Whoa. Sarah Janecek’s Politics in Minnesota newsletter sure lobbed one into the Strib newsroom late Friday. In a Weekly Report item entitled “MnDOT Under Seige: The Star Tribune’s Agenda,” Janecek writes that MnDOT personnel are getting pretty fed up with certain pushy, expletive-spewing Strib reporters.
According to an email sent by a MnDOT mucky-muck to an unnamed GOP legislator and passed along to Janecek, agency employees “have been subjected to professional and unnecessarily harsh name-calling, hostile phone conversations and phone and email harassment. MnDOT employees have come to me with reports of enduring profanity in phone conversationsand having their professional and personal integrity questioned.” Among other charges leveled: When MnDOT employees did grant interviews and provide information, “they feel their work has been mischaracterized in print and facts have been disregarded in lieu of predetermined story lines.”
In particular, according to Janecek, employees singled out Strib investigative team members Tony Kennedy and Paul McEnroe as particularly egregious offenders in the offensive language category, uttering phrases like “bullshit,” “you’re lying” and “you’re stonewalling.”
MnDOT has been under investigation on so many occasions by the Star Tribune that I wonder why its employees aren’t more desensitized by now to the journalistic speculum. However, another part of me sympathizes with MnDOT worker bees.
Kennedy and McEnroe are not the warm and fuzzy feature writers the paper uses to staff the booth at the State Fair or provide whimsical insight into the paper at Rotary Club luncheons. No, Kennedy and McEnroe are the baying hounds from Hell that are released from their heavy chain link kennels by leather-gloved handlers when the prisoners escape.
Thinking of them working a story brings to mind the description given Arnold Schwarzenegger’s Terminator: “It can’t be bargained with. It can't be reasoned with. It doesn't feel pity, or remorse, or fear. And it absolutely will not stop, ever.”
That’s McEnroe and Kennedy. Especially McEnroe. This is the man the paper has sent to cover two wars—and not as an “embedded” correspondent. When rookie Minnesota Viking Dimitrius Underwood went AWOL to
That’s good news for Strib management, which has been reaping the benefits of their exhaustive, scoop-filled bridge collapse reporting and is gearing up to nominate the pair in all sorts of Pulitzer categories, according to staffers. The bad news is, when you unleash the dogs, sometimes people get bitten.
In this case, according to Janecek’s report, the victims are MnDOT employees who are either potty-mouth adverse or just plain tired of being—pardon the pun—hounded by the pair. Is that a crime? Should the Stribsters be sent to journalistic charm school for a refresher course? It’s doubtful the paper will pay much attention to the PIM report, other than to write it off as political polemic.
Neither McEnroe nor Kennedy responded Friday afternoon to an email containing the PIM story. Kennedy, reached at home Sunday night, seemed more poodle than pit bull. He said he hadn't received the email, wasn't aware of the PIM report and didn't want to hear about it. "I work hard during the week; I don't want to deal with anything on the weekends," said the reporter, who is well known for making calls at any time, day or night (or weekend), when he's working on a story. "I'll deal with it Monday, if I have to deal with it at all.
Of course, I was tempted to yell at him, “Stop stonewalling me with that bullshit!” but I guess he wouldn’t have gotten the joke.
However, the part of Janecek’s story that did gave me pause involved claims that story coordination at the Strib seems so poor that everybody and their mother at the paper appears to be asking for the same documents, which is making for costly extra work at MnDOT, an agency funded by tax dollars.
That may be the point where this story rises above the partisan pool.
in this non-chronological format, these comment sections are unreadable, unless you're as nuts as bertram jr. and his detractors. please do something about this.
Sarah Janacek, the self appointed defender of the Pawlenty administration, should be the last one to complain about heavy handed and/or biased reporting. Politics In Minnesota is the purveyor of glossy coverings whenever one of its favorites - any Republican - is caught with a hand in the cookie jar or a foot in a mouth. MnDOT is a train wreck in motion. It has done more to disrupt the lives of people in Minnesota than any other agency under the mantel of "we are without sin. We can do no wrong". SJ should take off her rose colored glasses and read her PIM content regularly. Sarah defendeth train wrecks too much.
Several points. (1) Did anyone read all of what I wrote? That's what I thought. (2) No career civil servant who has properly shuffled paper for 20 years deserves to be told she's full of BS As Rybak noted, these people have been answering data practices requests for years. But as I noted, this round is different. The hounds were let go from the kennel. (3) I'll take wearing my ideological bias on my sleeve where everyone can measure it and critically think through it as opposed to submerging it until I take a job with a DFLer, a liberal think tank or a liberal blog. When was the last time a reporter in this town took a job on the conservative side other than Cyndy Brucato? (3) The only thing I'm self-appointed to is "Jill of all trades, mistress of none." No one would appoint me to anything, except maybe dog catcher.
I read it, Sarah. And, as your #1 fan, Bertram Jr. points out, we're at war. So I'd throttle back on characterizing some bureaucrats fielding crabby phone calls from reporters and making lots of copies as suffering from "shell shock," now referred to by the term of art, post traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD, which currently plagues many of our returning veterans and, by the way, many of the people who survived the collapse of the 35W bridge.
Got perspective?
And how did you honor our veterans on Monday jimmy?
Find anyone to spit on?
I emulated the president and skipped the ceremonies at The Tomb of the Unknown. But I stopped short of playing a video game and then publicly mistaking it for "first-hand experience" with the horrors of combat as the president did. THAT is a trait you and he share in common. As I recall, you're a guy who struggles to distinguish between watching war movies and having actually served.
What did you do, go shopping for a new lapel pin and a fresh bumper sticker? BTW, the original idea of Armistice Day, it was Sunday, was to pledge not to repeat the idiocy and pointless waste of WWI and instead work toward peacefu means of working out the inevitable differences between nations, not mindlessly celebrate rabid martialism and the illegal invasion of a non-aggressor nation.
But what does this have to do with the horrors of handling angry phone calls from reporters and the agony of making photo copies?
Just letting you expose yourself further as the anti-American, anti-military nutbar that you are.
Well done!
Actually, I made a generous contribution to the Semper Fi Fund. Then I watched me some Military Channel.
If you would like a new bumper sticker for your Yugo, I recommend : "What part of "the enemy wants to kill us all" don't you understand?"
If you can't be military, be a military supporter!
Hooya!
Semper Fi.
This is some of your best stuff. "If you can't be military, be a military supporter!" You mean as in, if you can't be athletic...? Very funny stuff. Especially welcome during the writers strike.
But what detracts a little from your otherwise piquant self parody is the sad fact that there's no "can't" about your choice not to serve, career civilian. You've been physically sound your whole life and, like all the other chickenhawks, simply CHOSE not to serve; "had other priorities," I believe is the boilerplate esxcuse.
But, you know, given the manifest cowardice that prevents you from even using your own name when you attack another man's patriotism, it's likely a blessing for the men who might've had the misfortune to serve with you in a critical combat moment that you stick with the History Channel.
I can just picture you there: hyperventilating in your easy chair, a box of Kleenex in your lap, as you watch "Dogfight" imagining you actually served.
But, again, this thread is about the brave people hunkered down in cubicles under the headache-inducing glare of fluorescent lights hollering, "INCOMING," when the caller ID shows another call from Portland Ave. and soldiering on through the searing pain of a fresh paper cut from refilling the copier after yet another volley of FOIA requests, not chickenhawk breast beating.
Perhaps you could cope with the cowardice of your youth by joining a Civil War reeneactment group. In your case, I'm seeing you in something gray. Though Union Blue would better conceal the inevitable urine stains.
Lambert! Rybak!
Someone come in here and take away Leinfelder's crayons!
//Janecek: No career civil servant who has properly shuffled paper for 20 years deserves to be told she's full of BS
Not even the ones who let the bridge fall? To Janecek it's more important to protect Republican bureaucrats than prevent bridges from falling down, and if they do fall down, from preventing the public from finding out who let it happen. Good old Republican values there.
You're not a very bright liberal are you?
"Bikin" Jim Oberstar, is the career Democratic politician and master diverter of millions of $ of transportation infrastructure money to build bike paths used by a couple hundred weenies like himself.
Start there if you are looking for someone who "let the bridge fall down".
Any good conservative knows that prevention is the cure.
Not rabid finger pointing by brainless liberals after the fact.
I tell ya', when it comes to self parody, you, sir, are da' man.
BJr "Any good conservative knows that prevention is the cure.
Not rabid finger pointing by brainless liberals after the fact..."Bikin" Jim Oberstar, is the career Democratic politician and master diverter of millions of $ of transportation infrastructure money to build bike paths used by a couple hundred weenies like himself."
How great is that? Failure to inspect bridges blamed on bike paths by a guy who lectures others about finger pointing. You gotta' love a guy who refutes his own arguments.
Crayon-boy:
Once again you offer nothing in the way of facts to support your objection to Oberstar's complicitness.
Tax payer money that should have and could have been used to improve, inspect, repair, replace etc. was instead directed to pork projects including rural bike paths.
Oberstar is the worst kind of "teflon" Democratic, with his snout buried in the pork barrel, while the bridge debris lies there.
It's been well chronicled, but I am sure you were otherwise occupied with a mensa meeting or some such.
Hey, hey, what's with all the finger pointing? Have you gone all liberal on us?
Perhaps if MnDot wasn't so ham-handed and closed-up when it comes to getting info to the public - save for press releases and shutting down and stone-walling press inquiries - this would not have gone so far. And no one has asked nor verified IF the Strib reporters really were "harassing" the MnDot employees. When their first instinct is to tip-off a GOP legislator, who in turns sends it your way...sorry it smells nothing so much of an attempt in CYA.
A procedural question: My link to this blog indicates it is part of something called "The Rake Today." Shouldn't that perhaps be "The Rake Today...or Maybe Yesterday, or a Couple of Days Before That, or possibly The Rake from a Rapidly Receding Point in Recent History?" Just asking.
Boy, oh, boy, Frogman, you would be so in for a withering rejoinder if the couple whose blog this is still monitored it. Lucky for you they've apparently landed work elsewhere.
Sarah:
You go girl!
Signed,
One of your biggest fans!
The Slaughter took a scary wrong turn today when it started carrying Janecek's, er, water. You mean to tell me you actually pestered Tony Kennedy at home on a weekend to get his response to complaints from MnDOT bureaucrats that he was aggressive and persistent? WTF? Didn't you read the Sonia Pitt stories? What Kennedy and McEnroe are doing is just the kind of meaningful news-breaking that could possibly save journalism -- and that the Slaughter consistently complains is missing from the dailies.
Yeah, what HE says.
I see nothing partisan here at all. The Strib reporters are doing their jobs and sadly MNDOT deserves to be ripped. There are many other questions I'd like to ask MNDOT about mismanaged projects and poorly designed roads.
A bridge collapsed and people died. I'm not sure the severity of the mistakes has caught up with MNDOT yet.
Seems MNDOT employees have forgotten who employs who.
You forgot to mention that Janacek is, and always has been, a Republican activist, a party hack. Of course she is going to take issue with any reporters who succeed in pulling the curtain back on Pawlenty's shame.
After recent debacles in the state Education and Health and Human Services departments that involved stonewalling (and for which the H&HS comissioner was forced to resign), it's clear that state government needs these watchdogs.
All of this is due to the cultural shift of having to "blame" someone, or even some compan, preferably by name, for every tragedy, big and small, real or perceived (Haliburton, Blackwater, waterboarding, etc etc etc).
And of course, to the news directors who have propagated "tragedy TV".
The bridge fell. Let's move on, folks.
We're at war here.
Self parody truly is the best parody.
Insurance coverage is not "radical" enough for you, jimmy?
I also believe it is the role of INSURANCE coverage to pay for the damage from accidents.
Unless of course you are John Edwards.
Are you kidding me? You're chiding the Trib reporters for being tough on the MnDOT folks? You should be happy they're doing it, even if in a somewhat redundant way.
Give me a break. Wake up Minnesota. Journalists aren't supposed to be water-carrying toadies for the people in power. How this transparently partisan kvetching is even worthy of comment in the context of the stories coming out that politically-hamstrung DOT eludes me entirely.
I suppose given the somnambulance that so much of the Fourth Estate has lapsed into over the the course of the Bush administration, which, by the way, uses plenty of profanities in its war against the media (not to mention bald-faced lies, FAKE journalists, intimidation that includes jail time, the phony and reflexive claim of "national security," smirking implications of treason, ruined careers, etc), I guess maybe this is a good opportunity to point out to the slack-jawed public that this is supposed to be an adversarial relationship, folks. McEnroe and Kennedy are merely doing their jobs, unlike many of the people they've been dealing with at MnDOT.
The people at MnDOT are the public's servants. And the reporters at the Strib are the public's surrogates. McEnroe and Kennedy are down there pounding on counter tops because you don't have the time or, frankly, the gumption, to do it on your own behalf. Ask yourself some time: How do I know ANYTHING? Is it thanks to my relentless hunting through mind-numbing documents, attending stultifyingly dull subcommittee meetings, burning shoe leather covering a beat? Or maybe you're getting your info from devotedly reading FaceBook. Or are you just really that well sourced? Puh-lease.
When are people going to get it through their thick skulls that when a public official or a politician summarily blows off a reporter, they are snubbing YOU, reading public, not the Star Tribune, YOU! They are saying that YOU desrve to remain in the dark. That what they're up to with your money and under the the mantle of yout imprimatur at the ballot box is none of YOUR business.
When these functionaries in state or federal government prevaricate and obfuscate and generally tap dance to cover their own butts, they are not protecting YOU who pay their salaries and whose benefit and safety they are sworn to advance and protect. They are protecting their, or their boss's, personal career agendas. Nothing greater is served. How do you think reporters are going pry loose information to which the public has a right, information that at the same time may threaten a careerist's sinecure, by coming on like Oliver Twist, for cryin' out loud? If you believe that I've got a FEMA news conference for you to attend.
Snap out of it. Have we all been lulled into such a drooling stupor by the ceaseless flood of consumer, lifestyle and celebrity stories that we've forgotten the fundamental raison detre of the journalistic profession (and it is a profession. damn it).
"When are people going to get it through their thick skulls that when a public official or a politician summarily blows off a reporter, they are snubbing YOU, reading public, not the Star Tribune, YOU!"
Eh, not so much anymore, Jim. Sometimes they're simply blowing off the STAR TRIBUNE, not you or me or the guy next door. The self-important newspaper of the Twin Cities picks and chooses which battles it will fight -- in other words, which ones it is willing to be our surrogates in and which ones it is not.
If the topic synchronizes with its liberal, social-justice agenda, then no one gets cursed at or badgered. But if it doesn't, whoa, look out, rudeness and profanity get unleashed by tough-guy journos.
Less and less, the STAR TRIBUNE speaks for anyone but itself. That has become increasingly clear in its readership numbers, too, which decline precipitously every time they're measured. That paper has alienated too many in this community to go on as self-appointed surrogates. I'd rather choose my own, thank you.
Whoever you are, this is such a tiresome old trope, the liberal-controlled Star Tribune, blah blah, blah... Look, Whoever, I'm not here to serve as the new apologist for the Strib now that their former one is writing about health care. But like ot not, the Star Tribune is still the paper of record for this berg. And of course they choose their battles. Every newspaper does. They'll have choose all the more now that they've hemorrhaged a lot of talent. And am I to understand that you are agin' "social justice"? What?
But whether or not the Stribune is liberal, or just lamely out of touch, is utterly beside the point of this discussion. They are the only newspaper with enough remaining staff and resources to do this kind of reporting. In case you hadn't heard. I.F. Stone is dead. Probably "too liberal" for you, anyway. And God speed to MinnPost, The Mole, The Rake, CP, SW Journal, etc. But as Damon Runyon put it: “The race is not always to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, but that's the way to bet.”
So go right ahead and "choose" your surrogates, whatever in the hell that is meant to mean. And whoever they turn out to be, I hope they show the same level of enterprise and chutzpah as McEnroe and Kennedy. Who it is hardly matters.
But whoever you tap on the shoulder with your sword, when government spurns their legitimate inquires into the people's business so you're free to lead your busy life and still remain reasoably well informed, here's hoping they don't politely apologize for the bother and turn on their unworn heel and continue on their clueless way as empty handed as they would have to be empty headed. To cite merely one example, we've already seen the results of that level of credulous, power-infatuated, baggy-kneed reporting out of the liberally-biased NYT during the Bush administration's fraudulent build up to the invasion of Iraq.
Here's hoping whoever you "choose" to do your reporting and writing for you has more discerning reporting skills than Judith Miller and her dewy-eyed editors did when they were carrying water for Chilabi and the neo-cons. Whether you supported the invasion or not, who can disagree that it would have been nice to have had a more honest, reliable and transparent vetting of the facts and rationale for war than what we got from a pliant MSM and cowering Congress.
For too long in this country we've come to believe that journalists questioning and, yes, hammering the government for answers to questions to which its citizens deserve full and verifiable answwers is somehow untoward. And if the hapless salaried clerks and bureaucrats the people in power use as their firewall against those inconvenient queries end up with a case of the vapors at having to field some angry phone calls--TOO BAD,
I guess what kills me is how people who sound like you are in greater sympathy with the stonewallers than the reporters asking the questions on your behalf. Fine, maybe on this issue YOUR biases prevent you from being skeptical about the motivations of those in power right now.
Fine. But the winds will shift and people you don't uncritically trust will find their way into the seats of power. And power, as you undoubtedly learned in grade school civics class, no matter who's got it, corrupts. These people, meaning people with power, ANY people with power, need to be watched and held accountable. And they tend not to like it, no matter what party they're in, wehn called on the carpet. And to get answers from them, you've got to be hard-nosed and be willing to be dropped from some people's Rolodexes. Sometimes you have to sue them in court. That takes more than guts. It takes money. So I hope who you pick for your surrogate is someone with a healthy trust fund.
If anything, the Strib is generally been guilty of blanching and flinching at the thought of falling out of favor with those people, not being too hard on them. So choose wisely, Anonymous, and do let us know who you have covering city, county state and federal government for us, not to mention the influence of corporate American over our lives. Do pass on their URL for our edification.
Right on, bro! The DFL is limited by the current political matrix (split chamber majorities, GOP Gov, convention next year, and shaky state revenues in a wavering economy) to be as bulldog and publically verbal about ALL the issues of MnDOT as they might like. MnDOT has been grudging and obtuse in the face of examination/inquiry, and needs the journalistic stick applied if the public is to get an accurate picture of this public agency's problems. Their response so far to legislators has been 38 cartons of fine print to the representative who wants answers to the FUBAR situation of the Wakota bridge. Not exactly a handshake of trust here. If the "lower level" managers are feeling the pressure, its because of the stonewalling at the higher levels; the reporters are just looking for seams in the wall. Good for them (AND US).
You really need to sit down and have a sandwich and a glass of milk.
Funny how no one was calling for tougher reporting and clingy surrogates when the Clintons were in the White House. But wait -- power corrupts, no matter who's got it? Rats. Whiffed on that one...
Most newspapers have rendered themselves irrelevant, and the Star Tribune has done it even more so, with its selective picking and choosing of worthy targets, while shoving its political agenda down the throats of too many mainstream Minnesotans. Now, you may start to grind your teeth at that term ("mainstream Minnesotans") but that's the audience, that's the tax base and that's the group that is so ill-served by the local fishwraps. Left-leaning in the newsroom, ethically corrupt from the publisher's chair on up, and yet we're supposed to be grateful and supportive all the same, long after the Star Tribune abdicated its real responsibilities to fair journalism.
The paper marginalized itself and pretends to sit in judgment of how others do their jobs, when it can't even hire itself a publisher without ending up in court.
Love it because its the only "newspaper of record" that we have? Look where that's gotten us so far. Sorry, Jimbo, but there are plenty of other choices nowadays, and I'd rather spend my time with some that haven't lied or betrayed me, in their claims about objective and honest journalism.
Quick question, Anonymous: Where are you getting your information on the bridge story, and the general state of things at MnDOT? Pass on a URL to edify the rest of us.
Special thanks.
Jimbo, please understand that not all "Anonymous" posters are the same person. Me, for instance. I'm not one (or more) of the above folks.
Can see where the shadow boxing could get frustrating for you. Maybe we should pledge to use pseudonyms, at least.
Or maybe I just wanted to see how many "lanes" I could make that north-south highway running along the left edge of our posts.
Not my problem. If you can't at least come up with a nom de blog, then be prepared to be lumped in with your fellow non-name posters.
Nobody:
Well, I don't think I'll have what you're having. You're sounding a lot like a guy who sat down and him a triple-decker feces sandwich and then washed 'er down with a brimmin' tumbler of milk..OF AMNESIA. To wit: "Funny how no one was calling for tougher reporting and clingy surrogates when the Clintons were in the White House." "Clingy"? Dude, ewwww. But anyway, yes, your assertion is indeed as funny as it is oblivious to recent history. Perhaps you've heard of Google. Give it a try. Here are some key words to get you started: Lewinsky, Whitewater, Vince Foster/murder conspiracy, health care reform, Ira Magaziner, "Travelgate" (shudder), Ken Starr, Jerome M. Marcus, Richard Mellon Scaife, Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, Christopher Ruddy, etc. You get the idea. Yes, what would a sharpie like yourself need with a surrogate to do his digging?
When did this become the "Jim Keinfelder" blog?
Typo correction: "Leinfelder" not Keinfelder. My bad.
And you are? Sorry, didn't mean to tire out your lips with all the readin'.
You didn't. I quit reading your lengthy screeds a long time ago.
If these two "reporters" are so good...why aren't they getting to the people that must be accountable, instead of bugging the crap out of lower-level employees who have no choice but to answer the phone?
If MNDot was under the control of Mike Hatch, I am guessing McEnroe and Kennedy would be on different beats.
McEnroe and Kennedy are still poodles compared to Nick Coleman.
Then why weren't they "turned loose" on Bikin' Jim Oberstar?
He diverted the bridge repair money to build more bike paths.
"@#!*%#!!! YOU!, Tom O," said McEnroe.
"Aaarf!" said Kennedy.
I was in the emergency room of HCMC with a friend the morning after the bridge collapsed for something completely unrelated. The so-called journalists were absolute vultures every time I stepped out of the building to use my cell phone and when we left to wait for a ride. I was accosted five or six times by CBS, NYT, ABC, etc. The people were rude and intrusive and I wasn't even, you know, directly traumatized.
While I think accountability is stellar and journalists of the past have brought to light many important issues, as far as I can tell the current field is overrun with sensationalism, desperation for readership/viewers, and lack of editing. I'd like to think that the bullying really was journalists pushing for the truth, but based on what I saw at HCMC and what I see in the Strib, I doubt it. Tact, manners, intelligence, and a thirst for knowledge seem to be missing in journalism right now.
Crotchety:
Not an especially apt comparison. The bridge collapse was an exigent curcumstance, otherwise known as "breaking news." Would you prefer it when something huge like this occurs that the people of Minneapolis just drop on by the ER one by one by one and ask over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over...(I think you get the idea)...what the hell happened? What did people see? How are they doing? How many are dead? How badly are injured are survivors? What are their names, because I can't reach my (fill in relative or friend) and they travel that bridge at rush hour ever day, etc. You were there and so maybe you knew something. Most people were not there and wanted to know what happened. Somehow I have to believe that usually you are not in the eye of a big story like this and you, too would like some way of reliably finding out what happened. And I'm guessing you're not patient enough to read about it in a history book or a weekly magazine or newspaper. You want to know ASAP.
But more to the point of this thread, McEnroe/Kennedy aren't hounding freshly traumatized disaster victims. They are requesting information from public employees who are safe, warm and dry in their cubicles. And when reporters confront what is often a reflexive refusal to provide it for no particular high-minded reason, they are asking again and again and again and again with force and conviction until the get it. It is their job. You needn't thank them. But you could make an effort at some perspective and a more evolved understanding of how you get your news before copping the crotchety pose.
The correct spelling of Sarah's last name is JANECEK...........
You do have it spelled correctly in a few places in this article.
Wait a minute: What have I gotten wrong here? SOMEBODY is finally going after MNDOT and instead of being happily surprised, we're supposed to feel sorry about it?
MNDOT and this administration have been stalling or changing the subject forever (never mind about how the bridge fell down, here's the new design!!!), in the very best Republican style. The "Emergency Coordinator" has been doing DC sleepovers on our tax dollars, was on PAID leave on our tax dollars, and/but there's no money for the injured and the survivors?
Thanks, Strib!
Money for injured and survivors? Give me a break. Yet another whiny "I can't help myself" crybaby. Sheesh!