My reaction: “Post” is short for “Post-Menopausal”. That’s a mighty aged lineup of reporters and editors.

Looks more like a think-tank of elder-statesman journalists. Or a local journalists’ retiree’s club.

Obviously, they’re drawing almost entirely from those who’ve lost or relinquished their former jobs in local journalism, and who can afford to work for cheap, at least for a while, due to severance or retirement income.

It’s hard to envision this venture succeeding, given how it’s being staffed. This may be a “new media” vehicle, but its reporters and editors clearly represent the oldest slice of “old media” in this market. That can’t be good.

Bob: I’m usually screaming about the lazy press in our town, but to respond to your comment, it’s not lazy journalists that leads media companies to use AP and Reuter’s, but lack of advertising revenue to support the news staff. Also, many media companies are publicly traded so the decisions of how news was reported in years past are that, past.

Newspapers once held healthy profit margins and although the margins are still decent, they are unable to support the staffing they once did. As the industry consolidates so does the operation and “templates” and “vendors” replace “custom” and “reporters.”

The Twin Cities has always supported a number of media outlets and ranks as one of the most news savvy cities in the country. I don’t know how the Perry and Kramer ventures will shake out, but this town needs a good shake up. Some of the traditional media companies have not responded as quickly or as well as they could have to the impact that the internets has had so if these two new ventures get everyone to step up their game, I’m all for it.

It will be interesting to see how the reporting evolves from the seasoned journalists writing for both sites. If there is indeed an organic growth of the story, not only from the journalist writing, but from the community, the stories we see on these sites could be the ones we think are the most newsworthy or interesting and not the same ole’ same ole’.

(Plus Chuck did their videos!)

That’s why I wonder whether some of these new online efforts are going to bring anything NEW to the table.

Some stories will get heavier play than others, because of the different forms of media. Red meat political stories, like the Gonzales resignation, will get bigger play on the political blogs and online media. Violent crime stories get more play on teevee, as it fits the “live, at the scene” format better than complex public policy or business news, which is best covered by the dead tree media.

That said, there is some lazyness in our local media. Newspapers depend too much on newswires like AP rather than do original reporting. Teevee news depends on the morning headlines for too many of their stories. Very few radio stations in Minnesota do ANY original reporting of news.

Many conservatives mistake “news we would rather not acknowledge or admit may true” to be liberal bias. I know some hard-core liberal types who fall into the same trap, certain that all news is filtered by White House censors. Both are equally wrong.

The news media can — and often will — screw up badly. Like our country, it eventually sorts things out and gets the facts right.

I’m blown away by how you see the exact same four front-page headlines (different wording, but same subject, I mean) on every daily, and the weeklies seem to hit the same theme each week.