The Rake Magazine

We all know newspapers are dying, leaving the news to migrate online, but that's hardly the end of the story. Is local online news financially sustainable? And what does the shift from the printed word to a multi-media platform mean for the future of storytelling? The Rake's online editor, Cristina Cordóva, offers a clear-eyed assessment of these questions and also surveys the current array of online outlets for local news, sussing out who's winning, who stands to lose — and how it all shakes out for you, the reader.

Turning to more lighthearted matters: For our semi-annual fashion feature, we convinced a quintet of comely dancers at the U of M to put on new looks for spring and show them off while performing a custom-choreographed dance piece. The results are fresh, fun, and even we'll admit it — a tad frivolous (in a good way!). Elsewhere in this issue, you'll meet some St. Paul high-schoolers scrambling to build a better robot; learn the new spin on trickle-down economics; get the back story on the citrus that's become a chef favorite; find out how to make sushi interesting again; plus much more.

As you've likely heard by now, we're no longer living in the Twin Cities — it's "Minneapolis Saint Paul," thank you very much, as per the new "joint branding initiative" rolling out in advance of the Republican juggernaut later this year. Nomenclature aside, this PR campaign aims to play up the native strengths of the Twin Cities (oops), rather than compare our assets with bigger and supposedly better metropolises (remember the Minneapple?).

But when it comes to the Dakota Jazz Club, it seems that Minnesotan modesty takes hold. This is one of the best places for live jazz in the entire country, but few seem to acknowledge that — or else they take it for granted. In the course of editing our cover story on Lowell Pickett, the Dakota's founder and co-owner, I heard tales about how the owners of legendary jazz joints in New York kowtow before Pickett when he visits. And as veteran jazz writer Britt Robson shows, Pickett himself is an extremely modest man — which makes us all the more proud to tell his story in our magazine.

Our other March feature is an astute and very personal take on another PR initiative of sorts: the Truth Project, which is designed to convince born-agains that "showing up to church, voting Republican, and putting a Jesus fish on the SUV isn’t enough," as writer Alyssa Ford puts it. Elsewhere in our pages you'll find an account of preschool-aged protesters taking to the streets in downtown Minneapolis; a letter from a soldier in Samarra, Iraq; a fresh look at fine-dining options that aren't getting the buzz they deserve; and, of course, much more.

For our first issue of 2008, we succumbed to a natural impulse of media organs throughout the land: list-making. But what type of list? Hosannas, top-10s, “best-of”s? Snazzy dressers, notable news, or stories you should have paid attention to but didn't? We set all that aside and came up with our first annual "Over the Coals" list: a recounting of idiotic, inane, and utterly inexplicable local doings from last year.

If you're inclined to overly complicated metaphors, it's kind of like we took the lumps of coal from the stockings of those who deserved said lumps, dragged the Coleman out of the garage, and set up a nice, toasty blaze for those self-same recipients of the aforementioned coal lumps.

If you're not inclined to such metaphors, forget you read that, and consider instead our feature on Sam and Sylvia Kaplan. You know their names, you might even recognize their faces, and you probably have a vague idea about how they are linked with Paul Wellstone, Keith Ellison, and now Barack Obama. In fact, they are essential to almost any Democrat who wants to to get elected in Minnesota. We set out to discover how that happened.

Elsewhere in our January issue, you'll find stories about the hot new thing to huff (it comes in cute, very portable cans); the end of the world, Mayan style; and another Darfur that is just a short drive from the Twin Cities.