The daily digest of Twin Cities culture | Secrets of the City

I had a feeling this would get it's own thread soon. See earlier talk here.

Nice. Can someone with animated gif skillz make his head bobble?

Maybe the whole TC daily media establishment?

Maybe the whole TC daily media establishment?

Yeah. How much lower can it go?

lol@Par.

I wonder what the logic was behind taking the non-compete agreements out of the building. One would assume there would be duplicates of those agreements floating around somewhere (if they followed my filing system of legal documents, anyway), so it wouldn't negate their existence or make them null and void if one copy disappeared.

Again: jackass. You can't do something that flagrantly stupid and not expect to get caught.

Maybe conservative bloggers can start the campaign now for Governor Pawlenty to pardon Par Ridder, because as everyone knows, Bill Clinton and Sandy Berger commited far worse crimes, and the lapdog liberal media is covering it up.

I wonder what the logic was behind taking the non-compete agreements out of the building

repeating my cost (cots?) vs. benefits from the premature thread...I'm sure he looked long & hard @ the income benefit of leaving vs. the cost of the potential suits and (lacking any moral virtue and knowing he was going to be public enemy #1 anyhow) he made the call to steal the data.

I wouldn't be surprised if the Strib negotiated to cover his legal costs right in his employment contract, knowing full-well what the fallout would be.

If the Strib makes him walk the plank, OTOH, I almost feel bad for him. Na, just kidding.

This is for you Max:

Has anyone seen Par Ridder and Mark Cuban in a room at the same time?

coming soon...to a Dairy Queen near you!

Ridder said the executives were verbally released from those agreements, but he said it was never put in writing.

If you don't get it in writing, it doesn't count. Once again: jackass. And now: moron.

Right, but this legal battle is not going to be good for either paper.

The Par Bobblehead will be making a comeback, I predict.

Well, fine, then I own a coffee shop. Either way, in my mind, it doesn't make good business sense to get yourself into a situation where you have to expose all of the dirty deals that are best left behind the scenes.

See, this is why it'd be a waste of time and money for me to start my own business. I'd be the only one playing nice and I'd end up in the poorhouse.

Really, Mister, you have a hot tub? And you'll give me a Snickers bar? I'll ask my mom if I can come over!

Oh, and Par after 3 days without hair gel:

great idea, josie but I will leave photo alterations to the younger, tech-savvy mnspeakers

maybe we need a Par caught in Dean Singleton's headlights. Or maybe it doesn't need alternations at all. that facial expression IS worth at least 1,000 words. . . too long for the typical dumbed-down Strib story these days

and I was going to (nicely) ask DpuglasG for dancing Par feet but then I remembered he probably should have his feet chained together

Of Par, one of the usual suspects just said to me:

This guy is the ass-end of a proud dynasty. Like the Bushes.

A good summation. Perhaps I'll embroider it onto a pillow and mail it to Par in the slammer

The link just worked for me.

I like afro-Par!

Reminds me of the day when I had to drive from lily-white Warren Township (now no longer white nor lilly) to "Black Indy" to buy an Ace black rubber pick for my new stylin' Disco 'Fro! Stopped off at Zeps on Indiana Avenue and had some ribs, with the famious Mambo sauce!

Sigh..

no, the link is great (thanks, user)

but if you go to startribune.com you get a picture of singleton and then another less scary one of Par. that's what I just saw on their web page. . .

OK Josie...

but you owe me!

YAY!!!! Thank you!!!

I have piles of internet cookies for Doug and Aaron. Yay!!!!!

LOL
thanks DouglasG and s4xton and josie, too! heck, I'd bake you creative folks some real cookies (I'm a 4-H food judge)

That Parratt chick is SOL.

Stribboy, take me.

Good to see The Leader of The Free World has a handle on the issues.

Can't wait to hear what Kate Parry has to say about the flood of hatemail that the Strib is about to get over Par-Gate. If she had balls, she'd just publish her letter of resignation, as in, "I am above this sort of behavior, I'm so outta here"

Take me, submitted by buyout. Excellent use of the anonymous name box. Well-done.

And Aaron, Par with the pile of shredded paper is priceless. Brilliant.

Keep the LOLpart coming. It may be MnSpeak's unique contribution to Twin Cities' culture.

Well, that and dancing DeRusha.

Quit gabbing and get back to LOLparing, Aaron.

just spit summit scandia ale all over my keyboard

thank you.

Bandini totally wins. OMFG.

Goal Bandini! Goooooal!!!

thanks bandini! laughed so hard I woke up my household's two LOL cats
(josie thanks to you that is my new favorite time-wasting site)

can par come to the mnspeak gathering and entertain us? just read lambert's piece in the rake on today's court hearing and it is absolutely damning. this guy is soooo stupid. . . par, not lambert

www.rakemag.com/

This is another reason why I don't trust the local news media. You got idiots like Pat Ridder, who manages to make a confession on a videotape that he stole private information from Pioneer Press workers, and therefore pass the information along to the partisan elites at the Minneapolis Star-Tribune. Perhaps what made this story even worse though is the fact that the Strib continues to deny that they have a problem with a form of journalism ethics, regarding Ridder tenure with the paper; they managed to create the biggest scandal in the history of the newspaper industry and these asses don't want to admit the hard truth about it. So, as usual, the Minneapolis Star-Tribune goes into partisan hyper-drive by making up a misinformed, propaganda story in the business section about how Pat Ridder is seen as the victim of an unofficial crime that he didn't commit.

It's often worse when you see the news anchors on WCCO TV lying to you about a local political story at the state capitol or a crime report in the metro area that has no merit on the social, rational subject, but it is damaging for a known paper that always take on a extreme liberal position in the pleasure for the DFL elite in which the paper's own editor and CEO is involved in a covert sting operation against his former company, the Saint Paul Pioneer Press, for political reasons. Yet, this is why so many of us, especially the younger crowd, are switching over to the internet and web blogs for real news, not some MSM outlet that takes orders to a small vocal minority that has no concept in pure democracy. And I don't (*bleeping) care if you clowns on this thread have the sudden audacity to slander me or anyone, who bash journalists in the namesake of morality and ethics. If FOX news can be slammed by critics for the lack of better coverage, then it should withhold the same critical standards to both the Minneapolis Star Tribune and the local news media outlets like radio and TV stations that has a problem, a serious one, to lie constantly in a straight face and not reporting on the REAL facts.

Sounds like he took it out of his personnel file, not to hide it, not to say "what agreement?" or "no, it didn't say THAT", but because removal would be one piece of evidence that it had been waived for him. Combine that with his testimony of waiver, and he's close. Find a witness, or get a PP admission about that conversation, and he's home.

In any case, enforcement of noncompetes is a tough thing to get courts to do, and they usually insist that every single i is crossed and t dotted before they'll consider them, because they so drastically constrain someone's right to work. If Par makes even a half-n-half case that there was a waiver (or, maybe even that his conversation led him to reasonably think there was a waiver), he may be safe. I'd not count him out on that yet, at all. Plus, if he truly signed the NC two weeks after he was hired, it may be out. If you hire someone, but then, two weeks later say "oh, you need to sign this", you have problems, because the original contract didn't include that term, so, if you want to make a new contract involving the NC, you can, but contracts have two sides, so you have to trade something for the new contract.

And, the data admission was no big thing, at least based on what info the paper ran. Yeah, he took it. Yeah, it was on the laptop. But, did the Strib USE IT in any fashion? If not, no harm, no foul, really. If this article said they used it, I missed it somehow.

And, will advertisers hate the Strib? Had they used the rate info, they could then undercut PP rates, which is the only real use of such data to someone else. Net effect to advertisers: cheaper ad rates. Oh, yeah, they'll be up in arms.

Oh, and I'm guessing the Strib won't be putting extra mail openers on duty to handle the flood of mail from people outraged at such conduct. First, I saw little (nothing, to be more precise) that makes the Strib itself sound bad, plus, NO ONE ELSE CARES, GUYS! People here tend to be a bit mediapomorphic, (note the polite understatement). but real world (non-media) people have tuned this story out long ago. So, letters will come from you guys, your friends and business acquaintances, and people who hate the Strib passionately and will revel in any Strib-mud they can find.

bobby, thanks for the succinct discussion of what is right vs. what a lawyer can help you get away with.

thanks, bobby_b, as usual I respect your lawyerly expertise

but as a non-lawyer, I'd STILL have to go to my basement workshop, get the glitter and hot glue gun out and make Par a world's dumbest client plaque
didn't some of his actions strike anyone else as rather stupid?

Strictly legally speaking, there's plenty of chances for Par to get out of this, as Bobby_B has indicated. But even my lawyer wife exclaimed this morning when reading the Strib's coverage this morning, "It's like he was trying to be stupid by being stupid to prove he's stupid."

Is "I don't recall" and "I didn't read the documents" really an ironclad defense? Criminy.

Would Par be gainfully employed by anyone if he wasn't a Ridder? Right now he's coming off as the biggest f-ing buffoon.

I have to step in here and say "woah woah woah" about the dissage of Scandia. It's good!

Se"PAR"ated at birth?

"It's like he was trying to be stupid by being stupid to prove he's stupid."

I don't think anyone has or can say it better.

Nothing like inbreeding, nepotism and a bad nosejob to keep the affluent rich.