Secrets of the City

Re Door etiquette: My general rule is that they have to be no more than two steps from the door by the time I get it open. Minnesotans are way too nice about this. I hate having to hurry up from 50 yards away just because someone is holding the door for me. Just let it go.

That NYT article on the Tribune is rich with material. Where to start? A news outlet going after a leaker w/in its own ranks? A staff writer making editorial comments on current political issues? Corporate bafoonery? Too good. Too good.

Agreed, Kevin. And it’s very well-written — it drags the reader from lede to end.

As for the door, if it’s a woman I’ll wait longer than if it’s a guy.

Re: the worst senators. Dayton was always somewhat lucid as long as he stayed on his psychotropic meds. The problem seemed to be that he’d run out before the end of the month or he’d apparently forget to have his staff get his prescriptions re-filled before the weekend.

The NYT story is devastingly good. Choice cuts:

“There is an implicit broader message. If the people who make the paper believe that an electronic version of the product is just as good as the one readers pay for, why bother subscribing?”

“But at some point  perhaps when reporters are denied access to newspapers  publishers are saying something else to their employees and their readers: What you’re holding has no value.”

I hear Rybak is having a pajama party at block E to “take a bite out of crime”!

yesterday morning I took the bus past the jaguar dealership and there were picketers yelling and waving signs. Today, there was one guy in a chair reading a magazine. Lazy teamsters….

I’d like to see Time to a piece on the most effective and least effective lobbyists. It would be interesting to see more about that process. And we could look back every few years and see which ones have been indicted.

Regarding the NYTimes article, since when does the Strib cost 25 cents? Hath the Gray Lady erred, does the Strib’s Senior VP not know the price of the paper, or are Strib employees entitled to a half-price paper?

Regarding door etiquette, my misanthropy index soars whenever a cell phone user has the door held/swung open for him/her and then walks through the door without so much as touching or nudging it such that the door quickly swings shut on the next person.

As I offer my dusty copy editing trophy up for sacrifice, please disregard my NY Times comment. Sometimes the second paragraph contains meaningful background information.

“are Strib employees entitled to a half-price paper?”

They get a deal.

“Sometimes the second paragraph contains meaningful background information.”

Or, it can be used to allude to something further on in the story.

I just want to know if the pickles will still be named with pithy State Fair references.

In other news, the St. Paul Saints have a fun promo planned.

sorry, here’s the link. whoops.

http://www.saintsbaseball.com/news/?id=4209

Claude and Rick are judging the pickles this year…

J, this is how you make a link:
Click the link button
Paste in the url
Put something in between the <a href=”"> and the </a>

This is the end result:
Saint Paul Saints issue commemorative Vikings cruise ships

Hey NYTimes: how’s that whole TimesSelect idea working out?

the red star has got to be the biggest joke in newspaper circles. Only yesterday did they print a letter to the editor about boycotting the baby seal hunt. obviously a letter from some idiotic wacko environmentalist. they can’t write a decent story without bias to save their lives.

Hmm…Is it possible for Rick to write an unbiased comment?

Damn wacko environmentalists. Always complaining when people club baby seals.

And damn commie pinko papers. Always printing their readers’ opinions.

Good piece on The Times online on Slate today.

So are we saying that the Mechanics have HIV? Try the link.

Did anyone notice in the Knight Ridder story that the executives allocated one eighth of the company’s profit to themselves? If you go back through the Knight Ridder proxy statements, you’ll find a pretty clear history of the hierarchy of the board’s priorities. It goes something like this: 1) The Ridder family; 2) people dumb enough to buy stock; 18) the employees. I used to point out the repricing of stock options in my class at the U in the lesson about how to read media companies’ annual reports.

Dayton among the 5 worst Senators. There’s a shock.

I look forward to TBartel’s revealing of the percentage of City Pages profit that was directed to the Bartel family.

Yo.

Bud, If I thought you were capable of other than knee jerk reactions, I’d try to explain why the Knight Ridder board’s repricing of their stock options as the stock price declines is good for the board and bad for the shareholders–the sort of self dealing American executives in all industries are rightfully famous for. (That’s an “ad hominem” counter attack, btw.)

City Pages was an S corp. If you don’t know what that means in terms of profit distribution, ask an accountant.