{"id":43246,"date":"2014-04-21T12:15:56","date_gmt":"2014-04-21T17:15:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=43246"},"modified":"2014-04-21T11:30:30","modified_gmt":"2014-04-21T16:30:30","slug":"the-barricades-fall-a-little","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=43246","title":{"rendered":"The Barricades Fall – A Little"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Twin Cities’ left is declaring a Code Red; Glen Taylor is buying the Strib<\/em>.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The Minnesota sports and business tycoon and former GOP state\u00a0senator\u00a0has picked up the shrivelling Gray Nag of Minnesota media properties <\/a>– and has vowed to make some changes.<\/p>\n

Some.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Bear in mind, Taylor came from the old-school Minnesota GOP; relatively moderate, accustomed to working with the then-slightly-less-extreme DFL in a way that’s as obsolete as the personal computers from the 1980s, when that arrangement still held sway.\u00a0<\/p>\n

But he’s talking changes; the MinnPost<\/em>‘s Britt Robson (from the first installment of a two-part interview) talked with Taylor about his planned changes:<\/p>\n

MP: The Star Tribune is regarded as a liberal newspaper, rightly or wrongly, and probably less so now than ten years ago. Will that change under you in any way shape or form?<\/p>\n

GT: I think the answer is yes. But I think the answer is yes whether I buy it or don\u2019t buy it. Everything changes, and some people are going to say, \u201cWell it is, because you bought it, that it changed.\u201d<\/p>\n

I would say back to them, \u201cNo. You are going to have new hires. You are going to have new people. There are going to be changes in seniority. You have got to be responsible to your readership.\u201d And I think it has already been changing, and I have been a longtime reader of the paper.<\/p>\n

Will it change because of the ownership of Glen Taylor? Yeah. To say it won\u2019t wouldn\u2019t be accurate. But it isn\u2019t like Glen Taylor is going to come in there on day one and say, \u201cI\u2019m going to fire people\u201d and do all sorts of things. I am going to say \u2014 and I have already told them this \u2014 that first of all it has got to be fair and it has got to be accurate.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

On the one hand, that – especially if manifested in the form of “reporting news that impacts the DFL with the same zeal as they do it to the GOP” – would be a huge start.\u00a0<\/p>\n

On the other, I think Taylor is too sanguine about the evolutionary process in journalism.\u00a0 The old, DFL-upsucking liberals like Nick Coleman are slowly fading away (and Lori Sturdevant has got to be eyeing that condo in Tampa, right?), but even they got their start at a time when American journalism paid more than feeble lip service to the ideals of impartiality and balance.<\/p>\n

The Journalism academy today is far less idealistic than it was forty years ago.\u00a0 New J-School grads are far more <\/em>likely to start out as advocates from the word “go” than their elders, who oozed into the role over decades in a “progressive”-dominated state.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Ch-Ch-Ch-Ch-Changes<\/strong>:\u00a0 So what does the Strib\u00a0 <\/em>really need?<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. An Editorial Staff<\/strong> that actually puts accuracy and completeness ahead of politics.\u00a0 Today – when they’ll sit on video of Mark Dayton giving an embarassing speech, but race to press with even the most foetid allegations about Republicans – they do not.\u00a0 This editorial staff needs to crack the whip on, if not “objectivity” (which I believe has always been a myth in the major media) at least detachment, balance and development of sources outside the current crop’s clubby Rolodex full of left-leaning contacts.\u00a0<\/li>\n
  2. Accountability<\/strong>:\u00a0 For the better part of a decade, the person filling the role of the ombudsman (“reader representative”) at the Strib <\/em>has served entirely as the editorial board’s spinmeister\/spinmistress.\u00a0 Ombuds like Sue Perry were the journalistic equivalents of Baghdad Bob,\u00a0asking who you trusted – your lying eyes, or the Strib’s <\/em>spin on the mountain of evidence of the paper’s bias.\u00a0 \u00a0The Strib <\/em>needs an ombud that revels in mixing it up with the paper’s status quo.\u00a0<\/li>\n
  3. A Columnist’s Row With Real Diversity<\/strong>:\u00a0 Liberals have spent the past half-decade or so whining about the hiring of Katherine Kersten.\u00a0 The complaints took two forms; “why hire a conservative, the paper is already balanced\/conservative”, and “she doesn’t know the journo’s secret handshake!”.\u00a0 The first line of complaints was straight from Alice in Wonderland.\u00a0 The second wasn’t so much delusional as, I think, a tacit admission that conservatives were right; the journos wanted someone filling the “house conservative” role who knew the secret journo handshake and would work for “the team” when in doubt.\u00a0 Which is not to impugn Doug Tice, Kersten’s designated replacement,\u00a0in any way – he’s a solid reporter, right of center by Strib <\/em>standards, and a journo of great integrity, but hardly an iconoclast.\u00a0\u00a0 The Strib <\/em>needs an iconoclast, someone who will hold the ancient, biased institution of the paper’s feet in the fire.\u00a0<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    What else will it take?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    The Twin Cities’ left is declaring a Code Red; Glen Taylor is buying the Strib.\u00a0 The Minnesota sports and business tycoon and former GOP state\u00a0senator\u00a0has picked up the shrivelling Gray Nag of Minnesota media properties – and has vowed to make some changes. Some.\u00a0 Bear in mind, Taylor came from the old-school Minnesota GOP; relatively […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[57,16,4,130],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-43246","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economy-and-the-market","category-conservatism","category-media","category-tc-media-bias"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43246","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=43246"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43246\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":43250,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43246\/revisions\/43250"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=43246"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=43246"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=43246"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}