Kevin - payback is a bitch for me, I guess, and I truly do lack the WWE/UCF gene.

One inaccuracy, though. MinnPost's About Us page contains more than "nothing that outlines the interests and connections of its founders."

Here's the part about top money/operations guy Joel Kramer:

While I never had any involvement in political life during my journalism career, in 2002 Becky Lourey asked me to be her running mate in her unsuccessful attempt to win the DFL nomination for governor at the state convention. My political career lasted six weeks. Among the things I learned was that I'm not cut out for running for office.

In 2003, I started a think tank called Growth & Justice, focusing on state policy that simultaneously creates economic growth, does so sustainably, and shares the fruits of the growth broadly. I served as executive director until this spring, when I became board chair.

During the decade after leaving the Star Tribune, I made campaign contributions to a number of Democratic candidates, locally and nationally. However, when I got serious about launching MinnPost this spring, I stopped making such contributions. My political views are generally liberal, though I often had some of my most spirited debates during my Growth & Justice days with Democrats when they took policy positions that I did not believe were supported by the evidence.

On the civic front, I served as chair of the board of the Children's Theatre Company in the mid-1990s, and more recently as board chair of Achieve!Minneapolis, which galvanizes community support for public education in Minneapolis. My wife, Laurie, was recently chair of the board of the Mental Health Association of Minnesota, and is currently president of the Smith Club of Minnesota. Laurie and I are members of the 1% Club, which means we promise to contribute 1% of our net worth every year to philanthropic causes.

We do not own individual stocks in our investment portfolio — only mutual funds and bonds. We are investors in Minnesota Jewish Media, a private partnership that owns American Jewish World, a local newspaper for the Jewish Community. I also serve as chair of the MJM board.

Laurie and I are members of Shir Tikvah Congregation in South Minneapolis. We have three sons, all grown, 2 daughters-in-law and two grandchildren.

Normally I'd say something like "pot, kettle..." but you're actually the biggest pussy in this fight. Instead of the role of the referee or someone actually covering this, you decided to jump in the ring with a folding chair. Instead of delivering insight or humor you decided to throw punches. Way to go with your "hypocrisy submission." Welcome to the ring.

Disclosure: K-Hoff will probably find some unrelated fact to rip on me with or tell me to go take some photos of pizza. P.S. I already met him at Cuzzy's for beer.

Barcum is probably trying to cozy up and save her job.

Given the respective salaries of Brauer and Burcom, taking Burcom's side on the "in person" thing is really cheap Kevin.

For what Brauer gets paid, I wouldn't walk across the street to conduct an in-person interview. Email Q&A's are inherently fair, and ensure that every quote is dead accurate, and not something that can be discounted later as "misspeaking."

That Brauer got under Burcom's skin is all the proof I need to figure out who the real journalist was in this fight.

Nice to see a "journalist" ignoring the real story here: Avista's ties to big oil and the lack of transparency in corporate news rooms. Brauer wrote what was probably one the most important media stories of the year, and yet, because of big egos and a media landscape fraught with job uncertainty, it's been reduced to nothing more than a cage match?

I think local journalists, myself included, should be ashamed when important stories like this become about the journalists themselves and not the issues.

It's like Powerline attempting to destroy CBS for what was a an important, concrete news story because one of the documents "could be false." The facts are there. The story is real. Yet egos, petty politics, and yes, testosterone, Kevin, have only served to hide the truth. And here, they've superseded weighty issues like making public the fact that a major newspaper running a pro-off-shore-drilling editorial is run by a company with major ties to big oil.

If the world sucks, it's our fault.

Two lightweights beating each other over the head with deck chairs. Strib? In trouble, hoping cacophonous inanity from "reader comments" will make it more exciting (not working). MinnPost? disgruntlement central. Journalism? Nuh-uh.

What's going on in the world today folks?

This is unintentionally hilarious, basically because when you write that kind of screed you open yourself up to more than a little bit of hypocrisy charges.

I mean, take your press release you ran for an advertiser that you did last month (http://blogs.citypages.com/ctg/2008/06/rent_at_the_ord.php). Holier than thou much? And that's even before this line: "[S]aying the "Daily Glean" is the among the "most-read things on Minnpost" is like bragging about finishing first in the Special Olympics." -- which is, perhaps, the most embarassing simile of 2008.

As a last nod to hypocrisy, I note that you're tarring Mr. Brauer with the narcissism brush-- pretty rich, since you are saying (implicitly) that you're such an authority on journalistic ethics that you can be both referee and scorekeeper on this cat fight. Impressive, Mr. Hoffman. VERY impressive.

And that's even before this line: "[S]aying the "Daily Glean" is the among the "most-read things on Minnpost" is like bragging about finishing first in the Special Olympics." -- which is, perhaps, the most embarassing simile of 2008.

totally agree

Hey, the special olympics quote apparently made the folks at Gawker laugh, so, you know, thumbs up all around!

The Special Olympics jab is both offensive and trite. A variation of that quip has been circulating -- ad nauseum -- on Internet message boards for years.

More to the point, is it acceptable to ridicule people who are developmentally disabled? I know it's not funny, but is it even acceptable. (Especially coming from a publication that so regularly plays the "race card" when covering the MPD and other institutions.)

I hope that City Pages' shrinking number of advertisers take note.

//is like bragging about finishing first in the Special Olympics. If Brauer doesn't start intelligently defending himself, the ref is going to stop this fight.

Seriously? You're taking a whack at special needs kids while defining "intelligently" in the same sentence?

And you feel good about that?

"recognizing that in this fight, there are no winners, only losers."

Well, there are those of us that aren't part of the local media that get a chance to see some of the happenings from an insider's perspective.

I love the Daily Glean---it's my favorite part of Minnpost. Brauer reads all the traditional media every morning so I don't have to. His summaries and commentary are hilarious. The links are there if I want to go deeper. I mean, what's not to like?

What I've learned from the whole exchange:

a) The Strib's Jill Burcum was having a bad day and/or is awfully thin-skinned. In her defense, I assume nearly everyone at the Strib is having a bad day every day because I can only imagine what it's like to watch your paper morph into bad tabloid, with top headlines like "Mom-to-be shoved into van, raped" and followed by solemn lines like "The fetus was unharmed." There's still some great stories and reporting at the Strib, despite all the lay-offs and dumbed-down direction. But man, as reader, I feel like I'm watching a slow, painful death. So as a writer, it must feel even worse, which is why I'm inclined to give Burcum a pass.

b) David Brauer is a seriously good journalist.

d) Kevin Hoffman is seriously creepy and has manhood issues.

Commenters commentating about commenters--$20. Me being able to offer nothing as a comment--priceless.

While I understand not everyone shares my resume, kind of like how I'm not a student of journalism. I don't expect him to know what it's like to feed someone who, through no fault of their own, can't feed themselves. Ditto for dressing, showering, toileting, etc. I don't expect him to know the joy that comes from such a connection.

But don't expect me to buy that just because the slander of a protected class (vulnerable adults) is itself protected under free speech, that makes it somehow acceptable. But maybe Mr. Hoffman subscribes to a strain of journalism of which I am not aware, the "we can so we will" mentality. Maybe this was the rationale behind his Special Olympics remark.

Unfortunately, this, like so much of Mr. Hoffman's contribution to the paper over the last year or so, reeks of bad journalism. It's a shame, really, because there are writers of quality over there, but the editor's influence makes it less and less appealing to go looking for them.