engage in doublespeak, because you can’t step up to the mike and say, “You know what? This really sucks.”

It seems there’s a lot of injustice to many of the workers who’ve been at the paper a long time, have developed an expertise, and now are being assigned out of their jobs. But, on the other hand, there are some harsh financial realities—

You bring up a great point. We’ve always written without much emotion about job cuts or job reassignments in other industries, and now that it comes around to our industry, we’re squealing like a pig. I do think there’s an increased sensitivity and awareness because it’s our ox that’s being gored. And I do not doubt there are people that doubt the direness of the financial situation. But when you’re talking about classifieds down 30 percent year over year, that is a significant business problem. But you cannot work only the cost side to fix that.

Gary Gilson, head of the Minnesota News Council, recently praised a piece you wrote about changes at The New Republic. “It seems to me that people interested in journalistic standards could have a rich discussion about objectivity if they focused on a story such as Carr’s,” he wrote. “What I loved about Carr’s storytelling was the fact that he convinced me that he KNEW what he was talking about and he TOLD us, instead of hiding behind the journalistic convention of having to attribute every idea to some authoritative source.”

He seems to be saying you wrote with attitude and edge, rather than that here’s-one-side/here’s-the-other kind of scientific method—

What’s funny about that: that was my first straight news story coming off the blog, and I’d been blogging for four months. That was a blog hangover where I was just stepping up and writing what I thought. When I used to work here, I think it was Richard Broderick who said, “Truth is not the hole in the middle of the donut.” It’s on the donut somewhere.

I think part of the Strib's problem is that they’re so concerned with being even-handed and the perception that, because their editorial page is liberal, that they’re somehow a liberal paper. I think they’re far too careful in their discourse. You have to make a good reasoned argument, you have to be completely fair, you have to be able to back up everything you say with efficacious reporting, but achieving some sort of formal balance I think is a little bit of an archaic news concept and it reads as such. It reads, sort of... boring.

As a somewhat younger reader, I liked the tone you established. Papers like the Strib say that to stay afloat, they need to figure out how to engage these younger audiences, and maybe that writing style is one way to do it.

There's been a slow, creeping but very definite innovation in tone and content at the New York Times for some time. People say, how can you get away with writing what you want? It’s not an issue. What’s an issue is if you get it wrong, than flying monkeys come out of the ceiling and kill you.

To be modern, to be engaging, to do as you pointed out, to reach out to audiences in demographic terms -- not philosophical terms -- you have to do a direct address to the readers, and that’s not about what you think. It’s about what you’ve found out. I don’t write about the space between my ears. I’m a reporter all the way. Even though I do a media column, it’s extremely reported.

I interviewed Steve Perry awhile back and he said watching mainstream media like the Star Tribune trying to adapt to new technology and relate to readers is like "seeing your grandma in stretch pants, doing The Robot." I feel like, finally, they’re catching on, with Buzz.mn and blogs like Eric Black’s where readers can have conversations, but it seems they have so far to go to adapt to this online environment.

People like you need to think what you do is magical and effable and tough to do, and it’s not. We’ve got 27 blogs at the New York Times, and we have a lot of business on our blogs. You’d like to think it’s big and mysterious and so hard to do. It’s not really. It’s having the permission from ownership to experiment. A lot of times at the New York Times what we’re doing is saying, “Let’s give it a whirl.” ...Because we have such a tight feedback loop with our audience and we’re not up on Olympus, we find out fairly quickly what works and what does not.

Do you think you could do that if you had to cut your newsroom by 20 percent like the Strib is doing?

We’ve had significant buyouts. But there’s no question I live an entitled existence in terms of the level of staffing. But you’ve got to keep in mind that with all those people comes a great ambition to not just cover a city, not just cover a state, not just cover a country, but cover a world. There’s not many Scrabble players at The New York Times. There’s not many people who stroke their beards. Everybody is engaged. I don’t think that staffing appropriately to come up with compelling content is a luxury. I think it’s a necessity. I don’t think you can cut your way to excellence or cut your way to viability.

We’re insulated by our two-tiered staff structure, but so is Dow Jones, and it seems like there’s some kind of questions about that. I do think that so far private equity as an owner of a newspaper, with their need for high margins and quick exits, have been a flop so far. Who knows?

Do you long for the Cowles days, the private ownership days?

Yeah, I do. I prefer to work with people I have values in common with. [Times publisher] Arthur Sulzberger and I don’t have a lot in common in terms of background, but we share values up and down. I don’t spend a lot of time talking to the guy, but when I see him, I think we both are oddly bullish about the newspaper business.

We’re growing audience. We’re diversifying into online businesses in meaningful ways. But when you belong to public markets or you belong to private equity, the clock ticks at a rate where it’s very difficult to innovate your way to the future. No one wants to hear about five quarters. They want to know what’s going to happen this quarter.

You can’t blame them. I mean, money has no conscience.

[Cross-posted at Minnesota Monitor.]

Beyond "Black Monday" at the Star Tribune

Dubbed "Black Monday," the May 7 announcement that the Minneapolis Star Tribune is aiming to eliminate 145 positions including 50 in the newsroom, was followed by "Blue Tuesday," an emotional day in which newsroom employees were called in one-by-one to learn their fate. Many reporters will be assigned to new beats, some columnists will revert to reporting, and at least one has learned he'll be let go. And the unofficial word in the newsroom is that the editorial page staff will be cut to seven people.

The Rake's Brian Lambert reports that TV writer Neal Justin will be given the opportunity to "compete" with Deborah Rybak for a non-column reporting job; Linda Mack will be reassigned away from architecture coverage; and writer Sara Glassman will likely be losing her fashion beat.

Many longtime reporters are considering the buyout offer, which would offer two weeks of pay for each year of service, up to 52 weeks, plus six months of paid health insurance (the March buyout offer capped payouts at 40 weeks). The Newspaper Guild must approve the offer before its members can sign on.

Reached yesterday before she met with editors, Sharon Schmickle, an international reporter and 1995 Pulitzer Prize finalist, said, "It might be too strong to say I'm seriously considering TAKING a buyout. What I'm doing right now is using the occasion to explore a lot of options, to think about where the newspaper is going and whether I want to steer in the same direction or try something different."

She said, despite all the "gloomy analysis" about the future of print journalism, she's somewhat hopeful about new opportunities in the field, citing the online multimedia package on Liberia she worked on earlier this year.

"It was so cool to be able to add the power of audio and video to that report, and I'm eager to do more of it," she said. "On the other hand, I'm not sure how much interest there will be at the Star Tribune of the future in covering Liberia. The interest may be there. Nancy Barnes was very supportive of the project, and she committed the time and resources I needed to make it happen. I just don't know whether she could do the same in the future."

Pam Miller, at the Strib's Guild blog, wrote of the meetings, "People winced and wept upon learning that nonunion colleagues and friends were being abruptly let go. (We now work at a newspaper where someone like Par Ridder stays, and someone like Rob Daves goes?? Up is down, and down is up.)"

The paper's Matt McKinney reported Tuesday that the paper "gave an involuntary buyout" to Daves, longtime director of the Minnesota Poll and part-time manager of Buzz.mn. Daves said he was too busy at the moment to comment on what he admitted was "shocking" news of his firing. He's preparing for a high-profile address he's giving next week at the national conference for the American Association for Public Opinion Research. He's the organization's president.

[Cross-posted at Minnesota Monitor.]

Spider-Man Scales Front Page at Pioneer Press

Spider-Man took over the front page of the St. Paul Pioneer Press on Friday -- and not the benevolent, good-guy superhero. Or so it seemed: Peter Parker's black-suited alter ego took up a quarter of the cover space, and the crouching web-slinger's ominous visage even obscured the name of the newspaper. The subhead read, "More villains, more action, more romance."

City Pages' Paul Demko seemed to think they left a line out: "More whoring ourselves out to advertisers."

True, the paper dedicated considerable space to the Sony Pictures film, opening May 4. In addition to 25 percent of the cover, half of the front of the Daily Life section went to the film review, the story was continued on 2E, and a full-color, 1/6-page ad for the movie appeared on 3E. (Across the river, the Star Tribune included a small photo teaser for the film on its cover, plus a review on the cover of its Scene section. Curiously, both print editions had a near-identical "Tangled Web" headline. I blame Par Ridder.)

Pioneer Press editor Thom Fladung said no ad dollars were involved in the decision to give the film such prominence. So why the hype?

"It's a huge movie opening tonight," he said. "On a day when we didn't have big compelling breaking news, I thought it was a way to make the front-page look distinctive."

But given Pioneer Press critic Chris Hewitt's rave-free review -- he said the film was "bloated," "a bust," "a real yawner," and "about as thrilling as walking into a cobweb" -- wasn't that action/romance/villains headline a bit of a bait-and-switch?

"Did it feel that way to you?" Fladung asked. "It didn't feel that way to me."

Related: "Front & Center: Metro Dailies Quietly Put Ads on Section Covers"

AltWeeklyDeathWatch shuts down

The anonymous blog AltWeeklyDeathwatch, having taken more than a passing interest in City Pages' editor Kevin Hoffman, has stopped publishing after reporting Hoffman threatened legal action against what he dubs a "hate site." Created in January by former employees of Village Voice and New Times (now merged as Village Voice Media), the site aimed to "chronicle the death spiral of the American alternative weekly as it descends through identity crisis, self-parody, and irrelevance."

In its final post, the site said Hoffman "has rained both legal and vaguely physical threats on our source," and added that the decision to stop publishing was made after "folks with no connection to this blog are named in a comments section."

The site has criticized Hoffman's writing, professional demeanor, and editorial style, while also veering into more personal areas: his marriage, choice of tattoos, and personal appearance. Asked to comment on AltWeeklyDeathwatch's shutdown, he said, "No, I'm not going to comment on that site."

The Voluntary Buyout That Wasn't: Strib Denies Sports Writer's Bid to Keep Working

Ninety-seven seconds before midnight on March 10, Star Tribune sports writer Steve Aschburner emailed his managers telling them he wanted to take a voluntary buyout of his contract. He was on the road, covering a Timberwolves game in Atlanta, and his decision came at the very end of a five-day window in which employees could choose to leave the paper in exchange for a payout for time served.

Aschburner quickly regretted his decision, recognizing it as an "impulsive, stressed-out thing" complicated by personal issues and the "ticking bomb" nature of the five-day clause, and within four days he told his editor he wanted to stay. For the past six weeks he's been pleading with Star Tribune managers to let him keep doing a job he loves -- but what he's found is that management sees his buyout as anything but voluntary.

For 13 of his nearly 21 years at the Star Tribune, Aschburner's beat has been the NBA, and the Minnesota Timberwolves in particular, and in that time he has earned praise from fans -- including one who hailed his ability to work the word "vomitorium" into a piece on a Timberwolves' loss -- and colleagues alike (he recently finished a two-year stint as president of the Professional Basketball Writers Association). And while he couched his successes in modest terms, he admitted, "I really loved my job, and I think I made [the Star Tribune's NBA coverage] into a brand."

But in the five days after the Star Tribune sale to Avista Capital Partners was finalized, he found himself facing a "perfect storm" that fueled his decision to leave his job: "The grind of the season, the isolation of the road, some miscommunication with my wife and then the shock and scare of a friend's and peer's death." A sudden heart attack killed his colleague, the seemingly healthy 55-year-old Hartford Courant sports reporter Alan Greenberg, and seeing himself as out-of-shape, he wondered if he was next. Combined, these factors left him "in no position to be making a life-altering decision."

But the long view is this: he loves his job and has no problems with the paper's new management. His desire to stay isn't about a change of heart. Instead, his fleeting wish to leave was a "hiccup" in judgement, but now the paper is viewing that mistake as the norm and his the two decades of eager service as an anomaly, he said. The Star Tribune denied his request to rescind his buyout application, citing budget concerns, according to a letter sent to publisher Par Ridder by members of the paper's Newspaper Guild unit.

Referencing conversations with Aschburner and letters from his doctor, Guild members Jaime Chismar, Pam Miller, and Chris Serres wrote that they believed Aschburner was under "emotional duress" when he indicated his interest in the buyout, and that he was in no condition to "reflect clearly on how leaving the Star Tribune would affect his career and family." They continued:

To deny Steve the opportunity to continue his career at this newspaper, especially in light of the anxiety he was under at the time of the resignation deadline, seems senseless and cruel. We urge compassion and respect for a dedicated journalist who loved the Star Tribune and is prepared to remain a productive contributor for many years to come.

Aschburner has also received unexpected and unsought support from sportwriting colleagues. Phil Jasner of the Philadelphia Daily News and Doug Smith of the Toronto Star have both written letters to Aschburner's editor urging his reinstatement.After finishing out the Timberwolves' season, Aschburner's last day of work was Friday, April 20, and he has not yet considered what he'll do next. He said he won't pursue legal action against the Star Tribune and isn't bitter about management's decision, but he still holds out hope for a change of heart.

"Someone is going to have to cover that team and league going forward, and no one on staff wants it or has experience," he said. "I am dying to stay on the job."

In times when the paper is in upheaval after the departures of 23 other newsroom staffers, continuing budget concerns, and the turmoil of a new publisher accused of swiping business secrets and staffers from his old employer, the Pioneer Press, why is the Star Tribune refusing to welcome back a popular, well-recognized and, above all, enthusiastic member of its team?

[Cross-posted at Minnesota Monitor. Photo: Aschburner presents Kevin Garnett the 2005-2006 J. Walter Kennedy Citizenship Award, via Garnett Tribute.]

Our Own Imus: City Pages Scrubs Editor's Stereotypes from Story

Kevin Hoffman, new editor of the Twin Cities altweekly City Pages, ventured into Don "Nappy-Headed Hos" Imus/George "Macaca" Allen territory this week in a news item that squeezed three questionable ethnic stereotypes into a wee 291-word piece entitled, "New Delhi Star Tribune: Local businesses, meet your new advertising partner, Habib."

Reporting on Star Tribune plans to outsource some 25 jobs to New Delhi, Hoffman's April 18 piece referenced a week at the Star Tribune "that saw new publisher Par Ridder smacked around like a two-bit ho in a lawsuit filed by his former employer." Hoffman also called the Strib's outsourcing plan "Operation: Sanjaya," after the wouldabeen American Idol Sanjaya Malakar, who is an American citizen born to an Italian-American mother and Bengali Indian father in Seattle. Both references -- which can be seen in Google's cache -- have been scrubbed from the paper's online story.

One curious stereotype remains: Hoffman predicts that within six to nine months, the paper's ad designer "will be taking a rickshaw to work." Rickshaws, while used in India, got their name from their country of origin, Japan -- not the home country of "Habib," whose name appears in the CP subhead.

[Crossposted at Minnesota Monitor.]

Steve Brandt Yahoogroups post

Longtime Minneapolis Star Tribune schools reporter Steve Brandt posted this musing on a parents Yahoogroup last week:

9a.
On newspapering and public policy
Posted by: "Steve Brandt" sbrandt@startribune.com brandsc4438
Fri Apr 20, 2007 6:54 am (PST)

I realized on the way to work this morning that this coming fall it will be 40 years since I earned my first byline. Even back in the pre-Watergate days, journalism was something that grabbed me because it offered a chance to dig into some interesting areas of public policy. And when Watergate came along as I was finishing college, it seemed like validation of that choice. (For those of you born post-Watergate, it was like "Survivor" except that the White House was the island and the last person voted off was the President.)

Today, I'm wondering. There seems to be little room for serious exploration of issues that affect our communities. Today, I posted a blog entry on the Minneapolis teacher placement issue on our micro-reporting site at: http://www.buzz.mn/?q=node/1151

What's new is that no story was in today's paper out of last night's discussion meeting, organized by the League of Women Voters, at which 90 people listened attentively for two hours as knowledgeable people explored the pros and cons of seniority in teacher placement. It was a good discussion, and I learned some new things even after giving the issue close attention for the last 3-1/2 years.

I made that decision to go blog-only but really it was forced on me. I asked for 20 inches to summarize what I expected to be a serious discussion of an issue that some say affects the education of Minneapolis kids. I chose that length advisedly, taking as my cue the Vikings stadium advance story that was in Thursday's paper. I was offered 10 to 12 inches, an amount of space that raises the why-bother question when dealing with such a serious issue.

Granted, much of daily journalism involves fitting 20 pounds of content into a 10-pound sack. I get that. But asking a serious issue to fit into a five-pound sack is asking too much of those of us who got into this line of work to do more than fill psace [sic] between ads. I didn't want my name on something that superficial.

I mention all this because I believe that the drift of this newspaper is harmful to the communities it serves. As Tim McGuire put it in a letter to the editor this morning, "the Star Tribune and the Pioneer Press always competed on a high level with dignity, passion and a constant concern for the Twin Cities audience." While McGuire had his own ethical blind spots, he's right in suggesting that there's a rot at the top of this institution. He's thinking of the publisher; I'm thinking of how our print readers are getting short-changed, and increasingly, our best coverage will be on the web.

That's it. I finished my blog at midnight, and I'm taking the day off, going to the country, and clearing my head.

Steve Brandt
Star Tribune

Make Some Noise: Activists Urge Action in Darfur

While working on his master's degree in educational leadership in 2001 , U.S. Rep. Tim Walz, D-Minn., grappled with how education about genocide had failed. History classes had, rightly, incorporated thorough study of the Holocaust, he said, but "we did such a good job of teaching it that students tended to take it as an anomaly out of history, in a bubble, and view it as something that was perpetrated by madmen and people that are insane."

Years earlier, as a high school teacher, Walz took on a "gratifying and terrifying" project with his five classes: using data about economic, ethnic and environmental contexts around the world, they tried to predict where the next genocide would occur in hopes of preventing it. Four out of five classes determined that Rwanda was the most likely site of another genocide. Three years later, in 1994, as ethnic Tutsis and their Hutu sympathizers were being executed -- more than 500,000 would eventually die -- his students called him up and asked, "Why didn’t anyone do anything? Why didn’t this government step in?"

On Sunday, Walz, U.S. Sen. Amy Klobuchar, Rep. Keith Ellison and Dr. Michael Barnett gathered with more than 500 grassroots activists at Plymouth Congregational Church in Minneapolis to ask why a modern-day genocide continues in Sudan with little outrage — or action — by the international community. They also explored how to ensure that people in the future aren't wondering why the United States didn't put an end to a conflict that has killed 400,000 so far.

With little political will, the speakers concurred, only one thing will make a difference: widespread pressure exerted by a well-informed citizenry.

"Politicians see the light when they feel the heat," said Ellison.
The Minnesota Interfaith Darfur Coalition assembled a panel of well-versed experts: Walz, who has a master's degree in genocide studies, co-sponsored a bill recognizing the early 20th-century ethnic cleansing in Armenia as genocide. Ellison co-sponsored the Darfur Accountability and Divestment Act of 2007, a measure that targets companies that invest directly or indirectly in Sudan ("If we starve the beast, it will change its behavior"). And Barnett, chair of the international studies department at the University of Minnesota's Humphrey Institute, was a United Nations delegate in the 1990s and, in 1994, a desk officer for Rwanda. (According to event organizers, all 10 of Minnesota's federal lawmakers were invited but, due to scheduling conflicts, only Democrats Ellison, Klobuchar and Walz could attend.)

Barnett spoke first, recalling a mid-1990s conversation he had with Anthony Lake, a national security adviser during the Clinton administration. When asked how to get a passive international community to take action to prevent further violence ravaging Rwanda, Lake told him, "Make some noise."

"The reason why nothing was done [in Rwanda] is we had no machinery," he said later, referring to international organizations equipped to intervene. "We always say, 'Never again,' but then when the 'again' happens, we scramble around looking for the possible posse. That’s when politics get involved. My recommendation is not simply to push on Darfur, but also to urge your elected officials to support the United Nations and other mechanisms."

Klobuchar followed, offering a to-do list of actions she thought had potential for success:

• pressing China, Russia and Arab nations to urge Sudan to allow U.N. peacekeeping troops to enter the country, a move they've long resisted;

• getting the U.N. Security Council to enforce provisions of resolution 1591 by establishing a no-fly zone over Darfur to stop offensive attacks -- and to use U.N. or U.S. fighters to "direct punitive strikes against Sudanese planes" if necessary; and

• pressuring the White House to reveal its "Plan B," still-unspecified punitive actions against against Sudan promised by the Bush administration if that country continued to bar entry to peacekeepers. The administration named a Jan. 1, 2007, deadline for compliance; no action has been taken against Sudan.

Citing a passage from the biblical book Leviticus, Klobuchar said, "Justice is our duty, and we are called to recognize the image of the divine in every human life. We must renounce inaction in the face of such enormous tragedy. We are here today because we know it is our human responsibility to not stand idly by as the blood of our neighbors continues to be shed.”

Ellison suggested that a broader group of neighbors be invited into the discussion. "We have to look at our coalition and ask ourselves, is it made up of people who look pretty much like me and people who see the world as I see it? Can we expand the coalition?" he said. "I think we should reach out aggressively to mosques and the Muslim community."

The members of Congress broadened the discussion to include pointed critiques of the Bush administration. Ellison said that the United States has a "moral imperative" to act on behalf of Darfur's civilians, but at the same time, the U.S. must restore civil rights here at home. "We need to be able to say that people detained in America have a right to habeas corpus. We have to be able to say we’re going to work hard and stop profiling based on religion and race in our country. We are going to say that America doesn’t engage in torture," he said. "So that when we go to the world community and say, 'This is wrong,' we can say it without fear of being accused of hypocrisy."

Walz echoed the sentiment, referring to a new report by China that outlines rights violations by the U.S.: "When China is now lecturing us on human rights, and they’re correct on where they’re lecturing us, that is a sad day for our nation."

Perhaps the most scathing criticism came from Barnett. He said the growing public concern for Darfur has more to do with the moral fiber of the American people than real concern by the government, which -- like China and Russia -- has its eye on Sudan's rich oil supplies. "U.S. economic and strategic interests line up with [the Sudanese government in] Khartoum," he said. "Because to go through Khartoum means you get the oil. It means you're able to deal with the terrorist networks more effectively. The fact that we've gone against our national interests, which means coddling up to Khartoum, says something about the very important moral condition that's come together on this issue."

That moral stand is the antidote to genocide, Walz suggested. In discussing his grad school research on genocide education, he concluded that students, convinced that the Holocaust was an isolated act by lunatics, fail to see what philosopher Hannah Arendt called the "banality of evil" -- the potential for complicity in atrocities by average citizens -- "that sits among us in all societies."

His call to action seemed geared both at citizens and his colleagues across the aisle. "If there are people that are talking about their faith openly, that are talking about their goodness, then hold their feet to the fire and ask them what they're doing about Darfur," he said. "Where's their willingness to stand forward? Where's their willingness to get in front of their peers, where it matters -- on the House floor. That's how things reach that tipping point, and we're right on the edge."

Part 3 of my continuing series on Darfur for Minnesota Monitor: Part 1, Part 2. Note: this article has been updated; see here for details.

Strib Stress: Meditating on a Newspaper Sale

Yesterday's Minnesota Monitor column:

A reporter's job is a tough one any day -- the Sisyphean churn of deadlines, the public scrutiny, the pace -- but those working in the Star Tribune newsroom can add another layer to the stress: on Monday, the paper's sale to Avista Capital Partners, a company known more for standards of investing than journalism, is expected to go through. So, who can blame veteran reporter Randy Furst for needing a special trick to keep his professional and personal ducks in a row?

Possibly the paper’s management.

On the morning of February 20, Furst set out at around 10 for a familiar ritual. He found an empty conference room on the second floor at 425 Portland Avenue, found a chair he hoped would be out of eyeshot of those passing by the room's window, leaned back, and took a breath. Some days these meditations would mean Furst counting back from 100 to 1. Others, he'd reflect on a passage from literature that, he said, "will get me closer to my higher power." He always has his PDA, and he ends up jotting down thoughts and a to-do list for the day.

"I'm a senior reporter here, and I need to try to get real clarity about what I need to do on a given day," he said. "It makes me a better journalist."

But on that Tuesday morning, his ritual was cut short. A woman Furst didn't recognize interrupted him and told him, "There's a meeting going on and you'll have to leave."

He did, thinking nothing of it, and ended up back at his desk digging into a story. In early afternoon, he was told by a newsroom manager that there was an “important” 2:30 p.m. meeting he needed to be at. “Make sure you've got a union representative with you,” he was told, because the meeting might result in disciplinary action.

At the 2:30 meeting, with two representatives of the Minnesota Newspaper Guild in tow, he sat slackjawed as management grilled him. "They told me I'd been spotted by a senior member of management of the company with my ear against the wall, listening to what was going on in another conference room. It was a real shocker," he said. "Did I know who was meeting in the next room, they asked. I told them I didn't, and I didn't care, because I was there to meditate. They told me the top executives in the company were there and they were meeting with some major people from New York."

When word got around the newsroom that Furst, who has worked for the paper since 1973, was being questioned as a spy, there was disbelief. "The whole thing is bizarre," said Chris Serres, a Star Tribune reporter. "Initially we thought it was a joke that he'd been accused of eavesdropping. Randy is probably the most respected journalist at the Star Tribune."

But then the anger came: one reporter, upon hearing the allegation, punched a wall and nearly broke his hand, Serres said. "The newsroom is a cauldron. There's already a high degree of tension over the sale."

Management’s recent announcement that it won’t fill positions vacated by staffers who take contract buyouts didn’t help. There's a clause in the paper's Newspaper Guild contract that states that in the event of a sale to an outside buyer, Guild members can choose to resign and receive two weeks of pay for every year worked, with a 40-week cap. According to Serres, who is vice chair of the paper's Guild unit, between 15 and 30 employees are expected to take buyouts. On Monday, staffers can start submitting letters of resignation; Friday is the last day to do so.

On Monday of this week, management told Furst they believed he wasn't eavesdropping and that he had a strong reputation for honesty. His employee file would have no mention of the accusation.

Serres sounded relieved. "Had they pursued this investigation, the newsroom would've erupted. The union doesn't need a battle like this," he added. "We want to focus on the work ahead, and we don't need ridiculous distractions to get in the way."

Fallout from the sale tops the union’s to-do list. A key task will be monitoring workloads to make sure employees don’t burn out from covering jobs once done by those who take buyouts.

Layoffs are another worry. He fears staff cuts will affect the quality of the Star Tribune's journalism -- and it's long-term viability. Those at risk for layoffs, he said, are reporters without seniority. "Layoffs will hit younger people hardest," he said, the same people who tend to eager and educated on the new online journalism practices touted by management. Low in seniority, too, he added, are minority reporters who are representing traditionally under-represented populations.

"You'll get a monolithic point of view that doesn't represent the community," he said.

Over the next week, as McClatchy hands the keys over to Avista, and some of the friends Furst has made over 34 years at the paper decide to say so long, one senior reporter will likely be scoping out empty conference rooms where he can breathe deeply and pin down invading thoughts in a PDA. Perhaps he won’t be the only one. Stribbers following Furst’s path might heed the joking advice of a newsroom colleague: make sure the adjacent rooms are empty -- and be sure to bring along a Guild representative.

House of Shame: Legislators and Citizens Address Emotional, Legal Sides of Predatory Lending

Glarushia Davis blames "Minnesota Nice" -- and herself -- for falling prey to predatory lenders. A few years ago, she refinanced her mortgage in hopes of using the extra money to get new siding for her St. Paul home. She assumed her lender had the best of intentions and agreed to a loan with an 8.5 percent interest rate that would convert to a fixed-rate loan at the end of two years. But by the end of those two years, she said, the rate had swollen to 14 percent, and that promised fixed rate never materialized. Instead, she struggled with monthly payments that rose from $759 to more than $1,400.

"I'm embarrassed to admit I was that stupid," she said. She was one of several Twin Cities residents who discussed their experiences with predatory lenders at a town hall meeting in north Minneapolis Monday night. Such mortgage brokers offer quick and easy access to loans that benefit the lender while often leaving the borrower with unmanageable debt or hidden costs.

Organized by ACORN and Jewish Community Action, the meeting of about 150 community residents and leaders also included testimony by Guisela Dominguez, who bought a house in Columbia Heights two years ago. As her monthly mortgage payments ballooned from $1,200 a month to $1,500, she fell four months behind in paying. Speaking through a translator, she said the lender told her she'd need to come up with $10,000 in cash, plus an additional $700 in back payments to save her house. She lost her home four months ago. Likewise, Ignacio Garcia purchased a home through a major Twin Cities-based realty company, but within 15 days of closing, he was told the place was uninhabitable, and utilities were shut off.

Their stories illustrate what ACORN organizers and state legislators say are common tactics among predatory, or "sub-prime," lenders: granting loans without verifying the borrower's income or long-term ability to pay, deceiving borrowers about hidden fees that jack up monthly payments, and using "negative amortization loans," ones with payments so low, borrowers actually owe more at the end of a year of payment than they did at the start of the year.

These practices are partly to blame for today's near-record home foreclosure rates here in Minnesota and the country in general, where there were around 1.2 million foreclosures in 2006. According to Michael Calhoun, president of the Center for Responsible Lending, "2.2 million sub-prime home loans made in recent years have already failed or will end in foreclosure. These foreclosures could cost as much as $164 billion -- an amount that could send more than 4 million children through college." Closer to home, there were fewer than 1,000 home foreclosures in Hennepin County six years ago, according to ACORN statistics, but in 2006, there were more than 3,000. In Ramsey County, that number jumped from 300 to more than 1,400 in the same time span.

State Reps. Jim Davnie and Joe Mullery, both DFL-Minneapolis, attended the meeting to discuss the predatory lending bills they'll each be introducing this session. The bills aim to do away with "no-document loans," explained by Davnie as loans "where they don't know what you can afford but they sell you the mortgage anyway." They also aim to rein in negative amortization loans, abolish penalties for borrowers who repay their loans early and ban what the lending industry calls "yield-spread premiums," bonuses paid to mortgage brokers who get borrowers to sign up for loans at a rate higher than what they qualify for.

"The best analogy I can come up with is, if at the end of the day the grocery store owner looked at the till and split with the cashier anything extra she was able to charge you on the bag of carrots," he said. "They've been kicking back some of that over-charge to the broker who sold you the mortgage."

Mullery's bill aims to give citizens the "private right of action"; that means a loan recipient can hire a lawyer who then gets the same legal rights the state attorney general has in defending individual rights. It also criminalizes predatory lending, in some cases. "If it's clearly a violation of the law, then they can be held for crime," said Mullery. "That's a lot more scary to them than a civil action where they may lose some money."

Like Davis, Dave Snyder, an organizer for Jewish Community Action, referenced "Minnesota Nice," admitting that the stories he heard Monday night made him "pissed off." Fair access to credit on reasonable terms is a basic tenet of his organization and his faith tradition. "A 13th-century biblical scholar and philosopher called Moses ben Maimonides teaches us that that highest ethical thing you can do to rebuild the world is to give somebody a fair loan so they can become self-sufficient," he said. "What a diminishment of that principle, what a defilement of that principle, what a corruption of that principle to have somebody giving a predatory loan that promises somebody to fulfill the American dream and then takes their home away."

U.S. Rep. Keith Ellison, D-Minn., capped off the evening with information on a federal predatory lending bill that is now being drafted. He expects it will be similar to -- and possibly stronger than -- a version introduced last year by Reps. Mel Watt and Brad Miller, both D-N.C., along with Barney Frank, D-Mass., new chair of the House Financial Services Committee. He says he'll work to incorporate features of the Minnesota bills in the federal draft.

Ellison, a longtime north side resident and former state senator, said "abusive mortgages" target people in districts like his -- and they contribute to the overall decline of neighborhoods. "In the sub-prime mortgage market, it's estimated that 20 percent of them -- one out of five -- are going to result in a foreclosure. They don't happen evenly everywhere. Yeah, there's a few out in Eden Prairie and Minnetonka, but they tend to cluster," he said. "You'll see multiple houses on the same block that are boarded up. That says this neighborhood is vulnerable. It says to some people who might want to buy there that maybe they might not want to buy. It says that if they turn around and re-rent these units, maybe the landlords will have to lower standards for who lives in those units. And before you know it, it has a negative spiral on the whole neighborhood. We will not allow the creation of slums in our neighborhood."

Vital neighborhoods, he added, rest on citizens supporting each other to expose and resist such lending practices. Bookending Davis' remarks early in the evening, he concluded that action, not shame, are key to defeating "well financed" opposition to lending reforms.

"We were raised to always want to pay our bills, and we get a little embarrassed when we find ourselves in a financial tough spot. We're saying, 'How can we be so dumb?' And we're taking all this shame upon ourselves, and we don't ask for help," he said. "Don't stand alone in this situation. When our friends and our neighbors and relatives tell us they got into a bad loan, we can't engage in shaming behavior. We've got to say the blame is not on the person who wanted to get a good loan, who expected to get a good loan, who had every right to believe they would be treated fairly, but is on the avaricious people who sold them this bad loan in the first place."


Photos: Keith Ellison and Jim Davnie confer (top); Ellison addresses the audience.

Courtesy of TobinRussell.com

Cross-posted at Minnesota Monitor.

Campaign 2.0: Obama's Social Network

According to the Federal Elections Commission, 109 people had filed to run for president before the end of 2006. Of those, how many have a clue about Web-based campaigning?

Over the next weeks, I'll be looking at the Web sites of major-party candidates who are considering running for president. I'll look at the trends and technology, design and branding. I'll track puns (Mrs. Clinton calls her faithful "Hillraisers," while Chris Dodd commands "The Dodd Squad.") and patriots (Tommy Thompson and Mitt Romney appear in heroic relief against the flapping furls of the flag), the ominous (Tom Vilsack's flying V logo) and the oblivious (Tom Tancredo goes all Ted Stevens on us, confusing a Web page for an e-mail: "Dear Friend, I am writing to you as a fellow believer in the cause of securing America's borders.")

First up, Barack Obama's site...

If you don't believe Barack Obama is a contender, check out his Web site. It's million-dollar look (and, I'm guessing, development budget), is crisp and clear, filled with some of Web 2.0's best doodads, but thankfully without the telltale Web 2.0 design cues (i.e., his name isn't Obamr^TM and the word Beta appears nowhere). The logo is all heartland chic: patriotic, rural and optimistic without wrapping itself in the flag; it conjures a "morning in America" feel as Obama's "O" rises over plow furrows that double as flag stripes. The look is restrained and tasteful — in sharp contrast to the man he hopes to succeed, whose tough-guy design has mimicked an interstate highway sign, NASCAR motifs, the colors of local NFL teams (at a Wisconsin rally, Bush's campaign signs took on Packer green and gold, while here in Minnesota they shifted to VikPublishings purple), and a bold flying W.

But what's most impressive is the site's technology. The Obama campaign appears to be using custom-designed, proprietary social-networking software that falls under that favorite Web 2.0 prefix, My.BarackObama.com (interestingly, while Obama has a mySpace account, there seems to be no link to the Rupert Murdoch-owned networking site anywhere on his home page: coincidence?). After users create a free account, they can start a blog, invite friends, publicize events, and — get this — do "personal fundraising" for the candidate. That is, you can customize a page, complete with a fundraising thermometer and room for a photo you can upload (my test-page, entitled "Let's Go Sledding!," features my frantic dog chasing my wife and I down a winter hill), and invite people to pitch in for Barack.

Users can create groups, and according to the site's blog, more than 1,000 groups already exist, from the Pasadena-based Macs for Barack (for Apple users) to the local Minnesotans for Obama. With a nod to hipsters and open-sourcers, there's a Creative Commons bug at the bottom; for the youngsters, a link to Obama's Facebook and Flickr sites. For the deeply interactive, there's YouTube; for the literary, speech transcripts; for the non-voter, a link to a registration site. Truly, whatever way you want to access information, this rich site has it: XML syndication; a store, where one can buy union-made T-shirts for the cutesy price of $20.08 apiece; and a campaign blog that gets both updated and comments, lots of 'em.

Conclusion: Obama's site is excellent, aesthetically and tactically. For a young candidate early in his political career, it's filled with rich content, from his political platform (available in mulitiple formats) to videos where voters can get a feel for less content-based factors like his demeanor and body language. For voters turned off by the Bush Republicans' machismo, it offer a stark distinction, nodding to national pride without veering into flag-waving, lapel-pin patriotism. And, while it uses the tools of pop culture, it doesn't dumb down politics. Best of all, it leverages the social networking phenomenon (and relationship marketing practices) Obama's campaign has already benefitted from: his fans have created numerous Wikis for him, he's got nearly 50,000 MySpace friends, and supporters have created several Draft Obama sites. That last group needn't waste its energy: the site makes it clear, this isn't an exploratory committee site, it's an online campaign hub.

[Cross-posted at Minnesota Monitor.]

Media Monitor: January 14

• McClatchy CEO Gary Pruitt tells Editor & Publisher Avista Capital Partners wasn't the only company interested in buying the Star Tribune, but he wouldn't disclose names of other bidders, nor would he comment on whether any Minnesota-based firms made offers. His response to a City Pages article titled after a Strib staffer's assessment "Pruitt is a joke": "I would feel worse if they were happy that we were selling them."

• As if following the lead of e-democracy's Minnesota gubernatorial e-debate this fall, The Huffington Post announced it'll be hosting the first ever presidential online debates.

• Bill Moyers, who returns to PBS with the weekly public affairs show April 25, evoked Martin Luther King's legacy in his keynote at the National Conference on Media Reform this weekend, comparing "big media corporations to plantation owners and American media consumers to their slaves." [YouTube].

What Minneapolis can learn from contrite killers

With three murders committed during the first 11 days of this year, Minneapolis is on pace to quadruple last year’s 60 homicides. The brunt of the victims—and suspects—were African Americans.

Facing that grim statistic, around 150 people gathered at the Urban League in North Minneapolis Thursday night to not only keep the death toll down, but to let the youth know the immense consequences of a murder. So, they enlisted the help of four unusual experts: convicted murderers serving sentences at the Stillwater prison.

The four men, Adoniyah Israel, Joseph Spann, Leon Perry, and Vava Kuaddafi, all young and black, appeared with City Council member Don Samuels and Urban League president Clarence Hightower via video satellite uplink, and shared sometimes chilling, sometimes moving stories about their crimes, prison life, and the conditions that led to their incarceration.

While common threads emerged—all four were raised by single parents, all four were involved with gangs—the individual stories had the most power.

Kuaddafi, 38, says that of his 23 years in Minnesota, he spent 21 years in prison. He said that he’d been molested as a boy and that he merely wanted to “inflict pain, like it was done to me. I knew it was wrong, but someone had to pay for my pain…Gang life, that was my religion, and that’s how I lived,” he said.

Others recounted long idle periods and lack of supervision that led to an urge to do something, which often turned a crime.

Perry, 34, recalls endless hours he spent as a youth at North Commons’ Hospitality House. He said, “No one asked why we hung out there all day.”

Spann,30, said he was “a follower… a people pleaser.” His older brother was his role model. But when the brother stopped crimes, “I kept on going…. that led me to here.”

“Being poor, not having much, you want things: excitement, to be known, a reputation, to be popular.”

And Israel, 35, who lamented “ a lot of times these kids are out there raising themselves,” said that he was “carried away with the hype and glamour of things.”

The Solution?

All four men, who were repeatedly commended for coming out, said that they are in a better position to warn the youth of the menaces in the street.

Israel: “Parents: listen to young people about how they want to spend time. Figure out what’s important to these kids—ask them—and work from there. “

Kuaddafi: “Interrupt isolation. Don’t be angry. I was angry and arrogant person.”

Spann: “Know you’ve a purpose in life. Learn how to listen.”

Perry: Focus. Come up with a vision. Know God.”

That last statement drew a round of applause and “hallelujahs!”

The men said they often think—and express remorse—about their victims. Israel stabbed his girlfriend to death. Spann and Kuaddafi killed grocery clerks during separate robberies. Perry murdered an acquaintance in a parked car.

”Mending the nest”

The program was labeled “Mending the Nest,” a monthly discussion hosted by the Urban League. It was started by Urban League president Clarence Hightower after 16-year-old Courtney Brown was murdered over a sports jersey he was wearing.

The aim is to cut the homicide rate in half in 2007, reduce the number of African Americans going to prison by 20 percent, and increase the number of African American youth enrolled in both summer employment programs and post-secondary education.

Boise Jones, project manager at Pillsbury United Communities entrepreneur training program, said that 35 percent of those released from prison end up back in jail, not because they re-offend, but because they can’t meet the basic conditions of parole—to find stable work and housing within 30 to 60 days of release. His formula—“Increase opportunity, decrease crime”—would focus on these “institutional barriers” that prevent smooth reintegration for former prisoners.

Todd Barnes, a consultant with the Urban League, said that the purpose of the discussion was “high drama.”

“It’s how do you stop people from pulling the trigger.”

The message, he said, is a sense of hope: “Listen, process, come to the table when you’ve issues.”

Looking around the room, the mostly African American crowd was filled with familiar faces: Al Flowers, Spike Moss, Rev. Jerry McAfee, councilmember Betsy Hodges and MAD DADs founder VJ Smith, organizer James Everett, and Kim Ellison.

[This story was cowritten with Abdi Aynte for Minnesota Monitor. Image: Joseph Spann addresses the audience as MAD DADS members look on.]

Rhetorically speaking: Richard Ice on Bush's speech

With a backdrop of bookshelves and an oil lamp, George Bush addressed the nation tonight, not from the Oval Office but from the White House Library. But was the change in venue enough to signal the significant change in strategy his speech was hyped to address? Dr. Richard Ice, Professor of Communication at St. John's University in Collegeville, Minnesota, shared his thoughts on the rhetoric and stagecraft of Bush's speech.

I’m surprised they were in the library. The message is they’ve got a different setting, which suggests a different strategy. I don’t think it was different enough.

He built up the argument that Iraq is central to our fight against terrorism, but also making it this kind of beacon of democracy in the whole area. He really upped the stakes of success in Iraq. Then he went to great pains to show this is somehow a different strategy. But I’m not sure most Americans see this as a different strategy. Embedding American troopss with the Iraqis? Most people might see this as a more dangerous strategy. He’s making the argument that they’re going to be able to not only expel the insurgents from areas now, but also hold the area...

Right after September 11, the theme was: victory over terrorism was different than victory in any other kind of war. That’s a good example of a rhetorical problem he’s got. He uses "war on terrorism" to mean both a literal war and a metaphoric war, and those two things get confused. Because when he talks about it as a literal war—which it is in Iraq, and people are dying—people are wanting to see a tangible outcome, but he also refers to the "war on terror" as a metaphor. Like Johnson’s War on Poverty, it suggests a kind of lasting vigilance in going after the terrorists. And he was using it that way when talking about Iraq tonight: he demands success and says democracy has to work there, but he can’t really articulate what that's going to be.

It’s clear it’s not going to be some kind of Jeffersonian democracy like we have, but I don’t know what it means to succeed there anymore. Even in Vietnam, the image of victory was South Vietnam saved. The image in Korea was South Korea stayed as a country. Here, you’re left wondering: When do we know we’ve had a victory? And he admits, we don’t.

That makes it even harder to note that there’s even success. We’re trying to get troops to secure something, instead of getting more troops to win. The idea of winning a victory, he admits is not really what's going on. So, why are we sending more people in? To win a… what?

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.

Media Monitor: January 5

• Hubbard's hardship: KSTP owner Rob Hubbard's dispute with the Department of Natural Resources is heating up: he wants to tear down an 800 s.f. cabin in Lakeland to build a 16,000 s.f. mansion with pristine views of the federally protected St. Croix River, in violation of DNR rules enforcing a 40-foot setback for such projects. Lakeland's City Council approved a variance so the 5-bedroom mansion and 4-car garage could be built, but the DNR says there's no "hardship" to warrant it; that is, the terrain and size of the lot present no physical obstacle for Hubbard conforming with the rules. "I'm not making any threats," Hubbard told the Pioneer Press, "but I've lived on the river my entire life. I intend to raise my family there. I don't think the Department of Natural Resources should have the ability to tell me that I can't rebuild a structure that is there." Hubbard is appealing the decision.

• Coleman stands by Kiffmeyer quote: In my interview published Tuesday, former Secretary of State Mary Kiffmeyer said a reporter "cobbled together" sections of her speech at a 2004 event "to say something I didn’t say." The journalist was the Star Tribune's Nick Coleman, who wrote on the event in a March 31, 2006, column:

When I attended a prayer breakfast in 2004, Minnesota's Living Flag, Secretary of State Mary Kiffmeyer, told the faithful that the "five most destructive words" she knows are " Separation of church and state."

When emailed about Kiffmeyer's accusation that he misquoted her, Coleman stood by the quote's accuracy, stating, "She uttered that infamous phrase at a National Day of Prayer breakfast in Plymouth in 2004. I was there. I have written about it or alluded to it several times. Amy Klobuchar, who also was there, can attest to the accuracy of it." Sen. Klobuchar, presumably otherwise occupied, hasn't yet responded to an email asking for confirmation.

• Sell, sell, sell: Via the Securities and Exchange Commission, here's the official purchase agreement for the Star Tribune; Snowboard Acquisition is a corporation formed by Avista Capital Partners.

Guild members may take the Strib's money and run

The abrupt sale of the Minneapolis Star Tribune to Avista Capital Partners the day after Christmas left many of the paper's employees wondering how soon they'd be shown the door.
But a little-known clause in the paper's contract with union journalists suggests that its employees might have good reason to look for the door--possibly in droves.

Article VIII of the Star Tribune's contract with the Minnesota Newspaper Guild and Typograhical Union ensures all employees represented by the union the right to exercise a buyout should the paper be sold to an outside buyer. Within five days of a sale, employees must express their interest in a buyout; in return, they'll receive two weeks of pay for every year worked, with a 40 week maximum. The purchase by Avista is said to be completed in "early 2007." While the Guild represents employees at the St. Paul Pioneer Press as well, the stipulation is specific to Star Tribune's Guild members.

Pat Doyle, Guild officer and veteran Star Tribune capitol reporter, says the benefit of this stipulation is that it allows employees "to trigger their own buyouts" rather than force them to accept terms established by management.

The provision in the Guild's contract was invoked in 1998 when the Cowles family sold the paper to the McClatchy group for $1.2 billion (more than double Avista's $530 million bid), but through a special agreement, only 12 employees received "buyouts." The agreement only applied only to the Cowles' sale of the paper to McClatchy; the Guild did not waive any rights to enforce this provision in the future.

"The Guild's position on this issue is even firmer and stronger than it was in '98," Doyle said. "It's in the contract. It's pretty clear-cut, and it's never been removed or shot down in any way."

But Eric Black, a Star Tribune writer for nearly 30 years, is more cautious. He says the buyout option is "enough money to get your attention," but adds a qualifier: "if it turns out to be an offer that's on the table, I'm sure quite a few people will take advantage of it."

"It's in the contract, and it's clear to me what's intended," he said. "Being cautious about such things and having been through the deal in '98, I don't foreclose the possibility that either the old owners or the new owners will come up with some kind of interpretation that would either try to get out of that offer or limit it in some way."

While Doyle wouldn't offer an estimate on how many staffers might be interested in buyouts, he said that after a Guild representative informed members about it on Tuesday, "It seemed to be of great interest to a lot of people."

A staff list circulating at the paper shows that at least 76 employees have 25 years or more experience, including some of its best-known writers: food columnist Al Sicherman (who celebrates his 39th anniversary in 2007), film critic Jeff Strickler (36 years), political reporter Conrad Defiebre (34 years), Jon Bream (32 years), columnist Lori Sturdevant (31 years), metro columnist Doug Grow (28 years), theater critic Graydon Royce (27 years), and National Press Award-winning cartoonist Steve Sack (26 years).

The Star Tribune's management representative was unavailable for comment.

Ellison to be sworn in on Jefferson's Quran

From Robin at Minnesota Monitor:

Rep.-elect Keith Ellison, the first Muslim elected to Congress, found himself under attack last month when he announced he'd take his oath of office on the Koran -- especially from Virginia Rep. Virgil Goode, who called it a threat to American values.

Yet the holy book at tomorrow's ceremony has an unassailably all-American provenance. We've learned that the new congressman -- in a savvy bit of political symbolism -- will hold the personal copy once owned by Thomas Jefferson.

The Job-like Job of Mary Kiffmeyer

Hearing her tell it, Mary Kiffmeyer's eight years as Minnesota Secretary of State sounds a bit like the biblical story of Job. Hounded by "unrelenting attacks" by Democrats, linked by association to the questionable tactics of fellow Republican Secretaries of State in Florida and Ohio, and challenged with technological concerns like Y2K compliance, she oversaw a tenure she characterizes as “arguably the most successful in our state’s history."

Kiffmeyer's critics, of course, disagree, saying that she brought criticism upon herself, unlike the biblical struggler Job. Their litany of complaints include: her attempts to throw up voting barriers for native Americans, students, and the elderly; that infamous email in which she warned polling officials to keep watch for potential "homicide bombers" whose telltale identifiers included a "shaved heads (for purification purposes)"; and public endorsement as a "nonpartisan" officeholder of controversial proposals like a same-sex marriage ban. Two years ago, Hennepin County Commissioner Mike Opat famously said, "In less than six years, she has distinguished herself as probably the least competent person to hold this important office in Minnesota history."

Given such complaints, it's no surprise she'll be enlisting Capitol Security to do a walk-through of her office to “protect my record and my reputation” against “any potential false claim” before leaving today. Or, less convincingly, that she made the unprecedented move of asking partisan blogger (and Mark Kennedy payrollee) Michael Brodkorb, of Minnesota Democrats Exposed, to be her witness to the transition.

Nor should it be surprising that she asked her communications officer to monitor our late November interview in her St. Paul office. Our discussion ranged from her work putting the Secretary's office online to the way people of faith, like herself, are caricatured as "boogiemen" in our culture, and how the phrase attributed to her--that "separation of church and state" are "the most destructive" words today--was really a journalist's unethical fabrication.

As a bookend to my recent interview with Mark Ritchie, here's what she had to say. For clarity and brevity, this interview has been edited. Given Secretary Kiffmeyer's past accusations of journalistic impropriety, the full, unedited transcript of our interview, which was recorded, will be made available here soon.

Paul Schmelzer: Let’s start with the softball question: what was your greatest success?

Mary Kiffmeyer: I think the voter turnout during my time. We were tops in the country all four major elections. That was not the case; we were beginning to drift down—second and third… I think the other thing is the technology. When I took office, it was COBOL language mainframe. When I took office, it was antiquated, it was not Y2K compliant, and we were the only state agency that was in the critical red zone on Y2K compliance... COBOL language mainframe is the riskiest for Y2K. So I was really glad I came in with a technology background and had to convince governor Ventura, a new Republican-controlled majority, and the DFLers--I had three major parties to convince that I needed almost a million dollars to get the work done in 11 months….

PS: On to November 7: were you surprised by the results?

MK: Yes and no. You have to realize that I kind of saw when my opponent was endorsed by three national organizations, raising money for him and raising money in general---and I think they had raised specific money for each of the five states they had targeted for those candidates, and they were universally all Democrats... So I was targeted by three national 527s. One of them was the Secretary of State Project.

So, I think: yes and no. I think other people are more surprised. And then there was the extremely negative campaign that was based in a large part on fear, because obviously we have paper ballots. Obviously we have optical scan. We don’t have any of those electronic things, so fear-mongering [was] going on in regards to stirring people up as if there was a question or tying into Ohio or into Florida. We don’t have any chads. We don’t have any punchcards. We don’t have any of those kinds of things that were issues in those two states, but nonetheless linking it was an unfair characterization.

PS: And that was the 527s that did that?

MK: And my opponent as well. When we had the debates, he’d bring them up over and over and over again... And when you pour the amount of TV that was poured in against me in a negative way in the last four or five days, plus target mail of the same thing and then radio—hundreds of thousands of dollars were poured in in a negative way against me. And their aim was to get at the undecideds…

The other thing was, the word went out that it was to be a straight party-line vote for the Democrats. None of this liking somebody and then voting for them. I had lots and lots of Democrats who did vote for me and were going to vote for me, because they really liked what I’d done. I think it’s easy for people to forget what it was like before I came to office, because after eight years, [people felt] “Oh, hasn’t it always been this way?” No. No it hasn’t. I remember all the Ventura people wanting election information, election records, and election stuff, and it didn’t exist. There wasn’t a website to put it up on. There was none of that stuff.

PS: Recently you said Joan Growe left you “absolutely nothing” when you transitioned into the job. Is this the kind of stuff you’re talking about?

MK: Oh no. You see this office as it is right now? There used to be beautiful historical piece of furniture here, that was here in the office for a long time: that was gone. There was this desk. And there were two chairs—those two chairs—they were horribly soiled, and it took me two years, to save up enough money and get them recovered... I would say let’s get that thing recovered. And the ends were all down to bare wood. Not being a good steward of that. So those two chairs and this desk... Otherwise there was nothing else.

PS: It sounds like you also didn’t get the moral support you wanted. You felt like they were uncooperative when you transitioned?

MK: Joan Growe gave me one hour. She sat at this side of the desk. She had one piece of paper in front of her. I sat over there with somebody else. Although we made numerous requests for organizational charts and that kind of stuff, we weren’t given anything. …She had one piece of paper in front of her, and I asked her for it when I left, and she wouldn’t give it to me…

PS: You recently said you’d involve the Capitol Security in overseeing Mark Ritchie’s transition. Are you expecting there to be complaints against you by the Secretary-elect?

MK: He complained all about me... In his acceptance speech, and even in things after that, he continues to take pokes. You know, you don’t need to do that anymore. It’s called graciousness. I appreciate the fact—I think that word was even used in regards to the transition article that was written. It’s because of how I do things and who I am.

PS: What about regrets? The National Day of Prayer thing, where you said probably the five most destructive words in America today are separation of church and state—

MK: Are you quoting from something written down there?

PS: I’m summarizing. But I can’t find the original passage uninterrupted—

MK: That’s because it never was.

PS: What’d you actually say?

MK: That was a cobbled together. When you think of journalism and writing, whenever you see something together with separate little quotes, it tells you right away: is that what I really said? What [the journalist] did was he took these five words and these words and these words and put them together to say something I didn’t say. What I routinely do when I talk to people is say, "The five words are not in the Constitution." ...What’s destructive is when you tell people they’re there and they’re not. And you tell them they’re there and they’re not with an intention to keep them away from being involved. That’s destructive. To say those five words aren’t in the Constitution with an intention to use that falsehood to say, “No, no, no, you guys can’t. You faith people--you have a faith, unless you’re something other than Christian--you people, because there’s a separation of Church and State, you have to stay out.” That’s destructive because, I feel anytime you try to keep anyone out from being involved in their government, but to misquote or to lie about what’s in the Constitution?

PS: Do you think the framers of the constitution intended for there to be that sort of firewall between the influence of religion on public policy?

MK: The quote from Thomas Jefferson, the firewall that was created was from the government intruding on religion. That was a quote taken out of his letter to the Baptist Society that said, don’t worry, the government won’t intrude on your religion, because there’s this wall of separation. It was a separation and a wall to keep the government from messing with religion. Obviously, how do you keep people of faith from never having an opinion from government? What segment of society are you going to say shouldn’t? Because I would say, other than the atheists—which, by the way, that’s a religious group, too—

PS: It is?

MK: Atheism is a belief that there is no god. So really, between atheists and Christians and all these others… how many people are left then to have an influence on government if it’s to go the other way? So the wall of separation was intended to say, “you can have freedom to flourish in your religion, OK, and the government won’t mess with your religion.”

You have the freedom. But there’s no such thing as an unlimited freedom. In other words you can’t cry "Fire!" in a theater. That’s the most common example... Slander is another one; there’s laws against free speech so you can’t slander. Except, by the way, for politicians. You can slander politicians with impunity. So you can slander us.

I think that the biggest thing for me was [...] about the 501c3 [the legal code that gives churches and nonprofit organizations tax-exempt status]. The ability to not be taxed is what gives you more restrictions on what you can do in your church, but you chose it because you applied for a 501c3. So, if you’re not a 501c3, and you pay your taxes, you revert back to only being under the constitution, which doesn’t take away your—you can endorse, you can do all kinds of things. The only thing that restricts you is the 501c3. That’s the kind of conversation which is based on giving the truth to people who’ve been lied to. So when they’ve been lied to, told this is in the constitution and it isn’t, and lied to in giving a sense that this is why, when in fact it’s the 501c3 that restrains you more than the constitution doesn’t at all.

PS: You’re a person of faith, and it hasn’t prevented you from having this job for eight years. Do you feel like your faith is evident? Would anyone coming in seeing you do your job notice that your faith is what guided you in it?

MK: I would say, not from the sense of the typical thing. Which is: you notice when you walk in, this is the way my office always is. Because I believe it’s an official office. Now inside my little personal bathroom right there, I can hang all the scripture versus I want?

PS (In jest): And are there a lot in there? It’s wallpapered? (Laughing)

MK: There isn’t anything in there. I’ll show it to you. Hey listen: the Star Tribune went into my basement in my first few months after I was elected. They did a story. You could tell, I could see they were kind of looking. It was insulting in a way. "I give you the courtesy of having you to my home, at least you could do the courtesy of not"—but I thought, for sure they’ve heard of these things… I took them down to the basement and showed them everything there as well.

People of faith and people not of faith have said, "How is your faith impacted here? How do you do that?" Often they have this garish notion. I think they really have this boogieman—whatever--type thing. And there’s always those out there, of course, but that’s not where 99.9% usually are. But anyways, in regards to: I said, with God, there is no respect of persons; whether you be male or female, Greek or Jew, slave or free, all are equal in God’s eyes. Many, many years ago, as I was reading those scripture verses--and I am a literalist. Francis Shaker wrote a book, How Then Shall we Live. How then shall we live? For me, if God is no respect of persons, I’m not either. So when you come to the counter [at the Secretary of State's office], no matter who asks an election question, they all get the same answer. They may not like it, but they will all get the same answer.… I spoke recently about what Martin Luther King means to me, and the one thing delightful in the African American community: you can quote scripture verses all you want and [there's] absolutely no [problem]. They’re like, “Amen, sister,” and they’re like right with you. But as I share that, that is why God is no respect or person… There was a gal who came up and her first words to me were, “I’m a Democrat.” And she started crying, and said, “After hearing you talk, I can sense that the honor and integrity that is in your heart, and sharing that is so strong within you.” And she started crying and saying, “I feel so much better.” I almost started crying because I was feeling so bad for her.

PS [Joking]: Because she’s a Democrat, right?

MK: No. That she would feel so terrorized that way. What are people saying out there? What are people doing? For political purposes they are terrorizing these people and fearing them to death. That isn’t the reality. I think there’s political gain to create this fear situation for people. And the hard thing is a lot of people out there maybe don’t have recourse. As the opportunity that I had to talk with her and share with her… it radically changed her perceptions.

PS: Who’s terrorizing her? It sounds like perhaps you’re mischaracterizing the religious left though. My experience as a liberal Catholic is not that anyone is saying you can’t believe what you believe---

MK: Did I say anything about the religious left? I don’t see the correlation there.

PS: You were saying she didn’t feel free enough to express herself on her side?

MK: Who? I don’t recall saying that.

PS: Ok, maybe I misunderstood. Why did you feel bad for her? Because someone was politicizing—

MK: It had nothing to do with faith. What it had to do with the integrity of the electoral system.

PS: Uh, ok. As I’m running out of time here, I’m wondering if you could talk about the future and tell me if you’ll run for Mark Olson’s seat should he resign.

MK: I don’t know. It’s not an open seat right now.

PS: So you can’t say if you have an inkling or want to serve your district that way?

MK: You know, I’m one of those people that I love whatever I do, and I usually respond to a need. Is there a need? And when there’s a need, I love doing it. My mother, when I grew up, there was a lot of work. And I remember my mom saying, “You’ve got to learn to enjoy your work, because there’s more work in life than fun, and if you don’t learn to enjoy your work you’re going to be a miserable person.”

PS: I know everyone who interviews you probably mentions the same stories: the terror alert posters, the “five words,” maybe the lawsuit about tribal ID cards. But I don’t need to go into all that stuff. Suffice it to say, you’ve been kind of a lightning rod for criticism and dislike from a certain sector. Why do you think that is?

MK: Know what my mother said? "Consider the source."

PS: Who’s the source?

MK: Generally, the Democrats. Mary Lahammer [of Twin Cities Public Television] in March of 1999 said, “And once again, since the day she’s been elected, the Secretary of State has been attacked by the Democrats.” Three months after I got elected it was, “And, once again….” It’s been going on since the day I got elected. Just unrelenting attacks and just going after me all the time.

PS: So it’s definitely on their part and not about how you’ve administered the office?

MK: Well, take a look at it sometimes. Look at the quotes and clips. The other thing that was amazing to me is, when I traveled in 1998, I visited with all 87 county auditors...They complained about the computer system... I gave them this special toll-free number, and I did stuff and went to things and found that it is ever-unending. I can’t seem to get ahead… You meet this and it’s more. You meet this, and it’s more. It’s unending.