The Rake Magazine

Among those of us who experienced what might be called a "difficult" relationship with mainstream newspapering, one of the jokes about newspapers' numbing institutional voice was that that voice must never, ever risk offending the kind of fine and decent ladies you find serving meatballs and lefse at a Lutheran church dinner. Such ladies were the acid test for hyper-cautious, risk-averse newspapering, for what flew and what didn't. If you could imagine the meatball ladies being shocked, the story or phrasing got the "delete" button.

Well, here's a dark secret. The average second and third tier daily newspaper newsroom was/is full of incipient Lutheran meatball ladies (and men), people who have assigned themselves the task of rigorously assessing the naughtiness quotient of topics and wording. If you're a reporter, good luck getting every day, garden variety, workplace-tested sexual vernacular past that crowd.

So imagine my amazement, (and sophomoric amusement), when I leafed through the latest edition of Vita.Mn, the Star Tribune's latest weekly vehicle for, like, rollin' with the dudes. There was "Alexis on the Sexes", the freebie's sex columnist, dispensing sage counsel and I dare say, encouragement to couples interested in exploring the exotic delights of anal sex.

Well ... from my experience with daily newspapering, I can assure you that decent women and certainly no men in the newsroom would dare mention such a concept above a furtive whisper, the latter out of fear of a call from HR. (A bit of an exaggeration there. In certain "safe zones", such topics were discussed, sometimes ad nauseam).

Vita.Mn of course isn't a mainstream daily, is it? But unlike the various free weeklies that have come and gone around town this one IS owned and operated and edited by the Star Tribune, where encouraging readers to try anal sex is about as remote a concept as suggesting some Hadassah lady set herself on fire on the Guthrie thrust stage.

I called Tim Campbell, the droll fellow who edits Vita.Mn AND the Strib's A&E section. I asked about the reaction to the column. "About what you'd expect," he said. Not much from the public, really. The target audience of precocious teens, college kids, twenty-somethings and pervy geezers took it all in stride, and in fact, said Campbell, they respond far more to fashion stories than "Alexis on the Sexes". (The presumption being, I guess, that all the aforementioned, with the exception of the pathetic pervy geezers, long ago included anal sex as a regular part of their sexual regimen and therefore are really far more concerned with accessory trends.)

Campbell said the intra-newsroom chatter about the column was also fairly predictable, with the usual guardians of righteous propriety, ("a-choomeatball ..."), expressing horror and declaring ... again ... the great and grand institution of the Star Tribune was poised, verily, on the precipice of a terrible slippery slope. If back door lovin' was now appropriate conversation within their sacred, Big "J" journalistic halls, (and mine you, without a breath of moral condemnation!), why every facet of truth, fairness and accuracy, will soon be dragged into disrepute.

As I say, attempts by mainstream newspapers to reach those much-coveted "younger readers" are often laughable. (I mean look at WHO is pretending to be hip!). Such attempts are doomed until Big "J" papers figure out a way to interact with that crowd on ... the crowd's terms ... not the terms of the paper's risk averse, (and often extraordinarily nerdy), meatball ladies/men-in-training. If that means a sex column, so be it. But don't -- and Campbell has not -- then censor the sex columnist.

Frankly, I suspect today's kids have access to so much sexual information -- and sexual bullshit -- they hardly demand it from an actual paper newspaper. But, if you're the big, lumbering corporate publisher trying to reach kids, talking sex comes with the territory, which means you've got to demonstrate a semblance of crede. As in tossing in a column on tips and tricks for back door lovin' with an attitude of nonchalance.

Somehow that led me to ask Campbell if Claude Peck and Rick Nelson's
very amusing, very gay Sunday "conversation" column, "Withering Glance", might be a good fit for Vita.Mn? You know, maybe in an expanded, unfettered sort of form?

Campbell thought a moment, conceded that when Peck and Nelson get into vivisecting fashion disasters Vita.Mn's audience would probably connect, but then, on second thought, no. "I think they're probably just too old."

Brutal. And just when you were thinking every gay guy was forever hip. Instead ... Peck and Nelson consigned to a wing of the same musty floor as other geezers and meatball ladies, the hetero ones who woo-hooed and scowled at the mere mention of back door love.

Even though the organizers of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland politely asked the likes of Sharon Stone and Angelina Jolie to stay home this year, the summit of big hitters is making news.

This Reuters report on Bill Gates' statement that the full marriage of television and internet is less than five years away ... (I'll bet three, if anyone wants to start a pool) ... is worth noting.

If what Gates believes actually comes to pass, and a fully-functioning internet, assisted by Hi-Def production values, (and fiber optic, for those of us lucky enough to have access to it), blows past commercial-(heavy) television, we will obviously be falling into a whole new rabbit hole. Note what he says about elections. Former Virginia Senator George Allen's "macaca" moment will be remembered as the only the first incident of guerrilla election coverage.

It can't come soon enough. Imagine, also, local TV newscasts with actual news.

I'm a big fan of Robert Wright. His book, "Nonzero: The Logic of Human Destiny", is one of the most sophisticated perspectives on human conflict -- including radical religiosity -- I've ever come across.

His various web-sites are now consolidating, including bloggingheads.tv.

There are entirely understandable reasons why commercial television stations, (hell, PUBLIC TV), haven't dared try something like this -- a regular, good-natured conversation/debate between broadly-informed thinkers, (not just politicians and government officials protecting a narrow partisan turf). The best reason? Once they inhale this stuff, there's no way viewers will accept the latest drug killing, car wreck or house-fire as the most important thing going on in their world.

Bloggingheads.tv is another preview of the edifying potential of the internet-TV marriage. It may never counterbalance an unlimited-on-your-42" LCD-in-your-living-room connection to ArgentineSluts.com, but it'll help.

"Truth be told, that's one of the reasons I left. I couldn't stand covering random assaults and vandalism, stories that had no impact on the average viewers. TV news does violence because it's fast, easy, requires no frame of reference or special reporting skills."
- Heather McMichael, a former Kansas City Fox 4 Reporter....comments to the Kansas City Star

This past Monday the Star Tribune staff received the following memo from editors Nancy Barnes and Scott Gillespie.

"Rob Daves has agreed to take on the role of project manager of buzz.mn through the end of March. In this role, Rob will be in charge of working with everyone in the newsroom to make the buzz.mn website a success and lay out a plan for its future, including developing marketing plans. To make this a success, we'll need everyone's help. Buzz.mn will succeed on the combined efforts of the newsroom, and contributors from the community.

"Only a handful of staffers currently contribute to the site on a regular basis. We'd like for all staff members who live in the communities where we are now developing buzz.mn to contribute items each week. We're not talking about devoting large chunks of your day, but to file two or three short items off your beat or from your community. You don't have to be a reporter. In fact, any member of the staff can participate. If you have any questions or need help learning how to contribute, please see Rob or your team leader.

Nancy and Scott

What is noteworthy here is the fact that no mention is made of Daves' role as head of the paper's Minnesota Poll, an iconic piece of enterprise reporting that is operating on a much diminished schedule compared to several years ago. By the estimate of one person with knowledge of such things, the current, McClatchy-operated, Star Tribune is devoting something in the range of 15% of what used to be budgeted for polling.

With Daves making this temporary move to goose growth in buzz.mn, one of a half dozen special/web-related productions the Strib has going, suspicions rise that cuurent managers may be quietly shutting the door on the Minnesota Poll in advance of their new, more likely than not budget-cutting owners, the Avista private equity group.

I called Daves for his comment and he made a convincing show of enthusiasm for the buzz.mn work he has been asked to do, but defered any speculation on the vitality of the Minnesota Poll to Scott Gillespie.

So ... I sent Gillespie the following e-mail ...

Scott:

I'm doing a media blog for The Rake. I'm told Rob Daves is temporarily moving over to handle one of your websites. I called him and he seems enthusiastic about the assignment, but defers any questions about the future of the Minnesota Poll to you.

Frankly, I'm getting expressions of concern from your newsroom that the Star Tribune is planning fewer polls rather than more, and/or that this move portends the demise of the Poll entirely. Can you comment on that?

I'm told the paper is budgeting roughly 15% of what it budgeted for the polls in their glory days. Is that number reasonably accurate?

Can you say how many polls you have planned for '07? '08?

Once Daves finishes his work with Buzz.Mn. will he be returning to his same role with the Minnesota Poll at the same or increased budget?

Thanks.

In an entirely timely fashion Gillespie replied as follows ...

Thanks for asking, Brian, and I'm sorry it took me so long to get back to you.

The Minnesota Poll will live on. Rob's a really versatile editor who's handled many temporary projects for us over the years while also running the poll. I'm not going to get into internal budget figures or frequency issues with you because we have competitors who would love to know what we're doing and when. But I can assure you that the Minnesota Poll will continue to be an important part of our news report.

Hope you're doing well.

--Scott

I think its safe to say that a few questions were left unanswered there. One I hadn't thought of is, "Who really poses any serious competition to the Minnesota Poll"?

I'll take Gillespie at his word, I guess, that the Minnesota Poll, which I regard as a valuable contribution to Minnesota discourse, will continue to be, "an important part" of the Strib's news report". But one truism of modern news "reporting" is that the public rarely complains about what is NOT in the paper, and pricey, labor-intensive endeavors like long-term investigative reporting and polling are therefore easily, uh, "down-sized", occasionally to oblivion.

Finally, as someone who marvels at the dramatic increases in productivity of American workers ... in a time when the real value of their wages has barely kept up with the rate of inflation ... I have to be amused at Barnes' and Gillespie's call for "all staff members", reporters and otherwise, to "file two or three short items off your beat ...", each week. You know, when they're not doing anything else ... and with no hint of financial incentive, other than of course keeping their jobs through the next round of "down-sizing."