Columnists Aweigh . . . or . . . Nice Guys Finished
By Adam Platt
Some of my peers have been asking me to weigh in on the Star Tribune’s columnist purge, but I’ve been having trouble with the topic because I’m of two minds on it. I agree with everyone else that columnists are often the spark and lifeblood of great newspapers. But my problem here is I don’t think much of the Strib’s columnists, and I never have, and that goes back to my arrival on this prairie in 1981.
I like Nick Coleman’s pugnacity. I loved him as a TV critic. I want to see his byline around this town. But read his last two columns (here and here), and tell me you haven't heard this all before.
Katherine Kersten was never columnist material to begin with. She’s an ideologue whose work bears no connection to journalism.
Then there are the paper's softer columnists, who really should be reporting or devoting their effort to things other than generating one-liners. They were given columnist gigs largely because glibness doesn't offend as many folks, I'm sure, but a stand-up routine in print is not particularly cathartic or edifying.
And they're the tip of the iceberg. The paper collects staff who are paid 100K or so a year to fly to New York, meet with Minnesota expats, extol their exploits in weekly blurb dispatches, and then pen thinky trend pieces whose basic thesis showed up in better newspapers eight weeks earlier. (And enough about David Carr. What’s next, dissecting his feces?)
What's at the root of all these miscast folks and wasted salaries? Management that could never figure out how to maximize its talent, a union culture that led management to avoid picking fights with talent over suitable roles, and a "lifer" culture where no prominent figure at the paper was ever forced to reinvent themselves to stay salient or move on if they wouldn't.
There's the prospective columnist who told management he would review national TV and attend its press junkets but wouldn’t cover local TV or radio. That’d get you shown the door in most of the places I’ve worked. But the Strib made it work because the Strib is not like most places. That's a leadership issue.
I remember in my media critic days hearing from Linda Picone, then Strib features editor, objecting to fun I had poked at Mary Hart, the paper’s then food editor. The Strib got to the food revolution ten years after other large newspapers because no one had the stones to tell Mary we weren't cooking with lard anymore and had started using fresh vegetables. Picone called me “ageist.” That’s how they viewed the world over there—you’re entitled to your forum as you see it until death or voluntary retirement.
Instead of the rough and tumble of a sharp newsroom, obsolescence is doing the work the bosses never could manage. I’d like to think the Strib is getting its due for decades of settling for mediocrity, managing by
consensus, and taking its readers for granted. Maybe somewhere in all this
pain, there’s a kernel of justice.
If not, at least there's still C. J.
© 2008 MSP Communications, Inc. All rights reserved
Jeez, after more than 15 years, can't you let it go? For the record: I did not reject your possible criticisms of the Star Tribune's food coverage--I may, in fact, have shared some or even many of them. But you didn't make specific criticisms (and if throwing out comments about cooking with lard or eschewing fresh vegetables were the kind of criticisms you had in mind, they would have been both untrue and silly, not a serious critique). What you did was to say that the food coverage was bad simply because Ann Burckhardt and the late Mary Hart were older. That was and is ageist. You didn't critique the coverage, you slammed the individuals.
Your thoughts about the sinecure of Star Tribune columnists--and reporters, for that matter--are not off base. But it might have been good to find an example within the current decade. The paper has been sold twice and has gone through several publishers, editors and feature editors since I left in 1995. Who cares what I said way back when? It really isn't representative of what the paper is today.
Nick would roll over in his grave if he had one (and thankfully, he's far from that) to hear his former boss defend him, but I will. You don't care that he's lost his column because you don't think he's that good. I suppose we could debate that--views differ, as we used to say in headlines--but you really ought to care that he lost his column because the current Star Tribune leadership isn't interested in columnists who stir up controversy. If he had just stuck to kids with cancer, brave dogs and stories about his vacations, maybe he'd be okay. When Nick is on, he is very good. He's a lovely, natural writer and when his passion is aroused, he can be downright stirring. Does every column hit? No, of course not. Writing three columns a week is harder than it may look. Writing three wonderful columns a week is near impossible (a writer I know once told me that he thought the late Erma Bombeck was the only one he knew who could do it. I never thought of her that way, but he may have been right).
I think Katherine Kersten was dreadful, writing without the benefit of research or context. But those weren't the reasons she lost her column, either. For good or ill, she stirred things up and apparently that's a problem. I will not miss her column, but I think it was ended for the wrong reasons.
Now we're left with the inane burblings of James Lileks in print and online and seemingly everywhere, and the egocentric, often incomprehensible jottings of C.J. If this is what Metro columnists are supposed to be in 2009, we are in very sad shape.
Posted by: Linda Picone on January 8, 2009 at 10:58 AM
I think reinventing one's self periodically is something competent people do without having to be told to do it. I really don't have any sympathy at all for anyone who relies on the same-old, same-old for their success and benefits. It's arrogance personified to me. I am self-employed and if I didn't re-invent how I approach my work DAILY I would be out of business in short order and no one would be lamenting my loss.
I agree with Mr Platt that the Strib has long been focused on putting people ahead of their content. Got nothing to say but been here forever? Good for you! Absolutely horrible for keeping readership and the interest of people who can and easily do go elsewhere for CONTENT that matters to them. I can think of no reason at all why anyone locally wouldn't throng to the Strib website if there were anything at all there we wanted to read.
I am also convinced the lifers at the paper are caught in the struggle between what they think the newspaper has to be/should be and what the marketplace is telling them it wants. The challenge I think is for the leadership there to realize what the paper is going to be, and then have the stones to get there first and do it well. Personally, I don't see it happening with the group in charge.
Posted by: David Garbe on January 8, 2009 at 11:34 AM
In re the Food section of the Strib.
I am a foodie. Complete, total, real all recipes everywhere. Cook everything.
Every recipe I've tried out of the Strib the last ten years has been atrocious. Cooked to a T per the recipe. What a joke.
Maybe the oldsters and their lard were right. Just kidding, in a way. [Because those ladies knew how to cook.] BUT...the person editing those pages and deciding what to put in there doesn't cook.
Twenty years ago, there were great recipes in there. I still use some of them, as does my mother.
Nelson and Sicherman are the only names worth reading, now.
Now, the recipes SUCK. Which is bizarre, given any recipe one could ever want is online, free, anyway. Who is responsible for the Food section now? That person should have been fired years ago.
Posted by: AynNewMediaRand on January 12, 2009 at 9:58 PM