Well, hey, Fox, ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN, MSNBC, Reuters, AP, UPI, the NYTimes, WashPost, ChiTrib, LATimes, Denver Post, Bloomberg, BBC, NPR, NDW, AFP, Tass and the rest of the world’s media!  Welcome to Saint Paul, all you producers and reporters and anchors and you legions of APs and PAs . 

Welcome to Saint Paul.  This is my town.

Many of you will have come here from one of the news business’ bigger centers; New York, LA, Chicago, London, wherever.  You’ve been joking with your friends about the time you get to spend in “flyover land”. 

Here’s a couple of tips for you:

1. It’s Saint Paul.  Not Minneapolis.  While they share a border, the two downtowns are ten miles apart.
2. Get out of downtown once in a while.  Yeah, I know – that’s where the convention is, and I know your job is to cover it.  But the Twin Cities are a neat place, and Saint Paul – unbeknownst even to many who live in the area – is the best part of it all.  Mark Twain once said “Saint Paul is the last city of the East, and Minneapolis is the first city of the West”, and it’s still kinda true; parts of Saint Paul feel like Chicago or Boston or New York; Minneapolis feels more like Denver or Seattle or San Francisco.  It can be a fun place.
3. See those people out there holding “Support The Troops” signs?  Not everyone in this town has drunk the lefty koolaid.
4. Shaddap about Mondale and Humphrey and Orville Freeman already.  Yes, they were part of Minnesota’s political past, and a big past it was.  But in case you haven’t noticed, the people who are making a difference in Minnesota’s political present – Coleman, Pawlenty, David Strom, Marty Seifert – are all Republicans, and to one degree or another right of center (although that’s a discussion that’ll rage into the wee hours if you get some Minnesota conservatives talking this week). 
5. Please, dear lord, don’t interview Jesse Ventura.  Not once.  Ventura is to Minnesota politics what that drunk weekend back during your sophomore year in college was to you.  You don’t keep lording that miserable fiasco over us, we’ll make sure the photos are destroyed.  Deal?

Anyway – welcome to Saitn Paul, an I hope you enjoy it!

This entry was posted by by Mitch Berg on Thursday, August 28th, 2008 at 12:00 pm and is filed under Convention '08, Media, St. Paul. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.