Secrets of the City

Correction:

It was THE first MNSpeak gathering EVAR.

They all are.

I wish I could make a link to this directly, but go to http://www.tagcrowd.com and paste in the URL http://mnspeak.com/mnspeak/archive/allcomments.cfm

Also, Bix is right. It was the first mnspeak gathering I’ve witnessed, anyway, and seeing is believing.

When I have a beef with City Pages – and I have had more than a few — I take it to them directly. Then I snark about them here.

A few examples:

Ethanol
Smoking & DUI
More Smoking

Bixby is one of the biggest words in that cloud.

I just don’t think CP has the soul it had with Steve Perry. Now it just seems like a faceless paper.

How is that?

jacc is the hot meat in an “ice” and “justpbob” sandwich.

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again. I love the tranny escort ads.

So, Bob do you really think City Pages ran that piece because their in tank for Philip Morris?

I was pissed off when I wrote that, and later apologized.

However, CP has a long record of taking a pro-smoke slant in their stories. Read a few and tell me I’m wrong…

Welcome to our world, bob.

Max – thanks for the link. Demko handed me that one on a silver platter.

Kevin (not Hoffman): I completely agree that CP lacks the Perryesque projection. I wouldn’t hesitate to step into the wayback machine, but there wasn’t much room for good, fresh blood like Jeff Severns Guntzel and Jonathan Kaminsky. (I know Matt Snyders is more controversial.)

Bob/Rat – one of the pieces Bob cited was by GR Anderson, who, whatever his love of tobacco, isn’t in the tank for anyone.

July 2, 2007

That was the one at Suzie’s, right? My memory of that meetup is rather dim.

All I have to say, with a slight drawl, is, “Demko…I’m you’re huckleberry”

It’s funny that Demko would get worked up about anything negative that is written here. You’d think that a “gruff newshound” would be used to a little criticism.

He’s just a tender little guy.

Quote via Napoleon Dynamite, btw.

Regardless of author, you mess with The Lung, you’re going to get stung.

I yelp at MinnPost too, as needed. Also offer praise for a job well-done, like The Daily Glean, my new fav news roundup.

CP has a long record of taking a pro-smoke slant in their stories.

Maybe they’re just a little suspicious. I imagine they fancy themselves as outside The Establishment or mainstream media. Lotsa money has been changing hands in this Crusade and a new Establishment, with power, has emerged.

Speaking of lotsa money changing hands, I’m guessing that the volume of Phillip Morris and RJR Nabisco ad dollars going into CP and other alter-rags of their ilk might have a little to do with their pro-smoke slant. just a hunch.

If you outlaw smoking, only outlaws will smoke.

Yeah, smoking is cool again.

Only bacon, Oliver, only bacon…

Tobacco companies are making money hand over fist.

If you outlaw smoking, only outlaws will carry smoking guns.

Wait…

It’s worth noting that — as Brauer’s piece ably identifies — not all of us think the same, and we’re not afraid to have a little healthy back-and-forth on it. Specifically about the tobacco issue, I offer this:

There’s discussion in the comments about whether a smoking ban in bars increases the rate of drunk driving. An American Lung Association guy takes us on.

The thing is, he’s absolutely right that that study is horseshit. Aside from pretty specious methodology, it doesn’t point out that the public health benefits of the smoking ban certainly outweigh the consequences, even if their findings are the gospel truth. But he’s absolutely wrong to suggest that editorial policy is influenced by advertising.

And yeah, I wholeheartedly encourage people to take criticisms directly to us. It’s welcomed, we can take it, and it only helps us get better.

Bring back the Sweet Potato.

No, no – take criticism directly to me!

Then again, I might not be the go-to guy for CP haters right now …

Have heard so far from one person with some very fair criticisms about a Matt Snyders piece on north Minneapolis back in July, but other than that, no real backlash. Sigh.

Duely noted, Jeff, and I have submitted another comment to you and The Blotter, eating crow for my earlier comment about tobacco advertising and CP’s editorial positions.

“you mess with The Lung, you’re going to get stung.”

That line may work on your wife, but MNspeak isn’t so easy!

Tell me about it. Tough crowd! Karma has a way of getting you in the end…

This isn’t really what we had in mind, either. Who do you believe? The ALAMN or MPCA? Actually, you can believe both of us…

oh I was totally at that FEMnSGT!
I remember the hoff!

Yeah, smoking is cool again.

It’s because I do it.

Karma has a way of getting you in the end…\

Like I said, that line may work on your wife…

Have heard so far from one person with some very fair criticisms about a Matt Snyders piece on north Minneapolis back in July, but other than that, no real backlash. Sigh.

Isn’t that cause for concern alone. A few years back I think there would be plenty of people going to bat for CP…

(rimshot)

he’s absolutely wrong to suggest that editorial policy is influenced by advertising.

heh.

Rich -

I definitely didn’t expect people to go to bat for the new CP – validates the story’s scene-setting – but (operator error aside) the sense that there are so few passions, even negatively right now, does speak volumes.

The goal here is to get more good stuff in the paper, whatever the circumstances. I truly do think talented people work there and deserve some praise.

Demko’s right, about his own work, at least.

While I often disagree with him, he’s an excellent reporter and deserves a lot of praise for that, regardless about how one feels about the rest of CP lately.

And no, this isn’t him or a buddy of his writing this.

Video games outsell music and deserve cultural treatment. And from what I hear, hockey is pretty popular around these parts. Young blood should have its fun…He acknowledges the strategic dimension: “It’s a fair criticism to say we’re going after a younger readership, and that includes young males.”

It sounds more like following than “going after”. They are following the trend that more people are reading the stories that cater to the young male readership… by creating more stories of similar ilk.

This seems to be the basis for the defense against the cries of plummeting quality. Could it be that more people are reading stories about video game tournaments because there isn’t anything more interesting being offered to the mass of savvy readers????

You get a dumb audience by providing dumb content and it’s not a chicken or the egg scenario. You gain intelligent readers by printing intelligent stories.

Demko’s a good cat. I am a former coworker, but I stand by my statement.

Though I risk being thought of as a jackass by Demko (who has made a cameo on one of my Xmas cards, by the way), while I don’t think it’s completely worthless, I really don’t take the time to read CP like I used to.

But Brauer’s article explains one thing.

He acknowledges the strategic dimension: “It’s a fair criticism to say we’re going after a younger readership, and that includes young males.”

I’ve noticed that various iterations of the word “fuck” pop up with seeming regularity. I know I risk coming off as a total prude, but I assure you, it’s not a foreign word to this mouth. And I believe it has its place. But when profanity goes into print in a publication that (I think) hopes to be taken seriously, and it’s not in a quote relevant to an article, it comes off as sophomoric and I have a hard time taking that publication seriously.

Oh- I think I should clarify. When I said publication, I didn’t mean adult-oriented ones, porn or otherwise.

CJC – f-bombing is not a new thing to the current iteration of CP.

Of course, I say this as a guy who browbeat my editors to let me use “suck” in a MinnPost headline.

I was not allowed to curse in my stories when I worked at CP, unless it was in a direct quote from someone else. So I tried to find as many quotes with curse words in them as I could.

I want to party with K.Hoff. Who can make that happen?

I’ve cursed numerous times in City Pages without it being a direct quote.

You know, I always felt like the rules were a little different for me at CP. I was not supposed to curse or write in the first person too frequently. In the meanwhile, half of Diablo Cody’s stories started with the word “I.”

There was definately a double-standard for the Max man.

You got shafted to the max.

Wow. Is anyone really going to read 3,000 words on the inner workings of City Pages? The most important points are the last three paragraphs:

On a macro level, CP’s February-to-February blog numbers are up across the board. Visits are up 43 percent (128,000 to 182,000) and page views have doubled (175,738 to 357,118). Blog readers lingered 62 percent longer on the site (a minute and a half versus 56 seconds). The “bounce rate”  people who leave without viewing another page  has fallen from 81 percent to 75 percent. (That’s moving in the right direction.)

City Pages’ traffic ranks third in the Village Voice empire, even though the 16-paper chain has alt-weeklies in bigger cities such as New York, L.A., San Francisco, Seattle and Denver.

The most important points are the last three paragraphs…

Quantity ` quality.

I don’t understand how that addresses the quality of the stories and coverage, which has been the topic of the entire thread.

Insert “not equal to” sign between quantity and quality.

: \

Quantity≠Quality

It would seem that City Pages now considers itself worthy enough to publish a lengthy Blotter post taking issue with a MinnPost photo caption calling an Iraqi mosque a “temple.”

Heh.

Boys! Stop that fighting! Don’t make me come up there…