The Rake Magazine

One of our correspondents the other day bemoaned our Strib coverage as appealing to "about 500 readers" and asked that we please write about something else. I hear you, brother (though I think the 500 number is WAY too high). I left the Strib because I didn't want to think about it all the time and would much prefer to concentrate on other local media, but the management weasels over on Portland just won't let up.
Arrived home from the North Shore Sunday night to find that the Strib's longtime contact with the outside world--the reader's representative--is the latest position to be whacked, or semi-whacked, depending on how you read the memo (posted below).
The paper's ombudsman position, created in the late '70s, was one of the first in the country. For years, Lou Gelfand handled the duties and was notable in his willingness to bite senior management's hand when required. Kate Parry, who was imported from the Pioneer Press about three years ago, lacked Gelfand's chutzpah during a time when those hands needed some serious gnawing. Well, at least she answered the phone. Now, with the switchboard operators gone and an Orwellian computerized phone system in place, and Parry reassigned as a health care editor, readers with issues are going to be hard-pressed to find someone to bitch to in the newsroom.
That's where my esteemed colleague comes in. On the newsroom's intranet communications board, one poster wondered if the new reader's rep might be "Brian Lambert at the Rake." I think that's a great idea--I'd post his phone number right now, but he's kayaking and can't defend himself.

Here's the memo and--hopefully--here's the end of Strib news for a while:

From: "Rene Sanchez"
To:
Date: Thu, 27 Sep 2007 11:07:34 -0500
Subject: Kate Parry is our new Health Care Editor

Dear staff:

We're pleased to announce that Kate Parry will be our new health care editor, taking on responsibility for coverage in print and on line. She will also occasionally serve as an at-large editor in the newsroom.

As you all know, we created one health care team to serve needs across the newsroom, including business, metro and features. This team has some of our most experienced reporters and writers, and we are looking to this team to produce some of our most ambitious journalism. In addition, we will need to expand our coverage online headed into 2008. We searched for several months for the right person to lead this coverage before coming to the conclusion that Kate had the best mix of skills for this important job. We know that she will provide thoughtful leadership and sophisticated editing; she has a long track record as an award-winning journalist.

When Kate came here nearly three years ago, it was with the understanding that the job of reader representative would not be a lifetime appointment and we discussed a tenure of about three years. I think we can all agree that Kate has served in that role admirably, and with courage. She has taken on some very difficult topics in her column, and spent hours listening to readers, and addressing the public. She has tackled prickly issues in the newsroom too, negotiating differences between writers and readers. We have been lucky to have her in that role.

But in a time of dwindling resources, we need more help with the journalism in the newsroom in order to serve our readers at the level they deserve.

We plan to keep the readers'rep position open while we evaluate our options although it's likely that in the future this will be a part-time position. In the meantime, we hope to step up communication in other ways. We will, of course, continue to answer all readers calls and report significant issues to editors in the room. Department heads will be asked to take on responsibility for correcting errors in their sections. And newsroom leaders will be asked to increase communication with the public. I will be resuming the editor's blog and the editor's column that Anders started, and I will occasionally ask other top editors to share that responsibility. We will also take on more responsibility for outside speaking engagements to share with the public the work we are doing in the newsroom. I have done two in the last week alone.

Kate will start her new job Monday, Oct. 8. Since her work will cross all departments, she will report to Deputy Managing Editor Rene Sanchez. Please join us in thanking her for her work as the reader's representative and wishing her well in this new role.

Nancy, Scott and Rene

I was covering the Larry Craig hearing for most of yesterday and, though I tried to keep the site refreshed by posting comments, memos and such, I didn't have a chance to read through the entries until late last nigiht. They made me smile.
There were posts from some of the media people I respect most in this town, who offered viewpoints that were enlightening, entertaining, and irritating. There were posts from others I don't know as well with fresh takes on old subjects, or who made comments with which I disagreed entirely. In short, this little blog offered a microcosm of what I like to get when I read a newspaper's opinion pages.
That's why interim Strib publisher Chris Harte's memo to staff yesterday regarding the changes to come to the paper's editorial pages left me feeling queasy.
The queasiness started with him naming Scott Gillespie editorial page editor "on an interim basis."
Just last week, Harte named himself interim publisher while a "national search" is conducted to find a Par Ridder replacement. I saw no similar replacement strategy attached to the Gillespie appointment. Does that mean that by the time Scott has finished that assignment, there won't be a need for an editorial page editor? I remember a time when the Pioneer Press had a sizeable, vibrant staff for its editorial pages. That disappeared with the paper's downsizing and "localization" under Par Ridder, who Avista championed as its publisher until only recently.
Par may be gone, but "local" isn't. It cropped up all over the Harte memo.

He sees the need for the paper to concentrate on "local, state and regional issues" (which I thought it already did) and I suspect that Harte agrees entirely with Ridder, who told a staffer during a recent meeting that he saw no need for the paper to endorse a presidential candidate, because it had no bearing locally.
Oops, there's that sick feeling again.
It got worse when Harte mentioned that he has issued a "mandate" to Gillespie to move the editorial pages in a direction that "complements" the paper's new strategy of locally zoning the metro pages. Readers who have complained consistently that the lefty editorial pages need "right-sizing" need to note this. Nobody is talking about a change in political slant; everything is just going to get smaller. I'm going to miss reading about issues that might be affecting an area other than my neighborhood. I thought that was what being part of a community was all about.
I didn't always agree with Susan Albright, but I respected her fight to preserve the integrity of her section. And I respect her even more for choosing to walk away from her job, rather than become an administrator for implementing the "mandate" of a man who doesn't even live here yet.

9/26 UPDATE: Albright is out, and Gillespie is in..."temporarily." Hope that doesn't mean he's going to decimate the opinion pages, then return to his regular newsroom vagaries....

Here's the memo:
"Editorial Page changes
by Chris Harte, Publisher and Chairman
September 26, 2007 - Susan Albright, our editorial page editor, will be leaving the Star Tribune, effective Oct. 12. Scott Gillespie, our managing editor, will move over to be the editorial page editor on an interim basis.
Susan has ably guided the Star Tribune editorial pages with the highest integrity since 1993, and I have the utmost respect for her as a journalist and an editorialist. She is a nationally recognized leader among editorial writers and a former president of the National Conference of Editorial Writers (NCEW).

Under her leadership, the Star Tribune editorial staff has won numerous editorial, op-ed and cartooning awards. In 2001 her staff conceived and launched the Sunday Op Ex section, now called "Opinion Exchange."

With all of these fine credentials to Susan's credit, it is all the more difficult to say that she and I have a difference of opinion that results in her leaving. As I moved into the chairman's role in March and then into the publisher's role, it was clear as Susan and I talked that we had different views of the future.

We have a professional disagreement about the role of the editorial pages and how they should be edited. The main shift I want to see is toward even more locally focused editorial pages.

I believe the role of a metro newspaper is changing radically and rapidly in a world of instant global access to information. I see the need for our editorial pages, like the rest of the newspaper, to concentrate more heavily than ever on local, state and regional issues. This is where we can stake a claim like no other media can.

Our readers can go to many places to get informed opinion on the Iraq war or global warming. But there are very few places they can go for expert opinion on local issues. And that is where I want us to dwell, with the active participation of our readers.

As you know, we will soon be locally zoning the metro news pages, and my mandate to Scott is to move our editorial pages in a direction that complements this local strategy.

Regarding her departure, Susan said: "It has been an honor and a privilege for me to serve as the Star Tribune's editorial page editor for nearly 15 years. I am proud of what the opinion page staff has accomplished in those years. On leaving, I can only express my profound gratitude to all my colleagues, and wish them all the best."

I hope you will please take the time to congratulate Susan on a job very well done. She is a true professional who stands up for her beliefs, articulates them eloquently and genuinely respects the views of others. I wish her all the best.

Posted yesterday: It should come as no surprise to any of our faithful readers that the Strib's, uh, shall-we-say, "progressive leaning" editorial department, under the long-time stewardship of Susan Albright, has for years been a painful, pricking thorn in the side of McClatchy, and now Avista. My partner in crime, currently on a kayaking adventure in Utah, recently posted about management's directive that the editorial department lay off support for the nickel a gallon gas tax hike.

The latest rumor to rumble around Shake-up Central on Portland has Albright stepping down from her post, to be replaced by none other than Strib managing editor Scott Gillespie.

It makes sense.

Gillespie hardly seems a favorite of Strib uber editor Nancy Barnes. Heck, when a reporter from the American Journalism Review showed up earlier this year to do a piece on the paper's contractions, Barnes offered a list of people for him to contact. Although all her other newsroom favs were included, Gillespie's name was nowhere to be found. Then there was the leak that now-vanished publisher Par Ridder wanted to bring PiPress's editor Thom Fladung Stribside (Fladung declined).

Gillespie is well-known as an editor who has continuously lost vertebrae as he's ascended through the ranks and become more adept at avoiding controversy at all costs. Over the last few months, he made his bones with top management by following its staff whacking and restructuring orders to the letter, no matter who got hurt. Staffers who once considered him a friend have no doubt that he'd run the layoff truck over them if Chris Harte so ordered, rather than take a stand.

Having Gillespie in the Editorial driver's seat would not only get him out of the downsized newsroom--where two editors are probably now seen as too many (read expensive)--it would put a malleable executive in charge of what, until now, has been the paper's last bastion of rage against the machine.

Watch this space.

Proving once again that if God himself arrived on Earth X% of the chattering classes would complain that his luminous vestments were not luminous enough, his beard had split ends, his diction was stilted and (for balance) Satan thought him intellectually lacking, the niggling over Ken Burns' "The War" has begun.

OK, so we're off to a shaky start comparing Burns to God, (some of his recent interviewers have come close), but come on, is anyone out there doing better stuff on this scale anywhere in this country? The answer to that is, "No". Personally, I locked in from the first frame last night and see no purpose in niggling, other than to bait/engender an argument. I'm a fan of Burns' "style", the pace, the panning, the narration, the "fiddles". Not only doesn't it bother me, I regard the time in frame and hours spent overall as a valuable antidote to the ADHD-pacing and "money shot" structure of way too many feature films and network documentaries. (In my opinion, Burns' "Lewis & Clark", which he described as a "visual valentine to the American West" is the apex of this style. Gorgeous. Hypnotic. Plug it into a plasma set.)

I have not seen all of "The War". (I am still trying to convince PBS that I am worthy of press screeners, even though my last name is no longer the prestigious "St. Paul Pioneer Press"). Burns has said that last night's opener was essentially a full-length scene-setter, designed to establish the characters from the four towns he chose to build his story upon. But the nigglers are already complaining that Burns' is treading on overly-familiar ground, hasn't revealed anything new about WWII, or why humans fight, and is already resorting to visual cliches of repeated stock footage.

Among the less-than-thrilled ... my new co-blogger, Ms. Rybak. She of course is so much younger than me she can be forgiven for not remembering WWII. Hell, she's such a pup she barely remembers Duran Duran.

Since I haven't seen the next 12 hours I'll reserve judgment on whether Burns goes anywhere new, anywhere no filmmaker before him has ever gone, and whether he creates an epiphanic moment whereby the human affinity for war is laid bare, Dick Cheney is dragged out behind the barn and peace petals blanket the planet.

But the Burns' "style", even the 14 and a half hours, he commits to these epics has the effect of a deep immersion class from the best professor on campus. You absorb his films. You LIVE in them, and the hours you spend with the rhythms and characters, especially the ground level characters he's chosen here instead of generals and historians, provide insights and qualities "ordinary" documentarians struggle to capture, condense, condense again and and contextualize in an hour, or even more laughably, a 12-minute, "20/20" piece.

What amuses me first is the insistence on ... speed ... even from middle-aged book readers, who you'd think would know better and appreciate comprehensiveness. The vibe is: WE already know about Guadalcanal, the battle of Midway and MacArthur's screw-ups. So come on! Chop chop. Let's get to something new or at least get to the end ... faster.

Burns has told every interviewer that he was inspired to make "The War" after reading a poll that showed a shockingly high percentage of American school children so ignorant of who fought who and why in WWII they believed the United States and Germany were allies against the Russians. (Holy shit.)

Knowing that those people soon become voting age adults capable of being swayed by cheap demagoguery, you may, if you're Ken Burns, decide to devote a year and a half to re-telling an oft-told tale in a different way, (going light on the politicians and admirals). But the nigglers are arguing that this is exactly what the Burns "style" is failing to engage -- the imagination and attention of teenagers and twenty-somethings who have no interest in the background noise about wars of their own generation, much less their grandparents'.

Burns has hinted he may take on the Vietnam War somewhere down the line. If the nigglers are upset that "The War" isn't ideologically-driven enough, THAT adventure may be more provocative.

Alessandra Stanley's review in The New York Times hits on the notion that the film is too tightly focused on America. Really? I mean, I understand the need to find something to niggle about under deadline pressure, but this is clearly a film about the American experience of WWII. (I'd love to see a similar film from a Russian or Japanese filmmaker with access to their archives.)

Even in the scene-setter opening I sense that Burns' decision to speak from the perspective of GIs, flyers, sailors, nurses and relatives at home offers valuable illumination about how little the average soldier then (and probably now) cared about or followed (or even had access to) world events that drew him into the maw of war. Only the Jewish guy from Waterbury, CT. recalled having followed the ravings and fascism of Hitler with any particular interest before enlisting. Most other young men, as Minnesotan (and soon to be folk hero) Sam Hynes, says, were simply swept up into the current, often with a cartoonish notion of war and the promise of instant adulthood and an adventure far more interesting than anything they'd find at home.

If all the "war" nigglers are really complaining about the lack of direct relation to the disaster in Iraq, I think they might be guilty of being too short-sighted and literal-minded. I'm guessing that by the time "The War" wraps next weekend, viewers who don't demand some kind of Michael Bay-meets-Michael Moore hybrid, will have had a remarkably fulfilling experience, even without learning anything new about naval strategies at Midway.

A commenter asks Ms. Rybak and me to say something about the sorry state -- make that "the perpetually sorry state" of Twin Cities radio, since people have been complaining about how dull, dim-witted, choked-with-advertising and uninspired local radio is since I started paying attention to it back in 1989.

It's not like it has gotten any better, generally speaking, but where would we begin?

First though, just to catch up, two stations parted ways with their program directors last week. First, Doug Westerman, briefly my boss, at KTLK-FM, was shown the door, then Erin Rasmussen at FM-107. There had been some gossip that Westerman's departure might signal the much-anticipated format switch at KTLk, away from conservative talk to ... God knows what. But by replacing Westerman with a talk radio program director from Memphis, Steve Versnick -- via WLW in Cincinnati, the signal would seem to be that Clear Channel will stick with, delusional 29%-er talk at least through next year's election, which has been my bet for a while.

The move at FM-107, a.k.a. "The Chick Station", home of Kevyn Burger, Lori & Julia and more recently, Andrew Zimmern and Colleen Kruse, is more like looking for fresh ideas.

The next quarterly Arbitron ratings won't be out until later next month, but trends since the "spring book" show very little change other than an overall bump upwards for KSTP-AM, very likely due to Twins baseball -- which provides the station with virtually no revenue.

What the commenter wants I think is a grand overview, a station-by-station analysis, which might be an interesting project. But it'll take a while to gather the deepest of my/our deep thoughts.

Until then here's a blurb a friend sent my way. It comes from Tom Taylor a veteran radio analyst/information trader, who has a successful independent until he sold and joined forces with ... (cue Darth Vader theme) ... Clear Channel.

Taylor's headline is: After Clear Channel goes private -- will there be an exodus of management talent?

He writes: One observer e-mails me to predict that "many folks at the management level are just waiting for their payday from the stock buyout. Watch and see. Fueling that is the feedback from the recent managers meeting. Market managers were told that they will be given their revenue goals from above, and then they're expected to hit them. So much for bottom-up budgeting. The subtle hint was that 'You'll hit them, or we won't be seeing you at this meeting next year.'" He goes on to say that managers feel particularly helpless because "in reality, local markets have discretion on less than 20% of the expense line items in the budget" and that "a large percentage of promotion and research decisions are made in San Antonio," leading to what he calls "micromanagement."

I include this only because the "Clear Channelization" of the seven stations the company owns in the Twin Cities and as well as the extent to which competitors acquire Clear Channel-like attitudes toward programming, salary levels and ad clutter is arguably the underlying malaise effecting this market and many others.

Clear Channel is going back to private status some time in the next few months, a move that will -- you guessed it -- re-line the pockets of the company's major investors, some of whom joined the Gilded Age when it went public several years ago.

Finally, after nine straight months of blogging, I'm taking a brief break. I couldn't leave town until the Par Ridder follies reached some kind of conclusion. The Slaughter will be in Ms. Rybak's more than capable hands until I get back on Oct. 5, although she too will be away soon for a few days.