When I first heard the rumor that former City Pages editor Steve Perry was interested/being considered/negotiating/taking the job running Minnesota Monitor, the hard-working, earnest-lefty news site, I called him. I think my first question was, "WTF?!"

Perry has spent much of the past year getting his own website, The Daily Mole, up and running. Among ex-newspaper wretches of a certain self-satisfied, snarky, semi-adolescent type, (e.g. yours truly) Perry's concept for a local news-driven website seemed (seems) precisely the model for our times. The Internet is not a mass medium; therefore, identify the audience you want, and give them what THEY want.

Perry was careful-to-coy about his intentions regarding the Monitor job, not exactly saying, "No way" and conceding that even the most clever ideas—The Daily Mole, which debuted only last November—require cash. Right now, The Mole is pretty much a one-man show. Perry reports, comments, and aggregates, (with assistance from his wife, Cecily Marcus). Many of us were hoping that he'd be adding staff by this spring, at least.

From the conversation with Perry, I didn't get the impression that he was even remotely considering some kind of amalgamation of The Daily Mole and Minnesota Monitor although if you stop and think about it, each has elements the other sorely lacks. Perry's Mole needs more voices, even if they aren't all as astute politically and journalistically as Perry himself. (The guy has a reputation for, shall we say, tremendous confidence in his view of what the heart of a story is and how it should be written.) Minnesota Monitor, on the other hand, badly needs an infusion of showmanship: a twenty-first-century design makeover, steady delivery of sophisticated humor, and the kinds of disparate elements—political cartoons, culture-critical video—that reassures readers they're being served something more tantalizing than spice-and-butter-free vegetables.

The shame here will be if Perry decides he has to gear down on The Daily Mole. Although this is a miserable time for raising money for anything, other than maybe an HMO, the nascent Mole still holds great potential for congregating the town's best wandering smart-ass minstrels in one place.

Perry said he doubted, "anything will happen soon, at least not for another week, week and a half."

While I'm at it, let me say that in world where major news media organizations were actively searching for next generation of management talent, people who have both proven themselves prescient about the evolution of the Internet; have demonstrated the consistent ability to acquire and cultivate talent; and understand the value of artful, purposeful provocation on relevant issues, dinosaurs such as the Star Tribune and the Pioneer Press would long ago have asked a guy like Perry in for a serious conversation.

Unfortunately, when editors are being hired more for their ability to obsequiously and instinctually kowtow to the blandifying edicts of the marketing and accounting departments, iconoclastic, push-back operators like Perry are waaaay off-the-charts scary.