I meant to write about this sometime between Saturday and yesterday; Ed and I interviewed Eric Black, formerly of the Strib and soon to be with (or around, or loosely related to) the Minnesota Monitor.  Busy as I’ve been, I sorta booted that assignment.

Jeff Kouba – currently among the best uninjured writers at Truth Vs. The Machine – caught the interview, and wrote a gratifyingly favorable recap:

In this NARN interview then, Black said he would like to build a model where left and right can talk to each other. He said he does indeed have a lefty slant, but that he invited Doug Tice to join the Big Question to have a more conservative voice. Black argued for outlets where both points of view are heard, not just one-sided places where leftys read only lefty sources, and rightys only read righty sources.

That was, indeed, an interesting branch in the discussion.  Black seems to combine a definite point of view with what seems to be a sincere jones to engage in dialog rather than merely throwing plates.  The idea interests me, as well; an actual, ongoing conversation that’s allowed to both go deep and take infinite tangents, between some people who actually are interested in conversation rather than banging rhetorical heads (or who can at least mutually bang heads without turning the entire affair into an endless, predictable pissing match) would be an interesting project. I’d be interested in such a project myself…

…after the ’08 election, at any rate. 

I’m being mostly facetious; I do relish these sorts of exercises, since they usually help me polish up my own rhetorical, logical and even ideological chops.  The unexamined prejudice, to paraphrase Augustine, isn’t worth having.

I did restrain myself from asking “how do you, a fairly distinguished and credible reporter, plan on sharing a masthead with that bunch of clowns” – but then, he did answer the question, too:

Mitch then asked about the seeming incongruity of wanting to promote conversation across the ideological divide, while joining MiniMon, which is unabashedly “progressive,” a place that doesn’t exactly do a lot to promote conservative voices.

Black said he would have his own blog and URL, and his material would be cross-posted at MiniMon. That I found interesting. This way Black can maintain some distance from MiniMon’s one-sided stance, while at the same time exercising his own voice, which may very well fit in nicely on MiniMon’s page from time to time.

It seemed to be a sensible approach.  Nice work if you can get it. 

Listen to the interview (it spans the last half of the first hour and the first half of the second hour) and decide for yourself!