Media

Strib strikes tentative three-year deal with guild

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Last night, the Star Tribune announced it had reached tentative agreement on a new three-year contract with the Newspaper Guild. Union members have two weeks to ponder and vote before the old deal expires at the end of this month, and the guild will meet next Wednesday for informational purposes.

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Posted by Jeff Shaw at July 17, 2008 6:53 AM | Comments (0)

 

Journalist catfight: the Strib's Jill Burcum vs. Minnpost's David Brauer

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vs. Modern day journalists fight like pussies. It wasn't so long ago that newsboys bloodied each others' noses as they competed on the streets for readers. Nowadays, the fights happen in the comments section on blogs, which like watching a slap fight between Axl Rose and Tommy Hilfiger. With that in mind, we bring you a play-by-play of the latest journalistic kerfuffle between the Star Tribune's Jill Burcum, and Minnpost's David Brauer.

The occasion is Brauer's latest Minnpost piece, in which he accused the Strib's editorial board of a potential conflict of interest. Brauer pounces on the fact that Strib owner Avista Capital Partners has interests in off-shore drilling that weren't disclosed in the course of the editorial advocating for same. Little did he know that it would provoke a stinging rebuke from the Strib's Jill Burcum. We score the fight after the jump.

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Posted by Kevin Hoffman at July 10, 2008 5:46 AM | Comments (15)

 

Confidential Star Tribune memo: "We continue to move forward with the Guild, but talks have unfortunately stopped with the other major unions."

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Negotiations have broken down between the Star Tribune and the Teamsters unions that represent mailers, pressmen and drivers, according to a confidential memo from Publisher Chris Harte obtained by City Pages.

"Obviously, our original deadline of June 1 to reach agreement on $15 million in annual savings from union contracts has come and gone," reads the email from Harte, which was sent to employees June 18. "We were making progress in some of these talks and thought it made sense to keep trying for another couple of weeks. We continue to move forward with the Guild, but talks have unfortunately stopped with the other major unions."

The email cites a July 3 deadline--last Thursday--for the Teamsters to identify their share of cost savings to reach the $15 million goal. It has been previously reported that the newsroom was asked to shave $2.5 million from its budget.

Harte hired Restructuring Associates Inc., a Washington, DC firm that specializes in mediating between unions and management, to assist in negotiations, but the Teamsters apparently walked away from the table. In a June memo, the Guild told its membership that "as time passed, the process has become closer to traditional bargaining, though the consultants continue to act as facilitators."

"We are still hopeful that we can reach a collaborative solution," Harte writes in the leaked email. "As I explained in recent employee meetings, the other ways of achieving expense reductions will surely be far worse for all of us who work here, and for the readers and advertisers we serve."

The Guild's contract is set to expire July 31, but includes an "evergreen clause" that would allow negotiations to continue even after the deadline.

"We don't have an agreement on anything," says Graydon Royce, the Guild unit's co-chair, who said he could not confirm the authenticity of the email obtained by City Pages. "I can't really comment on that because I don't have direct knowledge. If there's a memo to that effect, I haven't seen it."

The printed-out email was delivered anonymously via U.S. Mail to City Pages in a plain white envelope that was received Monday, meaning it was likely sent soon after the July 3 deadline to identify cost savings had lapsed. We sent an email to Harte and left a phone message for Star Tribune spokesman Ben Taylor, neither of which were returned Tuesday afternoon.

The full text of the email is after the jump ...

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Posted by Kevin Hoffman at July 9, 2008 5:18 AM | Comments (1)

 

Newspaper Default-o-Matic: Pi Press parent a big credit risk

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Bored with words? Like to look at graphs instead? Still want to follow the burgeoning newspaper financial crisis?

Longtime journalist and current CEO Alan Mutter has created a handy tool just for you called the "Default-o-Matic," which breaks down how tenuous each newspaper corporation's financial status is. The data is obtained using ratings provided by Moody’s Investors Service, and his most recent post in this category assesses MediaNews, parent of the Pi Press.

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Posted by Jeff Shaw at July 7, 2008 9:33 AM | Comments (0)

 

Strib Bankruptcy Watch: Profiling the vulture circling overhead

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Buried deep in the Star Tribune's fascinating profile of hedge fund manager and minority Wild owner Philip Falcone is this nugget:

Falcone is also rumored to have bought a 5 percent stake in the Star Tribune's debt, which he also won't discuss.

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Posted by Kevin Hoffman at July 6, 2008 11:40 AM | Comments (1)

 

Strib: "We have the money, we're just not going to pay the interest"

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The Star Tribune's Neal St. Anthony offers up the latest internal revelation from the paper: the Strib chose not to make a quarterly interest payment to its second-tier debt holders despite the fact that, according to publisher Chris Harte, they have the money.

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Posted by Jeff Shaw at July 1, 2008 8:15 AM | Comments (0)

 

Strib goes green with biodegradable bags

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On Monday, the Star Tribune will become the first major newspaper in the country to use biodegradable plastic bags, according to Editor & Publisher.

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Posted by Kevin Hoffman at June 28, 2008 12:15 PM | Comments (0)

 

Strib Guild Rally

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At 3:30 p.m. Wednesday reporters at the Star Tribune will put down their phones, stop typing for just a little bit and head to the park across the street from their building on Portland Avenue to show their commitment to garnering a favorable contract. They want you to show up too.

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Posted by Beth Walton at June 24, 2008 10:37 AM | Comments (0)

 

Star Tribune has strong showing in Nielsen online rankings

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The Star Tribune fared well in the latest Nielsen online servey:

Brand or Channel Sessions per Person Unique Audience (000)

DrudgeReport.com 20.1 3,008

1. Daily Kos ^ 9.6 1,201

2. Fox News Digital Network 8.7 10,132

3. CNN Digital Network 7.8 33,101

4. AOL News 7.8 22,524

5. Yahoo! News 7.2 35,846

6. Economist.com 6.5 789

7. MSNBC Digital Network 6.2 35,184

8. Google News 5.5 11,356

9. Netscape 5.3 1,947

10. Breitbart.com 5.2 2,318

11. Gannett Newspapers, Newspaper Division 4.9 14,629

12. WorldNow 4.9 7,523

13. NYTimes.com 4.5 21,340

14. Townhall.com 4.5 1,181

15. Media General Newspapers 4.5 1,459

16. worldnetdaily.com 4.4 962

17. Star Tribune 4.3 2,337

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Posted by Kevin Hoffman at June 20, 2008 8:11 AM | Comments (0)

 

Two TV stations spanked by Minnesota News Council

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From the Minnesota News Council:

NEWS COUNCIL UPHOLDS COMPLAINTS AGAINST KBJR-TV & KSTP-TV

Minneapolis (June 19, 2008) – The Minnesota News Council today narrowly upheld two complaints against KBJR-TV (Duluth, Minn.) and upheld one complaint against KSTP-TV.

Tony Sheda, of Wrenshall, Minn. complained that the KBJR-TV broadcast, "The War At Home" (Nov. 27, 2007) sensationalized the death of his son Adam, a staff sergeant recently returned from Iraq. The story was the first in a two-part series about the emotional effects of war on returning soldiers.

The News Council voted 9-8 to uphold a complaint that it was unfair to use Adam Sheda as an example in a story about post-traumatic stress disorder. The Council also voted 10-7 that it was unfair for KBJR to report that, "It's been said that [Adam] Sheda may have had a death wish based on a posting he made on his MySpace account."

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Posted by Kevin Hoffman at June 19, 2008 6:30 PM | Comments (1)

 

Playboy's "Sleaziest Man in Hollywood" grew up in Minnesota

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You know his work even if you don't recognize David Hans Schmidt by name. He's the behind-the-scenes scumbag that gave the world sex tapes from Screech, Colin Farrell, Tonya Harding, and other quasi celebrities. What you might not know is that he grew up in Minnesota.

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Posted by Kevin Hoffman at June 19, 2008 12:11 PM | Comments (0)

 

Fun with RSS readers

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When you follow a lot of blogs, use of an RSS reader where new posts are routed directly to You, The Reader, is de rigeur. Sometimes a long blog headline is truncated.

Usually, this is pretty annoying, as your (my) lazy ass tries to guess at what the post might mean before wasting three seconds of your life and one or two calories by actually clicking on it. Other times, the truncations are delicious, as this screenshot reveals. Check out that top item.

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Posted by Jeff Shaw at June 18, 2008 6:25 PM | Comments (0)

 

Report: PiPress parent company likely headed for Kingdom Come

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The brutal technological and economic storm that is either laying ruin to print media, nurturing the seeds of some as-yet undetermined new model of journalism, or both, shows no signs of abating. That's according to an article Tuesday on Bloomberg.com.

The story is long on ratios and ratings and such, but it boils down to this: Several of the largest newspaper companies, including Tribune (owner of the L.A. Times and the Chicago Tribune), Media General (based in the southeast, and owner of the Tampa Tribune), and MediaNews (owner of the PiPress, among many others) are on the cusp of defaulting on their debt and plunging into bankruptcy. One company, Philadelphia Media Holdings LLC, which owns the Philadelphia Inquirer, defaulted on $85 million of debt on June 5.

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Posted by Jonathan Kaminsky at June 17, 2008 3:10 PM | Comments (3)

 

Katherine Kersten continues jihad against TIZA in Wall Street Journal

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Katherine Kersten just can't leave the "muslim school" controversy alone.

Just when you thought her jihad against Tarek ibn Ziyad Academy was over, the Nag from the North goes and writes an op-ed about it in the Wall Street Journal.

The piece, headlined "Charter Schools Shouldn't Promote Islam," points out all the many religious practices taking place at TIZA and argues that such actions wouldn't be tolerated if it was Catholicism being promoted on the public dime.

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Posted by Kevin Hoffman at June 16, 2008 3:23 AM | Comments (12)

 

Judge in WCAL case to AG's office: Shame on you!

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Last summer, we brought you the story of WCAL, the classical music radio station housed at St. Olaf College that the school sold to Bill Kling's MPR for more than $10 million, and which was turned into The Current. There's a lot of ins and a lot of outs that we don't feel like delving into right now (hint: read the original article), but there's big news to report.

After many months of fact-finding, Rice County Judge Gerald Wolf issued an order on Tuesday lambasting the sale of WCAL in the harshest of terms. After implicitly calling the sale illegal, Judge Wolf unleashed his fury on the Attorney General's office, which is bound by law as the watchdog for all charitable trusts in the state.

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Posted by Jonathan Kaminsky at June 11, 2008 8:28 PM | Comments (13)

 

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