{"id":79088,"date":"2021-08-03T06:09:21","date_gmt":"2021-08-03T11:09:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=79088"},"modified":"2021-08-03T06:09:21","modified_gmt":"2021-08-03T11:09:21","slug":"void","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=79088","title":{"rendered":"Void"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

There was a time, from the late ’80s into the very early 2000s, when they did some genuinely good journalism. When Steve Perry ran it, before he went full-bore crazy partisan with the Minnesota Independent <\/em>(which, true to its name, depended for its existence entirely on progressive plutocrats with deep pockets), the CP did some useful journalism – the kind of stuff you didn’t have to agree with, politically, to see the merit. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Those days were over 15 years ago. The likes of Mike Mosedale, Dan Haugen and Aaron Rupar pawned whatever legacy the CP’s earlier incarnations had earned, and pawned it very very cheap. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

So last fall, when the City Pages <\/em>oozed to its final, unlamented (outside navel-gazing journos) end, I tried to play it straight down the objective middle: they had had a good run, for a decreasingly talented group. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Some people just can’t take a karmic hint<\/a>:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The much-loved Twin Cities alternative paper City Pages\u00a0shut down abruptly last fall<\/a>\u00a0after its parent company the Star Tribune Media Company said it was no longer financially viable.<\/p>

Now several former City Pages editors are launching a new digital news publication called\u00a0Racket<\/a>\u00a0that officially launches August 18.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

I “much loved” the final incarnation of the paper mainly because it was a boundless font of material. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jay Boller:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We want to fill the void that City Pages left, which we feel is considerable\u2026 Bringing that legacy into the future is the mission statement.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

The “void” the CP “left” was smaller than the void when it existed. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

There\u2019s a real reader demand for a type of news that doesn\u2019t really fit the boilerplate definitions of what a newspaper sounds like. \u2026 It\u2019s to check power balances. It\u2019s to keep institutions on their toes, including other news organizations. And just kind of being that pesky force that is beholden to no one.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

I get what they’re going for – that was this blog’s motivation, and still is. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

But “check power balances?”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If The Racket <\/em>is anything like the City Pages <\/em>in its past decade and change, it will be yet another yappy little junior partner of the the media we currently have. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Like it needs any more. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There was a time, from the late ’80s into the very early 2000s, when they did some genuinely good journalism. When Steve Perry ran it, before he went full-bore crazy partisan with the Minnesota Independent (which, true to its name, depended for its existence entirely on progressive plutocrats with deep pockets), the CP did some […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-79088","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79088","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=79088"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79088\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":79089,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79088\/revisions\/79089"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=79088"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=79088"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=79088"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}