Secrets of the City

“According to Mediaweek, St. Paul is the cultural center of Minneapolis/St. Paul,” writes Tim Brunelle.

The Minneapolis-St. Paul market, once two markets until 1986, is one of the geographically largest, reaching into western Wisconsin. It’s home to 19 Fortune 500 companies including Target, US Bancorp, Pepsi Americas, Best Buy and General Mills, as well as a number of universities, making for a highly educated, white-collar population. Minneapolis serves as the market’s business center, while St. Paul is the state’s capital and cultural center. Civic duty runs deep—the state has the country’s highest voting rate.

Mediaweek’s Market Profile on Minneapolis-St. Paul says our “affluent, news-hungry market has a stable radio scene, but troubles in print.” Surprise, surprise. And they didn’t even mention MPR, did they? Or online news, for that matter.

“We’ve come to expect that whatever we want to know should be just a few mouse clicks away,” writes Dave Healy, of the Park Bugle, questioning whether or not newspapers have a place in this give-it-to-me-now information age. Sure, newspapers have adapted to the trend by going online, but “newspapers are more than a way of distributing information,” argues Healy. “They also serve as filters, a way to winnow the limitless harvest of words that threatens to overwhelm us.” They decide what’s fit to print. They make it fit  into however many column inches they have that day. And the editors make it fit to read . Or so it used to be.

Do newspapers still serve as filters? Are they still determining the news that’s fit to print? Keep in mind that almost every local online newspaper has some kind of citizen engagement forum to determine what you want to hear about. And don’t forget the comments sections.

They certainly don’t have limited space online. So, they’re not “making it fit” anymore. They don’t have to limit themselves to X number of stories or X column inches a day. Does this create an overwhelming flood of unfiltered information? Sure, we still have home pages, so they can still prioritize certain items if they like. Is this being well done, or just the latest news?

And how about making it fit to read? Didn’t the Strib just fire a bunch of people from the copy room? (Ouch.) Are editors even getting to the pieces before they go live? We’ve sure seen plenty of errors online. How much can be done when the goal is to get it up as quickly as possible? And do we even fact check anymore?

Is this all just a part of information evolution, or do we need to think things out a little more clearly?

(via WCCO)

Longtime WCCO-TV reporter Darcy Pohland died overnight. She was 48 years old.

Pohland was discovered by a personal care attendant Friday morning at her home in Minneapolis. She had apparently died in her sleep. Her cause of death has not yet been determined.

Pohland has been a news reporter at WCCO-TV for the last two decades.

Alongside the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal, the Strib won two Society of American Business Editors and Writers awards yesterday for 2009 coverage — a Breaking News award for “Petters Found Guilty” and an Enterprise award for “Wasteland,” Chris Serres’ exposé of rotten exurban land development.

(via MinnPost)

SABEW named three winners in each category and classification; the Strib was joined in both of its wins by the Times and the Journal. To give you an idea how heady the competition was, the co-winner in “Wasteland’s” category was another Minnesota-based story, “The Burger That Shattered Her Life,” Timesman Michael Moss’s incredible and sickening tour through America’s lax meat inspection system.

WCCO asks, “are Minnesotans sick of winter?” Yeah, no shit we are. Aren’t we sick of winter every year, about two or three weeks into it?

“We’re tired of it but I’ve been living here for 24 years, so it’s as to be expected,” said Laura Mlynarek throwing snow from the sidewalk.

“I’m done with winter. It could end pretty soon,” said Bruce Nelson as he shoveled his driveway.

“I am getting a little sick of it. Minnesota’s getting old this winter,” said Gregory Wacker while running his snow blower.

Yeah, no shit. But… we know what to expect, right? Why so much complaining? Is this winter really any worse than the rest? Don’t we say that every year?

And don’t we have real news to report? Cripes!

Today MinnPost introduced a new feature, MinnPost Asks, “short Q&As with people who have something to say that’s worth hearing.” Uh… ok, I guess. But how is this new? And how is this exciting? Isn’t this what everyone else is doing? And isn’t it just a simple, low-maintenance format for, uh, a normal article? Not sure why we should cbe too terribly excited about it. But the first installment is a Q&A with Minneapolis School Board Member Chris Stewart.

Do you have an itch for TV fame? Check out Barataria’s latest post. Erik Hare asked the Twitterverse what it takes for someone to get on TV.  “It started as a curiosity,” he explains, “but I had a purpose.  There are, after all, bobbing heads who seem to make a living dispensing bits of wisdom like so much Pez in the various forms of media.  Could I possibly join that class?”

The trick? Be an expert on something. But… Erik has a little problem with this:

I don’t believe that “experts” are what is needed in the world.  I can’t pitch myself as an “expert” on anything without feeling I’ve done something morally wrong.

That may sound extreme, but … Hell, it is extreme.  I admit it, my Taoism is getting the better of me here.  But isn’t the role of news media to provide us with context, not a series of expert opinions?  Isn’t it more valuable to give people the background that allows them to ask the right questions and the sense of wonder and curiosity that drives them to find the answers for themselves?

What do you think?

Erik continues, explaining how “this is at the heart of how journalism, particularly on television, is changing.”

Matt Thompson is the coolest of cool. No doubt about it. And now we have one more reason to think so. The former web editor of the Strib,  founder of  vita.mn, co-producer of Epic 2014, and generally one of the sweetest people you’ll meet will soon be taking on the role of editorial product manager for NPR’s paidContent,”a major local/national news experiment backed by millions of dollars in foundation support,” according to City Pages. Congrats to Matt, and congrats to MPR, one of 10 news outlets selected for the experiment.

Minnesota Public Radio, which began in 1967 as a classical music outpost at St. John’s University, has already become “a powerhouse conglomerate of 39 stations in Minnesota and neighboring states.” But that’s not good enough for them. Why would it be, when they seem to be one of a handful of healthy media companies these days? They are, in fact, devoting more resources (in the form of bodies and funding) to the news. According to the Strib, “Since December, MPR has added 15 newscasts, bringing its weekly newscasts to 269. And it recently unveiled a revamped digital arm called NewsQ.”

Is the Strib running scared? They’re quick to point out that with a mere staff of 70 MPR poses “little threat” to the Strib’s 275-person news operation. Still, MPR staffers aren’t sitting around waiting for the ax to fall. Surely this has some impact on the quality of work (or at the very least on the office dynamic).

And how about the other local news outlets? What is their plan of attack? Predictions, anyone?

How about some feedback from MPR’s Future of News summit yesterday? Isn’t that what sparked the Strib article to begin with? If some of the summit tweets are correct, and this is just part of MPR’s self-promotional agenda, then it worked, right? I mean, when you have the main daily (if there even exists such a thing anymore) writing about another media outlet’s success and even saying that it “has drawn top national media analysts” that’s success, right? (more…)

WCCO has the story: Three people suffered stab wounds and more had minor injuries after a fight broke out at a Halloween house party. It happened around 1 o’clock Sunday morning in the 4100 of Bunker Lake Boulevard in Ham Lake.

Here’s my favorite quote: “They were ready, they came here, they found some homemade knives, they all had knives.” Wait. They found some homemade knives?