City Pages’ “The Blotter” has the details:
Another big name is leaving the ranks of local journalism. For those keeping score, now it’s longtime Strib metro columnist Doug Grow.
“It’s time to pursue other opportunities,” Grow cracks sarcastic when reached on his office phone by Blotter. “Many a VP has left our company in pursuit of other opportunities, and now it’s moving down the ranks.”
Grow, one of the few opinion scribes in town who actually infused his writing with a novel concept known as street-level reporting, has applied for one of the 50 buyout packages offered by the Newspaper of the Twin Cities that go into effect June 1. “Nothing is final until then,” Grow notes with just a touch of trepidation. “If I wake up on May 31st terrified that I’ve never had a real job, then maybe I’ll stay on.”
The USA Today-ization of the Star Tribune continues…
I think Grow is exactly that…a street level reporter, which is great, but I grew real tired of him being a kiss ass / PR spin agent for Ellison. That wasn’t any kind of journalism…
OMG, Veritas, do you think at all about what you write??? What hypocrisy. “typical DFLiar commment..insult those you disagree with….” Then you go on to insult both Coleman and Growe. Play nice or get out of the sandbox.
Kersten is a cheap hack who ignores any facts that are inconvenient to her preferred thesis. I also personally believe she is a bigot, and she attracts the worst kinds of supporters (this evidenced by the actual hate mail I got when I wrote a letter in to the Strib that was published criticizing her for blatant misrepresentations).
Grow, on the other hand, while I often find his column to be a bit on the dull side stylistically, I never seem to have any real problems with his accuracy. And he actually seems to get off his butt and talk to people in the community, which would seem to be a pre-req for a Metro columnist. He’s also been an effective scold of anyone in power, which is a pretty good thing to have too, no matter who is in charge.
Veritas, the communist taunts are as pathetic as your posts. Grow (ha!) the hell up.
I like Kersten - first off, she’s a totally different slant at the Strib which is needed. In addition, she writes quite a few topics that elicit good debate. She did quite good work exposing the flying imams.
The best part about her pieces is her blog on the Strib where people debate her columns. It’s pretty interesting when the lefties start debating themselves with some supporting her view and others disagreeing.
Insulting Coleman is too easy - it’s not as much his socialist leanings but it’s the size of his ego that is the problem. His rants against blogs are just too revealing.
So, instead of offering four of the same thing (liberal op-ed columnists), the Strib will now offer three of the same thing. Wow, that’s diverse.
And they wonder why the subscription rate is decreasing…
Kersten’s plagiarized in the past - and the Strib did nothing about it…..
http://lloydletta.blogspot.com/2005/11/spotty-parrys-parry-here.html
http://lloydletta.blogspot.com/2005/11/strib-readers-rep-misses-point-on.html
She also has become a cartoon of conservatism - bigotry…. Her focus for her columns has been relentlessly either the homos or the muslims. It’s getting old.
All these post are proving is that the Strib is an awful paper that is almost never worth reading and will only become worse as the budget cuts happen. Newspapers are dying, as they should be. Editorials and columns are personal beliefs masked by false journalism and are often read as fact and not the simple minded opinions that they are. The top down dictatorial style of mass media is a main cause of our polarization into Democratic and Republican camps that have no hope of ever accomplishing anything positive.
Blogs like this one, Minnesota Democrats Exposed, and others are currently the best forum for discourse. This is true as long as we don’t simply parrot the drivel from the Strib, FoxNews, MoveOn.org, Rush or the multitude of other mindless sources that were the problem in the first place.
Kerosene Hat - I fear someone lit you!
How in the world do you attribute MoveOn with FoxNews?
Its merely an agglomeration of people, with a bent, but not a top-driven ideology & propaganda machine in the same sense that Fox is. You’ve already lost a firm grasp of what NEWS vs IDEOLOGICAL OPINION is.
How do you come to the conclusion that blogs are news?
Some level of journalism needs to be maintained - there have to be standards that tend towards truth - yeah, I know that in this climate, truth tends to have a liberal bias, however…
If we are reduced to the brand of journalism represented by blogs - its “he said, she said” & will only be more propaganda driven & further erode the presentation of straightforward truth.
…because the RW radicals, in particular, have gone so far off the deep end.
Nonetheless, both sides need to be tempered with another source which HAS to hold a stringent standard of evidence. The reliance on blogs does not raise that standard.
A good example might be a troll user name of “Veritas” who does nothing but call the preponderance of posters here “commies.”
NO VALUE ADDED is easy.
Doug Grow specialized in human interest stories. After Jim Klobuchar left, Doug became the senior columnist. He would write about blind people, dis-abled people, everyday heros.
When Joe Biernat at City Hall would refuse to accept responsibility, it was Doug who really drove home the point.
When Jesse Ventura got really silly near the end of his term, it was Doug who really put things in perspective.
Doug was from the Vietnam era. He would be the first to disclose his anti-war bias. It was a product of the spirit of his times.
He often wrote about the internal issues affecting organized labor. I never found his writing to be inflammatory, as so often I find Katherine Kersten’s. It was more insightful.
Once in awhile he would write about the Star Tribune’s management itself. I found those columns to be transparent and sad.
Doug was my hero; I think his career writings need to be defended.
Mockingbird,
I was trying not to comment on real journalism, when it can be found. My issue is with commentary and opinion that in some way disguises itself as objectively reviewing and relating facts. I feel that all of the sources I mentioned are guilty of this to great degree. When places such as factcheck.org go through MoveOn, Rush, Michael Moore and FoxNews they shed a little needed light on how distorted these sources often are. These are the people and organizations that believe they KNOW the solutions and want stories to make them look correct.
Blogs are not the replacement for real journalism in any way because of the reasons you stated, there is no standard of dealing with evidence and facts. They are a replacement for the opinion sections, commentary columnists, and talking heads. In this capacity they are an improvement because subjects can be directly debated and challenged in a much more democratic way than with standard mass media.
Real journalism is another whole issue. There is little of it to be found and it gets so little attention because the stories they tell are not easy to follow in short segments. Maybe more importantly real journalism almost never fits the preconceived world views of either the left or the right wing idealogs and therefore is most often ignored by all sides.
By “USA Today-ification” of the Star-Trib, you meant it to be an insult. But given what a crap paper the Strib is in so many ways (nice coverage of what was going on at the leg. this session this year guys), at least one can say USA Today actually covers news of interest. I can do without the color and coporatism of USA Today, but sadly I think I learn more from it than I do from reading the pathetic Strib. In other words, a Minnesota-based “USA Today” might in fact be an improvement.
On Doug Grow, he can tend to become a bit condescending. And, in covering the Jude-Luther race in 1994, had some very inaccurate reporting that has been hard to get passed even these many years later. It was the first of many confirmations that the more one knows about a story, the more scary it is who WRONG the reporting of it so often is.
The Strib is just a crap paper. It has few defenders.
“How in the world do you attribute MoveOn with FoxNews?”
“Its merely an agglomeration of people, with a bent, but not a top-driven ideology & propaganda machine in the same sense that Fox is.”
*blink* *blink*
Bwahahahahaa! That’s a good one, but did you clear it with Soros first?
Kirsten’s pieces are a disgusting plethora of right wing talking points, her writing suggests she must get the call from Karl Rove every morning. She makes me sick.
Praising TPaw’s veto based Governing as if it is praisworthy? Give me a break. She is the Star Tribunes embarassment, hands down.
BLOGS ARE OPINIONS!!!!! At best, they cherry pick news articles to support their positions, and then give a whole bunch of people the chance to listen to themselves yammer on and on (including myself). I fear for the future of our democracy if Kerosene Hat thinks that everyone can get their NEWS from a blog. When was the last time anyone from MDE or this blog reported from Sudan or Somalia??? Sorry, I’m sticking with the AP or NPR or BBC. Good Lord, what a f** idiot you are.
Max,
Did you read my post? I said exactly that, blogs are a better alternative to the opinion pages and talking heads, not real journalism. Grow and Kirsten are opinion columnists, not pure journalist.
I still disagree. I prefer to read an opinion column - at least the authors can usually write a coherent sentence reflecting a coherent thought. Blogs have the same problem as emails and IMs. You can fire off any stupid thing that comes into your head without having to put any thought into it. Give me George Will any day.
That is fine to disagree and your reasons are valid though I still think there is a danger to the pseudo journalism sometimes practiced by many opinion columnists. Either way you should read what is in front of you before you produce an opinion on it.
Who knows, maybe it’s just an age thing. Sometimes I feel like Grandpa Simpson (“back in my day”) although I work in the information services field and certainly am no old codger or stranger to new technology. However, when I see what passes for communication using that technology (I do have teenagers) I worry about how the trend towards getting information in small sound bites from non-print media will affect our ability as Americans to form justifiable opinions and to make good decisions.
I agree that most people can’t tell an opinion from fact anymore, thanks to all the ‘pseudo journalism’ out there. I love Jon Stewart and Michael Moore as much as the next guy (alright, as much as the next liberal guy) but even I know that you can take actual clips and quotes out of context and juxtapose them to prove any point you want, in the name of ‘news’. This is one lesson that the left has finally adopted from the right.
Max,
Both the left and the right do and always have used their pseudo journalist soldiers to spin what they are doing. John Stewart is funny because he can and does skewer both sides sometimes and can laugh at himself. That and he tends to look for what is funny rather than just try to advance an agenda. Micheal Moore is just as bad as Rush and will say whatever promotes his point of view whether or not there is any truth in it.
Blogs are what they are, a representation of a segment of the population and a great forum for discourse.